Notebook Trio: ASUS A8JS and G2P and ABS Mayhem Z5
by Jarred Walton on December 29, 2006 12:15 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
ASUS A8JS - Exterior and Features
The ASUS A8JS is a reasonably equipped midrange laptop, designed to handle just about any computing task that you could want to perform. The review system we received came equipped with a Core 2 Duo T7200 processor, 14" WXGA+ LCD, 8X DVDRW, 100GB 7200RPM hard drive, GeForce Go 7700 512MB graphics, and 2x1024MB DDR2-667 memory. Unfortunately, it appears that ASUS has decided to downgrade the final shipping versions of this laptop slightly, as we are only able to find 2x512MB DDR2-667 models available online. With Windows Vista ready to launch in the very near future, we would really prefer to see the end of midrange laptops with less than 2GB of memory. Prices are slightly lower than what we were originally quoted, likely due to the reduced amount of memory, but now some users are going to be looking at purchasing a laptop and then immediately spending an additional $200 to upgrade the memory, probably throwing out $100 worth of memory in the process. You can find the 1GB version of the A8JS for about $1600 right now, so our tested configuration would cost closer to $1800.
Looking at the exterior of the laptop, ASUS has created a reasonably attractive system. The top surfaces of the A8JS are composed of a silver plastic material with a matte finish, accompanied by black trim and a black keyboard. The bottom of the shell is also made of black plastic. Even though the chassis is primarily composed of plastic, it still feels reasonably durable and should hold up well provided you don't plan on beating on your laptop. The silver surfaces are not particularly scratch resistant, and after enduring a couple months of what we would consider light use our unit already has begun to show various scratches and blemishes. If you're like most of us, that's not really a big deal, but the shell will definitely show signs of use over time.
Looking at the various interface options, the front of the A8JS doesn't have any ports. There are LED indicators for power, battery, Bluetooth, and WiFi; a button that opens the top latch; and some perforations/designs for the two internal speakers.
The right side of the laptop has two USB ports and an infrared interface, along with the CPU HSF exhaust port. During use, particularly when the system is under full load, the right side of the laptop (both the exhaust and the bottom area) can become relatively warm. In the warmer months of the year, some might even say it's uncomfortably warm, although right now in the winter it can be nice having a portable lap warmer around.
The left side of the A8JS contains another USB port, an unpowered FireWire port, and the headphone and microphone audio jacks. Above these ports is an ExpressCard 54 expansion slot. The optical drive is also accessed from the left, and in the top-rear left of the laptop is a flash memory reader with support for MultiMediaCard (MMC), SecureDigital (SD), and Memory Stick (MS)/MS Pro flash memory. The included optical drive is an 8X DVD burner with dual layer support as well as DVD-RAM support. One minor complaint about the optical drive is that it is a bit difficult to press the eject button, though on the other hand you won't accidentally eject a disc either.
Finishing up with the rear of the unit, and moving left to right, we have the power adapter socket, two more USB ports, TV-out, VGA and DVI ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and a modem jack. At the far right is a security locking mechanism, and we should also mention that the DVI port does not support dual-link cables/resolutions. That's too bad for those users who want to use the ASUS A8JS with a 30" LCD running at 2560x1600, but it's not really unexpected.
Opening up the unit, we get to the major portion of the user experience. Besides the display, which we will cover in a moment, there's the keyboard, trackpad, some additional shortcut keys across the top along with the power button, and finally the integrated webcam above the display. To complement the webcam, there's also a small built-in microphone to the left of the keyboard. The webcam functions pretty well, as far as such things go, and it's a 0.3 megapixel model (640x480).
Focusing on the keyboard and trackpad, we have to admit that trackpads are not our favorite way of interfacing with Windows. They are more of a necessary evil when you can't afford the luxury of having an actual mouse available. Like nearly all modern notebooks, the trackpad has customizable scroll areas on the bottom and right side. With the limited space available, ASUS wasn't able to include a full-size keyboard and number keypad. The keys are still reasonably sized, however, and all of the most important keys are easily accessible.
Wrapping things up with the display, the overall quality was decent but not spectacular. The maximum brightness level is sufficient for most indoor use, but it can feel a bit dim when used in brighter lighting. Contrast, viewing angle, and response time are all acceptable, and as usual there is a moderate amount of backlight bleed. We didn't have any issues using the display for gaming, viewing movies, or running typical Windows applications, but of the three laptops we're looking at this display is definitely the low man on the totem pole. Being a widescreen display, running at the native resolution can be a bit tricky at times. Most recent games will allow you to make some manual modifications in order to get widescreen support, which can be a bit tedious at times but unless you run much older titles you should be fine.
The ASUS A8JS is a reasonably equipped midrange laptop, designed to handle just about any computing task that you could want to perform. The review system we received came equipped with a Core 2 Duo T7200 processor, 14" WXGA+ LCD, 8X DVDRW, 100GB 7200RPM hard drive, GeForce Go 7700 512MB graphics, and 2x1024MB DDR2-667 memory. Unfortunately, it appears that ASUS has decided to downgrade the final shipping versions of this laptop slightly, as we are only able to find 2x512MB DDR2-667 models available online. With Windows Vista ready to launch in the very near future, we would really prefer to see the end of midrange laptops with less than 2GB of memory. Prices are slightly lower than what we were originally quoted, likely due to the reduced amount of memory, but now some users are going to be looking at purchasing a laptop and then immediately spending an additional $200 to upgrade the memory, probably throwing out $100 worth of memory in the process. You can find the 1GB version of the A8JS for about $1600 right now, so our tested configuration would cost closer to $1800.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Looking at the exterior of the laptop, ASUS has created a reasonably attractive system. The top surfaces of the A8JS are composed of a silver plastic material with a matte finish, accompanied by black trim and a black keyboard. The bottom of the shell is also made of black plastic. Even though the chassis is primarily composed of plastic, it still feels reasonably durable and should hold up well provided you don't plan on beating on your laptop. The silver surfaces are not particularly scratch resistant, and after enduring a couple months of what we would consider light use our unit already has begun to show various scratches and blemishes. If you're like most of us, that's not really a big deal, but the shell will definitely show signs of use over time.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Looking at the various interface options, the front of the A8JS doesn't have any ports. There are LED indicators for power, battery, Bluetooth, and WiFi; a button that opens the top latch; and some perforations/designs for the two internal speakers.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
The right side of the laptop has two USB ports and an infrared interface, along with the CPU HSF exhaust port. During use, particularly when the system is under full load, the right side of the laptop (both the exhaust and the bottom area) can become relatively warm. In the warmer months of the year, some might even say it's uncomfortably warm, although right now in the winter it can be nice having a portable lap warmer around.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
The left side of the A8JS contains another USB port, an unpowered FireWire port, and the headphone and microphone audio jacks. Above these ports is an ExpressCard 54 expansion slot. The optical drive is also accessed from the left, and in the top-rear left of the laptop is a flash memory reader with support for MultiMediaCard (MMC), SecureDigital (SD), and Memory Stick (MS)/MS Pro flash memory. The included optical drive is an 8X DVD burner with dual layer support as well as DVD-RAM support. One minor complaint about the optical drive is that it is a bit difficult to press the eject button, though on the other hand you won't accidentally eject a disc either.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Finishing up with the rear of the unit, and moving left to right, we have the power adapter socket, two more USB ports, TV-out, VGA and DVI ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and a modem jack. At the far right is a security locking mechanism, and we should also mention that the DVI port does not support dual-link cables/resolutions. That's too bad for those users who want to use the ASUS A8JS with a 30" LCD running at 2560x1600, but it's not really unexpected.
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Opening up the unit, we get to the major portion of the user experience. Besides the display, which we will cover in a moment, there's the keyboard, trackpad, some additional shortcut keys across the top along with the power button, and finally the integrated webcam above the display. To complement the webcam, there's also a small built-in microphone to the left of the keyboard. The webcam functions pretty well, as far as such things go, and it's a 0.3 megapixel model (640x480).
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Focusing on the keyboard and trackpad, we have to admit that trackpads are not our favorite way of interfacing with Windows. They are more of a necessary evil when you can't afford the luxury of having an actual mouse available. Like nearly all modern notebooks, the trackpad has customizable scroll areas on the bottom and right side. With the limited space available, ASUS wasn't able to include a full-size keyboard and number keypad. The keys are still reasonably sized, however, and all of the most important keys are easily accessible.
Wrapping things up with the display, the overall quality was decent but not spectacular. The maximum brightness level is sufficient for most indoor use, but it can feel a bit dim when used in brighter lighting. Contrast, viewing angle, and response time are all acceptable, and as usual there is a moderate amount of backlight bleed. We didn't have any issues using the display for gaming, viewing movies, or running typical Windows applications, but of the three laptops we're looking at this display is definitely the low man on the totem pole. Being a widescreen display, running at the native resolution can be a bit tricky at times. Most recent games will allow you to make some manual modifications in order to get widescreen support, which can be a bit tedious at times but unless you run much older titles you should be fine.
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unclebud - Saturday, December 30, 2006 - link
"Seems all the usual suspects are on a holiday"more than likely they were just thrown speechless by such extreme bias in this "review"...
newsflash - it can have a sorry gma 900 in it that can barely play rollercoaster tycoon and call it a "gaming laptop" if they want...
ugh. i tried skipping around to get something valuable out of this "article", but there aren't any pictures of the models even...
going to reread mr anand's review of his laptop to cheer myself up -- now that's a thorough review!
JarredWalton - Saturday, December 30, 2006 - link
"but there aren't any pictures of the models even"Umm... what? There are 36 images (with enlarged shots) in the article, plus another 30 or so graphs/charts. If you're not seeing them, either your browser is incorrectly configured and is blocking the images, or else the servers are having issues. And if someone called a GMA900 a "gaming notebook" they would be lying; calling an X1700 laptop a gaming laptop is more of an exaggeration, but it's clearly not the fastest mobile GPU.
I honestly have no idea what you mean by bias, so I'd be happy if you would point out areas that are "biased" rather than just giving a blanket label to the article.
mino - Friday, December 29, 2006 - link
Overall a nice review, those ASU are getting some serious popularity here in Europe while the reviews are nowhere to find..However, ranting for half a page about 14inch not having numeric keypad? I would have thought it was under you level of knowledge...
While the KB is NOT perfect in any sense - small enter, small keys.. - the absence of numeric keypad is natural.
Maybe you should spend a few weeks on road with some 17inch baby of yours to see how "important" numeric keypad really is...
One thing I hate about A8J is that transreflective (CrystalSomething) screen. It is pretty much unusable the moment the sun shines, and it does shine a bit too much in the summer.
JarredWalton - Friday, December 29, 2006 - link
I wasn't really complaining about the lack of a numpad on the 14" A8Js, merely pointing out that it's not there and you really can't fit one into such a chassis. My "rant" for half a paragraph was dedicated to the Fn key - and mostly I was just talking about the uses and making a minor complaint about it not being switched with the Ctrl key location. Unless you're looking somewhere else?I tried to discuss my feelings about the keyboards on each laptop, as that's pretty important with long-term use. Given what I do for a living (writing), I would actually avoid purchasing the G2P (as tested) and the Mayhem Z5 purely on the basis of the keyboard alone. The US G2P might actually be fine, as the primary issue I had was with the mixed up locations (relative to most keyboards) of the \ and " keys.
As for the G2P, that's where I complained about the missing numpad, and it's a 17" model notebook. I complained about this same issue on the Dell XPS M1710 and E1705, as I use numpads on a regular basis and find them to be important. Ironically, the ABS includes a numpad, which I liked, but the other missing keys (Home - PgDn) were at least as irritating to me as the lack of a numpad. Obviously, my taste in keyboards isn't the same as every other person's, which I why I started the article talking about the importance of trying out laptops in person where possible - or try a similar laptop if that's all you can do.
Ideally, I'd like a 17" notebook to have a numpad and a layout very much like the ABS, only shrink the width of the Backspace, \, Enter, and Shift keys and put in a column with Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn similar to how the two ASUS laptops do it. There's plenty of room there for those keys... or just extend the keyboard area down a bit and put the keys right above the cursors like on a regular keyboard.
As for the two ASUS laptop LCDs, I didn't find the LCD on the G2P to have problems in bright light (sunlight is a stretch but possible). Hopefully all newer ASUS laptops have LCDs more like the G2P. The A8J on the other hand is definitely the worst LCD of the bunch and really suitable for indoor use only (or on overcast days). When I first used it I didn't think too much about the LCD quality, as most laptop LCDs can't compete with desktop LCDs in terms of brightness and color quality. After playing with the other notebooks, however, I became quite unhappy with the A8J LCD. Sure, it helps battery life, but all you need to do is have more brightness levels to allow for lowered battery use on LCDs like the G2P.
mino - Saturday, December 30, 2006 - link
Seems all the usuall suspect are on a holiday :)Maybe I should read a bit more thoroughy, and sllep more too :). Point taken.
As for the display, the are two things. I am yet to see an glossy surface LCD to be usable on sunlight. They are nice and sharp for movies and indoors. But my observation is that the moment sun shines (also through an unprotected window) the display changes to a mirror - well, it called an "mirror effect" dispaly sometimes :). At the same conditionas even a poor-quality anti-glare one retains usability.
That said I will have to pass the A8J, otherwise it is pretty solid bundle(I like the BT+DVI+14"WXGA+ combo).
Should the time come when the notebook are regularly of built-to-order variety such is it with cars now. That way most of these "issues" with manufacturer isung bad display, VGA, CPU and so on would be a thing of the past.
It would not even increase the price too much provided good automation is employed. Actually this would greatly simplify the abundance of notebook based of the same chassis with a bit different internals only.
Hell, just ASUS has 5+ series with the same 15.4inch chassis...
mino - Saturday, December 30, 2006 - link
spelling, here you come :(francisco54 - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
hola mepodeia mamdar los draivers de este ordenador