Asus M51Ta Owners' Lounge

[E.B.E.]

Nothing new to report, but I had a question and maybe someone can help. The built in camera has vanished from device manager and cannot be found. So, basically the hardware isn't being detected. I thought it was a driver issue at first and went to find out the type of camera (3 possibilities in this notebook), and it's not where it is supposed to be. The only system changes, were some games were installed. It was working yesterday afternoon.

Is there something I'm missing? Any thoughts?

Suggestion #1, try restoring (System Restore) to a point where it was working. Uninstall any software you recently installed, to eliminate possible conflicts.

If that does not fix it, you can try a system recovery (From the partition or the DVD).

[highlandsun]

My current display is 1400x1050, no point in "upgrading" to something with less resolution. The 3650 isn't too important to me since I won't be gaming, just wanted a big screen I can have a lot of editors open on while writing/debugging code.

re: textured vs smooth surfaces - they all wear out smooth anyway over time. My M6Ne is on its 3rd keyboard, the keytops on the previous keyboards were all worn completely smooth by the time I replaced them. I think that's the least of the worries...

[bennyhana]

Here's an update on the camera situation. It is still gone even after a full system restore. ASUS, said that if a restore did not work then an RMA is the only option after that. I guess I have to determine if it's worth it. If I had it for 6 months I'd say no, but I've had this less than a week. I'll have to mull it over.

[E.B.E.]

Yeah, in that case the camera hardware is probably faulty.

[Tshroom]

That sucks. I always wonder about the Asus swivel camera. It seems like a good idea, but it just looks so fragile. Asus could stand to upgrade the design and resolution of their laptop cameras. Most big names use 2MP cameras now.

I hope I don't have to send mine in for anything.. little annoyances always get me in the end though, and its better to get it fixed before you have your laptop decked out with software. Just in case they send you a new unit or wipe your drive.

[Tshroom]

Well my m51ta is out for delivery. It should be here anytime now. Hope I can clean it up and get some impressions posted.

[Tshroom]

Alright initial impressions.

It looks almost identical to the older M51 laptop, however I think the speakers are now Altec Lansing where as the older one wasn't. It looks very similar to my DV series HP, but it feels more solid. My HP creaked and flexed a lot while the Asus seems tightened up. It is still plastic, but constructed well.

The system had a bunch of useless Asus applications I had to uninstall, and the keyboard lag was an issue until I changed some settings on the synaptics touchpad.

The LCD is very nice (almost comparable to my HP w1907 monitor). The touchpad feels sticky, and the buttons are very loud and oldschool sounding, but the keyboard (after the lag is fixed) is awesome. It doesn't flex and it feels smooth.

The system processor idles around 45-50c and reaches 75-80c under full load (via coretemp). I couldn't find anything to monitor gpu temp, but NB probe from asus claims both components to be in the green.

I ran 3dmark05 (as I think it to still be the standard for laptops) and came up with a score of 7033 on 1024x768 no AA. That is without optimized drivers or tweaks. I am sure I could squeeze at least 7500 out of it. On a side not it informed me my CPU score was 8300.

If anyone has any questions I will be glad to answer. So far I am pleased with my first Asus and I hope for the best because right now I wouldn't mind being an Asus customer for life.

[E.B.E.]

The system had a bunch of useless Asus applications I had to uninstall, and the keyboard lag was an issue until I changed some settings on the synaptics touchpad.

Could you detail on that please? It might help other people with keyboard lag problem on the M50 models. Namely, noone has discovered a link between the keyboard lag and the touchpad settings, As far as I know.

[Tshroom]

I just followed the first solution in this thread and it hasn't bothered me since.

Solutions to keyboard lag in Asus M50 series

Also check the newegg link at the beginning of the thread. One of the reviewers has some tips that worked for him.

Now the only problem I have is making the recovery partition hidden again. After I redid the factory partitions the Asus recovery partition shows up in explorer now where as before it wasn't there. Its just a minor annoyance. Any tips? Some people say delete the drive letter in disk manager, but I don't know if that would make it inaccessible later.

[E.B.E.]

Oh sorry about that it seems I didn't read Emporiumboutique's thread with fixes carefully enough (I didn't know there was Synaptics-based fix).

I just followed the first solution in this thread and it hasn't bothered me since.

Solutions to keyboard lag in Asus M50 series

Also check the newegg link at the beginning of the thread. One of the reviewers has some tips that worked for him.

Now the only problem I have is making the recovery partition hidden again. After I redid the factory partitions the Asus recovery partition shows up in explorer now where as before it wasn't there. Its just a minor annoyance. Any tips? Some people say delete the drive letter in disk manager, but I don't know if that would make it inaccessible later.

I don't think deleting the letter does anything to the partition. But it may just be detected again under the same or another letter...
The correct way to do it is to use a partition manager such as PowerQuest PartitionMagic and set the partition as "Hidden".

Not sure if F9 (recovery from HDD) still works after you do that. But if it doesn't, you can always un-hide the partition later on, when you need to recover. There are ways to do that that do not require Windows to be booted (e.g., FreeDOS + the DOS version of PQMagic).