ASUS UL30 Owner's Lounge

[bentvalve]

I found a nice drive......
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB397G/A

Anyone know of a cheaper one that is decent quality?

[fuzzielitlpanda]

does this happen to anyone else or is it just me. whenever i lift up my ul30 the notebook starts making crazy noises. also the hard drive likes to squeak alot.

Mine does that too. I'm pretty sure it's just the mechanics of the hdd making all the noise. I'll be upgrading to an ssd soon though

[bentvalve]

Mine does that too. I'm pretty sure it's just the mechanics of the hdd making all the noise. I'll be upgrading to an ssd soon though

......ssd?

[coriolis]

......ssd?

Solid State Drive, pretty much a non moving hard drive. Think of booting from a large flash drive over SATA, faster writing and reading speeds, no moving parts so its dead quiet and it doesn't produce much heat.



I have one on my desktop that I'm loving. I'm picking one up for my notebook too.

[coriolis]

Gotcha , thanks.

BTW , what is the thickness of the the UL30? Is it as thin as the current MacBook Air which is .76" thick ?

I found a nice drive......
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB397G/A

Anyone know of a cheaper one that is decent quality?

Thickness: 0.6" - 0.98" varying on different points.


Optical drive: http://www.newegg.ca/store/SubCatego...%20dvd%20drive

[bentvalve]

Solid State Drive, pretty much a non moving hard drive. Think of booting from a large flash drive over SATA, faster writing and reading speeds, no moving parts so its dead quiet and it doesn't produce much heat.

I have one on my desktop that I'm loving. I'm picking one up for my notebook too.

Thank you. I did not know that technology had come so far. I would not be surprised if SSDs completely replaced SATA hard drives. A quick look at Apple and I see the upper end MacBook Air comes with a SSD.
I bet if one replaced the SATA in the UL30 with a SSD the battery would last longer.....of course this is just a guess that SSDs use less power than SATAs.

[ilovejedd]

Ok im gonna buy a lap now, im really torn between the ASUS UL30A-A2 OR UL30A-X5 , the main difference being windows 7 and the color of the computer.

I like the black better, but I have oily fingers, so if its glossy plastic, wouldnt it be covered with fingerprints?

Also , WHY is the ASUS UL30A-A2 more expensive than X5 on amazon?

hope u can help!

The outside of the X5 is black, brushed aluminum but it still retains fingerprints. Not as bad as glossy plastic, but it's not something I expected. Unfortunately, the interior of the laptop is glossy plastic. As for the price disparity, the A2 has considerably longer batter life than the X5 (~30%).

[ilovejedd]

Thank you. I did not know that technology had come so far. I would not be surprised if SSDs completely replaced SATA hard drives. A quick look at Apple and I see the upper end MacBook Air comes with a SSD.
I bet if one replaced the SATA in the UL30 with a SSD the battery would last longer.....of course this is just a guess that SSDs use less power than SATAs.

Laptop hard drives actually use very little power. When I was doing research for my HTPC, the 2.5" drives I researched had peak usage around 1W. Idle was like 0.5W. I'm not sure how much lower power consumption SSDs have.

The reason to get SSDs, however, is because they're silent and can withstand greater shock due to the lack of moving parts making them ideal for laptops, tablets and other mobile devices. There's also the near instantaneous access times. You have to pay for the privilege, though, as the cheap SSD's usually are no better than hard drives, performance-wise.

[mucker]

I found a nice drive......
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB397G/A

Anyone know of a cheaper one that is decent quality?

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product...82E16827151186

I bought this one, but from NCIX in Canada. Works and looks great.

[kostazu]

Thanks folks, this makes my decision quite a bit easier. Regarding the UL30a addressing 8GB of RAM, where is this stated? Is this implied with 64-bit systems? Has anyone actually achieved this much ram on this particular system?

You misread what I said. The UL30A only supports 4GB of RAM. This is a motherboard/chipset limitation, not a OS limitation. The UL80 can support 8GB of ram, at least according to amazon, which is why I'm considering it. (http://www.amazon.com/UL80Vt-A1-14-I...6499989&sr=8-1) The extra ram is very handy for multi-tasking, as well as running virtual machines (virtualbox).

Now, a 32-bit OS can only address around 3ish GB of ram. It's essentially 4GB minus all the system devices, or around 3.3 ish GB. Here's the gritty details: http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3124

"With a 64-bit CPU the addressable memory is now 2^64 or 16.8 million terabytes." That's theoretical, the physical limit is dependent again on your motherboard and chipset. Also, windows caps the max memory by flavor of windows as well: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...8VS.85%29.aspx (short answer is 192GB for win 7 pro or ultimate variations, or 16GB for home premium).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit has a breakdown about the pros and cons of 64-bit.

Just one more followup point. Most of the cpus made for laptops/desktops today are 64-bit OS compatible. (The Atom is one of the exceptions.)