Like Rywill, I’m in the market for a laptop, and like Rywill, I’m favoring the Dell XPS M1530. However, I saw Asus has a new one out with the new Intel Penryn processor, the Asus M50Sv. I found two reviews over at notebookreview.com (review 1; review 2), and it looks promising. Basically, it looks equivalent to the 1530, with a few extra bells and whistles (fingerprint reader, auto brightness adjustment, Altec Lansing speakers), plus it should run cooler and longer with the new processor.
Anyone know anything about this model? Is there some glaring thing I should watch out for? I don’t know how Dell warranty/support compares with Asus warranty/support. My only previous experience with Asus is the motherboard in my desktop, which has been rock solid for about five years. Is there some place I can check this thing out before buying? Thanks for any advice.
One thing I’ve learned from watching movies and television is that if your laptop has a fingerprint reader, the hero or villian (depending upon whether you’re a hero or villian yourself) is likely to chop your finger off in order to hax0r ur b0x.
Anyway, I have an ASUS laptop and it’s decent. They tend to pack quite a lot into their machines (I couldn’t find another notebook at that price with 2GB and discrete graphics at the time). But I have yet to try the warranty. They have nasty trackpads IMO, so if you’re one of those that don’t connect some kind of mouse all the time it might be annoying. (They might have improved them in the last year though).
Throw in a positive vote for ASUS laptops from me. I’ve got an A8JS that I’ve had for a good long while and really like it. Like said above ASUS manages to pack in a ton of stuff into their laptops for a decent price. Dunno about the trackpad issues, the buttons are a little funny but other than that it’s fine.
Thanks for the advice. Anyone know where I could get a look at one of these in person? Laptops are highly personal, and there’s no way I’m going to buy one unless I can scope it out in the flesh. At least Dell has kiosks at the malls.
Funny timing on this thread. I just bought one of the lower end Asus F3-series laptops (TL-60, Radeon 2600) for $900 from Newegg, and got it all up and running last night. It’s a Vista machine, and Asus doesn’t provide XP drivers for it, so you’re pretty much stuck with Vista. However, the machine is running remarkably lean from the factory–it came with Nero, some Asus utilities and the MS Office trial preinstalled, and that’s it. It’s got none of the intrusive, obnoxious bloatware that Dell and other manufacturers load onto their laptops. Even with Vista everything feels crisp and responsive.
General build quality seems very good, with one possible exception. The touchpad is a little, well, touchy. It’s taking me a while to get used to it, but I’m not a veteran laptop user so I don’t feel all that well qualified to comment on its relative merits. FWIW the Dell touchpads I’ve used have been easier to use without accidentally clicking on things.
If it would be useful I’ll post more impressions once I’ve got some games installed on it.
They announced in January they were closing all of the kiosks in the US. I’m not sure if they are gone yet, haven’t been to a mall that had one since Christmas.
