raskren Posted May 13, 2005 Share Posted May 13, 2005 I just received an Asus V6800V laptop yesterday.^Ignore the "Take a tour" button.^It is a very nice looking machine. Knife-edged metals with a brushed look give it a very refined feeling. It is incredibly light too. It looks many, many times heavier than it actually is probably due to all the metals used.Here's my beef with this thing. It has bluetooth, 802.11a/b/g, infared, a card reader, and more. Asus felt it would be best to defeat literally all bult-in Windows utilities to control these devices. The machine comes with Service Pack 2 and the Bluetooth stack and service that would both normally be there by default are not available. The services aren't merely disabled, they're not even available to the system. Asus uses some kind of Toshiba driver to enable bluetooth. I don't quite understand it completely but without some specific software installed, the bluetooth device isn't even viewable in Device Manager. On top of that you have to use a total of 3 pieces of software to enable/disable bluetooth. Each starts one or more services and has a tray icon. The GUI for each one is awful. They all look like legacy 16-bit apps. None of them look anything like Windows Xp. And none of them appear to be capable of "talking" to one another.Now that's just for bluetooth. Asus gives me tray applications (note the pluralization) to turn wireless on/off despite the fact that I have two hardware buttons that I can use to do the exact same thing. There are Asus services for WLAN as well as the Intel Proset utility which launches three processes of its own and requires 3 or 4 services to be running all the time. Why can't they just use the Wireless Zero Config with one service and one tray icon? Well, I know I can use it but why does Asus force this crap on me?!I also managed to disable the hardware buttons. There is a row of buttons beneath the monitor as well as a few on the F1 through F8 keys. As I gleefully deleted startup items I also disabled some service that allows these keys to work. I don't know what it is but with all this frustration, I really don't care.So now I have the task of trying to remove all the drivers from each component's installation package and adding it to my XPCD for unattended installation. I've done this before with other machines and it can be a painful, time consuming process because you really can't test hardware installation in a Virtual Machine. My goal is to make this machine use the built-in Windows services without all the constantly running tray icons, background apps, and services.Otherwise the machine is great. It uses the new Sonoma chipset, 512 DDR2 400 (which will end up being 1GB+ DDR2-533 for synchronous bus operation) and has a 1.87 Ghz Pentium M CPU. I can play DX9 games as well using the Ati X600 graphics card which is a tad bit slower than the Ati Radeon 9700 Pro on my home desktop.I've always carried the philosophy that the best thing you can do with a new computer from a large OEM is format and reinstall. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
firefoxthebomb Posted May 13, 2005 Share Posted May 13, 2005 Tisk Tisk, so true so true, that is the first thing I do when I get any computer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raskren Posted May 13, 2005 Author Share Posted May 13, 2005 Does anyone else here have this model or any other model of Asus notebook? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zxian Posted May 13, 2005 Share Posted May 13, 2005 I've gotta say that it's sadly the same case with my Compaq Presario X1050CA. When I first got it, there were a whole host of driver software packages that I don't ever use. There was even startup software for the modem of all things... who uses their laptop modem these days anyways. Luckily, Compaq was smart/nice enough to give me a pure XP disc, and a separate disk for drivers and software. I ended up simply formatting and then reinstalling just the drivers for all the components... forget about the Intel ProSet for wireless... it's not really all that great... pretty ugly UI too.Why can't laptop manufacturers simply rely on what Microsoft has already done for them? My laptop works brilliantly with the Wireless Zero Config service and everything else as well... all from Microsoft. Some people never learn... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ButlerKevinD Posted May 17, 2005 Share Posted May 17, 2005 Why can't laptop manufacturers simply rely on what Microsoft has already done for them? My laptop works brilliantly with the Wireless Zero Config service and everything else as well... all from Microsoft. Some people never learn...<{POST_SNAPBACK}>Hehehe.. You forget, that falls under the realm of "Things That Make Sense But Are Never Implemented". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soldier1st Posted May 17, 2005 Share Posted May 17, 2005 you get what you payed forwhen you buy a computer,all tones of crap is put onwhen you build a computer, none of that stuff is put on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rikgale Posted May 17, 2005 Share Posted May 17, 2005 There was even startup software for the modem of all things... who uses their laptop modem these days anyways.I do! I have little choice when visiting my parents Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saraband Posted May 17, 2005 Share Posted May 17, 2005 same thing when i got my toshiba satellite notebook A63 - it came loaded with SO much unwanted software from toshiba and norton and sonic and...i suggest u first, backup the drivers like thishttp://www.network54.com/Forum/thread?foru...0&lp=1108892103then reformat it - it works out alot quicker...in the long run that is ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zxian Posted May 18, 2005 Share Posted May 18, 2005 you get what you payed forwhen you buy a computer,all tones of crap is put onwhen you build a computer, none of that stuff is put on.<{POST_SNAPBACK}>There's not much choice when buying a laptop. Many of the "home-built" laptops have too many problems from incompatible hardware or just poor construction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tarquel Posted May 19, 2005 Share Posted May 19, 2005 My Acer laptop (see sig) was thankfully *NOT* loaded down by a load of crap. Just some essentials like PowerDVD 5 (shame it wasnt 6 but still works well) and NTI CD & DVD creation software (which i'm not familiar with that much, but works well - love nero tho)It asked to backup the system to a DVD when starting the system which was interesting so i decided to update windows and stuff first heheAll the drivers are avaliable from the website but i'm a tad nervous when it comes to wiping laptop's that aren't cheapo custom ones as this has a hidden partition thats used for something. I haven't looked at my CD's yet that came with the system properly. Dunno whether the XP CD is a "normal" oem CD or not yet lolThe system was performing nicely so didn't really wanna wipe it. I wont now after installing a load of stuff onto it and using it as the main pc Just a few cents here (anyone know about this hidden partiton at all? I know its for some sort of restore process but If I completely wiped the HD, i wonder whether i could get it back - or if i need it at all)Anyhow... Regards,N. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
suryad Posted May 19, 2005 Share Posted May 19, 2005 My Dell XPS Gen 1 laptop came with a few useless pieces of software...like Quicken and MS Money installed...and thats about it...but yeah I did uninstall most of the software that came preinstalled...ran a bunch of cleaning utils for trimming down the registry and after trimming off the fat it ran great...till I found nLite and I went ballistic and shrunk down my XP install cd from a whopping 600 mb to a paltry 150 mb with SP2 installed. Now it became quite perfect. Next time I reformat I will probably nLite my already nLited install to see what else I can get rid off..hehe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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