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"Asus unwilling to help or admit issues" on by k186
Pros: The pros are obvious with this machine. For the price, you can't find another mobile i7 with a 5870 out there. The laptop looks really cool, rubberized body, the angular shape of the frame, it just oozes with coolness =)
Cons: But, with all those pros, there are so many glaring issues preventing this from being a great buy.
1. Missing Keystrokes
2. Cannot upgrade graphics drivers
3. Heat issues on some units
4. Battery life (really a nonissue if you're looking at this)Summary: Don't believe what you read - missing keystrokes happens to every g73jh. The only solution is to disable the touchpad in the bios.
oh i forgot to add. Asus has been completely unhelpful. Their response is to "RMA it." This is not satisfactory because the RMAd replacement units sufferthe SAME problems. Also, if you buy the RBB-X05 unit GOOD LUCK WITH THE BESTBUY WARRANTY. THis is just asking for a headache since asus themselves offer no solution, best buy will certainly not have one themselves. ASUS is pretty much absent, and many g73jh owners have turned to ATI to help resolve some of their problems with their cards.
It is impossible to get stability out of the graphics card with new ATI reference drivers. You are stuck on Catalyst 9.12 (factory shipped) or 10.1 (on the asus website). All newer drivers case GSODs. The fixes so far are to flash a new vbios or overclock the gpu to prevent nearly immediate crashing but they still crash. Those who CLAIM to have stability do not play demanding games PERIOD.
People who lost keyboard backlighting just flashed their bios in Windows which is risky to begin with. Really the flashing process is simple and trouble free flashing it through the command prompt on a bootable USB-stick should give you 0 problems.
HEAT. WIth NO COOLING pad: Mine idles at mid to upper 60s. It will hit 100+ C on a furmark burn mode stress test within 6 minutes. A cooling pad helps tremendously. With a cooling pad I idle at around 50C and furmark stress test get's it steady at around 96C - considerably better. Some people who buy from 3rd party distributers (NOT the RBB-X05 only available at best buy) claim to have much lower temperatures that peak in the upper 80s. Good for them, they are the lucky few with well done pasting jobs. Many people have also repasted their GPUs themselves and have achieved similar lower-temperatures. This might be something you will have to do if you want to extend gpu-life.
Sources: notebookreview.com asus forums; ati/amd forums
FINAL RATING: 3.7/5
TOO MANY THINGS WRONG for a $1200 laptop.
Updated on Aug 5, 2010
Updated on Sep 4, 2010Asus just released a beta vBios and it works like a dream! In love with my machine all over again. Only problem left is the missing keystrokes. Boo.
- 5 replies to this review
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Have the same issue -- still. I sent my laptop to them 4 times to fix this and other issues. Each time I got it back it had more problems than when I sent it to them - missing screws, no network adapter installed, keyboard not installed securely, etc. Then after still having this issue I decided to suck it up and just order the part at my own expense and fix it myself. When I called Asus support the genius that answered the phone told me she couldn't find the part number and I should look for it myself! Pathetic customer service! I have been in the IT field for over 16 years and have dealt with my RMA issues and I have never delta with anyone or any company as incompetent as Asus.
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I called ATI regarding the stability question. Game crashes were only happening in Mafia II, after a few hours of play. The reason is because the default GPU temp at which the fan hits 100% is set too low. Flashing the BIOS fixes this problem, and the stability improved. New notebooks are shipped with this already. The BIOS flash has to be done to the motherboard for this fix. You can use the FlashWin Utility that ASUS preinstalls, its quite easy. Yes, there is always a risk that you can brick your notebook, so do so with care. I have had no missed keystrokes, however.
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My G73JH has NEVER missed a keystroke, so don't say all of them. Go to control panel, click mouse, then click on change mouse settings, click on Device Settings, then click settings, Turn Palm Check all the way into the red, or, there is also a checkbox that says "Disable pointing device while Typing" turn that on. With both of those you will never miss a key stroke.
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My G73JH has NEVER missed a keystroke, so don't say all of them. Go to control panel, click mouse, then click on change mouse settings, click on Device Settings, then click settings, Turn Palm Check all the way into the red, or, there is also a checkbox that says "Disable pointing device while Typing" turn that on. With both of those you will never miss a key stroke.
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i have a solution to this problem buy a mac book pro
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