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Finally, a Netbook with Brawn (and Dual-Core Processor)

Paul Lilly — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:41:01 -0600

Asus said it was switching to Nvidia's Ion platform for future netbooks, and making good on that promise, the Eee PC maker on Thursday announced the Eee PC 1201N Multimedia Netbook.

Up until now, a multimedia netbook could be considered an oxymoron, if not a cruel joke, but that certainly isn't the case here. Pushing the boundaries between a netbook and notebook, the 1201N sports a 12.1-inch LED display and comes built around Nvidia's pixel-pushing Ion platform. That's great for graphics, but it doesn't stop there. Instead of the ubiquitous Atom N270 processor found in most netbooks, Asus equipped the 1201N with Intel's Atom 330 dual-core processor.

On the storage front, the new netbook comes with a 250GB hard drive and 500GB of online Asus WebStorage. The online storage space is provided for free for the first year, and after that, you'll have to pony up for a subscription plan.

Other specs include 2GB of DDR2 memory, Wi-Fi, three USB2.0 ports, a 6-cell battery good for up to 5 hours of run time, and Windows 7.

No word yet on price or availability.

Image Credit: Asus

ASUS Announces All Eee PCs Will Switch to ION Platform

Ryan Whitwam — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:17:16 -0600

Asus is about to make a big change to their Eee PC line of products. The netbook pioneer has announced that all their future Eee PCs will come equipped with Nvidia ION instead of the slower Intel solution most netbooks and nettops use now. Nvidia claims that ION is ten times faster than Intel’s integrated solution.

ION is famous for being capable of outputting 1080p video without using much power. The ION platform is also able to run Aero cleanly on Windows 7. “These PCs will run circles around most Atom-based systems, so they are an excellent solution,” said Industry analyst Jon Peddie. With the upcoming Flash 10.1 supporting video acceleration, you can expect smooth flash video at long last.

ASUS Announces TS Mini Windows Home Server for 10-computer Backup

Bart Salisbury — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:02:20 -0600

When you got to back-up, you gotta back-up. And ASUS has just trotted out a product to help do just that: the TS Mini Network Attached Server (NAS).

Set-up in a tower profile, the TS Mini is chocked-full of back-up goodies any home owner might need (and perhaps a few more). It is powered by an Intel Atom N280 processor running at 1.66 Ghz. Can handle up to 2Gb of DDR2 800 memory. Has 2 3.5-inch drive bays, and comes configured with 500GB, 1TB, or 2TB of hard drive storage. Gigabyte ethernet, naturally. Six USB 2.0 ports. Two eSATA ports. And a bag of screws.

The TS Mini is capable of handling back-up chores for ten computers. It also can serve as a streaming media platform, sending content to multiple attached devices, including receiver boxes and game consoles.

Pre-orders are being taken, with prices starting at $349. And, like early Model T Fords, you can have any color you want so long as it is black.

Image Credit: ASUS

Asus G51Vx-RX05

Katherine Stevenson — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:00:00 -0600

This budget notebook will make gamers smile

If there’s one thing that might take your mind off your financial woes, it’s some good old-fashioned fragging. And Asus is happy to oblige by offering the most affordable full-fledged gaming notebook that we’ve ever tested. The G51Vx-RX05, sold exclusively through Best Buy, costs less than a grand—OK, at $999, that’s a technicality, but still, this 15-inch notebook is cheap. It’s half the cost of the 15-inch iBuypower M865TU gaming rig we reviewed in November.

Of course, Asus had to cut some corners to get there. The notebook’s Core 2 Duo P7350 CPU, for example, boasts a mere 2GHz clock speed—that’s 33 percent slower than the iBuypower’s proc. And true to form, the G51Vx-RX05 performed about 30 percent slower than the iBuypower (our new zero-point rig) in our Premiere, Photoshop, ProShow, and MainConcept benchmarks.

A Power Control Panel option in the G51Vx-RX05 lets you overclock the CPU by up to 150MHz. That’s a 7.5 percent boost, which amounted to around five percent of additional performance in our CPU-centric benchmarks: Using the so-called “Extreme turbo” mode, we shaved 11 seconds off our original Photoshop time and a minute off of Premiere Pro. That doesn’t do much to bridge the gap between the G51Vx-RX05 and its higher-clocked competition, but it does add some value to the package.

If you're not crazy about the G51Vx-RX05's blue-backlit keyboard, a function button lets you dim or disable the lights.

Where you’ll find the most value, however, is in the notebook’s GPU. The G51Vx-RX05 sports the same GTX 260M graphics part as iBuypower’s machine. As we noted in our review of the iBuypower rig, this GPU performs head and shoulders above any previous-generation mobile part, serving up playable frame rates in today’s more graphically demanding games. Although iBuypower’s much-faster CPU gives that machine a slight edge in games (and effectively knocks Asus’s rig off our benchmark chart), the G51Vx-RX05’s game performance is still laudable. Compared to Toshiba’s 9800M-equipped Qosmio X305 (reviewed in June 2009), the G51Vx-RX05 was more than 20 percent faster in Far Cry 2 and Call of Duty 4. In Crysis even, Asus’s rig hit 30.48fps with the settings at High—that’s 30 percent faster than the Qosmio performed.

Physically, the G51Vx-RX05 seems solid. Its glossy white cover, glossy black trim, and blue-backlit keyboard give it an unmistakable gaming aesthetic that’s not too outlandish. Its rubberized palm rest adds a nice, comfy touch. And while its 15.6-inch reflective screen sports a relatively low 1366x768 native res, that can actually be a boon in games.

Does the G51Vx-RX05 make compromises? Yes. But in doing so, it delivers on its mission to provide top-notch gaming at an unbeatable price. And for that, this notebook deserves high marks.

Asus VH242HL-P

Michael Brown — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:57:44 -0600

Up, down, and almost all around

The Asus VH242HL-P is one of only two monitors we tested with a stand that tilts, swivels, and is height-adjustable. The 23.6-inch display is based on a six-bit TN panel with FRC and a native resolution of 1920x1080.

The monitor’s default setting prevents changes to brightness and contrast, so we switched to User Mode to tune the monitor when using DisplayMate. Red, green, and blue were all set to 100 percent here, but the entire display nonetheless over-emphasized blue. We also ran into a problem with the gamma measurement test, which indicated a serious color-tracking error. We finally put the monitor into sRGB mode and sacrificed brightness control in the interest of color accuracy.

Call us old-fashioned, but we like the reassuring tactile feedback that the Asus VH242HL-P's mechanical switches provide.

The VH242HL-P exhibited a nicely uniform black level with very little backlight intrusion, but we observed blooms of intensity in the corners and in the middle of the screen while displaying high-intensity blue and cyan as well as low-intensity green. Compared to the rest of the field, DisplayMate’s high-resolution digital photographs looked markedly more subdued on the Asus display. But the VH242HL-P did a spectacular job of displaying text; even nine-point serif fonts were clearly legible.

We didn’t encounter any dead or discolored pixels in our review, but buyers should note that Asus’s three-year warranty kicks in only if there are more than five of the former or three of the latter.

<< Back to the Monitor Index

Asus Adds WiFi, Card Reader to New O!Play Air Model

Pulkit Chandna — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:25:36 -0600

Asus has extended its O!Play HD media player family to include the Air HDP-R3, the first model in the series to feature WiFi connectivity and a multimedia card reader. Nothing else has changed apart from these two additions. The O! Play AIR HDP-R3, as the new media player model is called, features 802.11n WiFi, HDMI 1.3, a multimedia card reader, a USB 2.0 port, one eSATA/USB2.0 combo port and a RJ-45 LAN port. The Air HDP-R3 retains the aesthetics and the dimensions (181x125.3x47.7mm) of the original O! Play player - one without WiFi. The only departure from the original's design is in the form of the WiFi indicator on the player's front. Its price hasn't been revealed.

Eee Keyboard Hits Snag, Launch Delayed

Paul Lilly — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:30:44 -0600

It looks like we'll have to wait a little bit longer for Asus' Eee Keyboard, which was was supposed to launch in October. That didn't happen, nor does it look like we'll see the keyboard this month because it hasn't yet passed wireless regulation testing in te U.S. and Europe. How long that will take is anyone's guess, and it's up in the air whether Asus will manage to ship the Eee Keyboard in time for the holidays.

Perhaps turning lemons into lemonade, Asus said it will use the delay to its advantage by beefing up the hardware specs. The company plans to swap the CPU for one that is faster, and it will get a new OS too. On top of it all, the Eee Keyboard will add capacitive touchscreen capabilities. All this while still checking in around the $500 mark.

We'll update you with more info as soon as we have it.

Now Available: Motherboards Equipped with USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps

Jason Barry — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:43:08 -0600

With some of the first USB 3.0 and SATA 6 devices already released, the first capable motherboards are now available for purchase. Asus and Gigabyte were both known to be working on new boards earlier this summer and both companies are now shipping their latest models.

Asus is shipping two boards, one with a P55 chipset, and the other with an X58. Due to the single lane bandwidth bottleneck of the P55 chipset, Asus uses a bridge chip (PLX8613) and four PCIe lanes so the board can run in SLI and Crossfire modes. Gigabyte is shipping seven different boards in the P55A series. Gigabyte opted to avoid the bridge chip so dual-card modes will not be enabled in the board.

These motherboards are shipping despite delayed chipset releases from Intel supporting the latest interfaces. Manufacturers do not expect to have new Intel chipsets with USB 3.0 support until 2011.

Asus P7P55D-E-Premium

Maximum PC asus RSS Feed

Finally, a Netbook with Brawn (and Dual-Core Processor)

ASUS Announces All Eee PCs Will Switch to ION Platform

ASUS Announces TS Mini Windows Home Server for 10-computer Backup

Asus G51Vx-RX05

This budget notebook will make gamers smile

Asus VH242HL-P

Up, down, and almost all around

<< Back to the Monitor Index

Acer H235H

Gateway FHX2300

HP 2709m

LG W2353V-PF

NEC MultiSync EA241WM

Samsung P2370HD

ViewSonic VX2433wm

Asus Adds WiFi, Card Reader to New O!Play Air Model

Eee Keyboard Hits Snag, Launch Delayed

Now Available: Motherboards Equipped with USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps