http://uk.asus.com/Notebooks/Superior_Mobility/U36SG/
This had everything I was looking for (except a backlit keyboard, but still...)
The packaging was shoddy, I guess I've been too spoilt by Apple. It came in a messy looking box, and inside was just some wonky brown cardboard holding it all together. Two things I noticed that I liked, and two that I didn't:
1. Hard drive LED! We buy Lenovo at work, and the lack of a HDD LED bugs me
2. You can make the "restore DVDs" straight to ISO, no need to waste real life discs (who uses them anymore?) - again, Lenny doesn't offer this feature. Before someone goes "Herp derp Y U make restore discs when you use linux LOL!!!!11111oneone" - in case I sell it in the future. in case it needs to be sent back under warranty.
And the bad stuff:
1. The damn stickers! stuck all over the thing. Protective plastic. spam stickers. ugh. Luckily they all came off OK. There were sneaky ones on the underside of the hinges I didn't spot first time round:
2. As with my last ASUS (EEEPC900A - a netbook, remember those?!) there's no indicator LED to say the battery is finished charging. You've actually got to start it up and check in the OS. I don't get why they would miss off something as simple as that. The manual says when its on green and solid, its at least nearly fully charged - well thats useful.... NOT
Anyway, after making the restore discs (5 DVD ISOs - yep, that's (compressed) 17GB of crap they pile on to these things), it got flattened and a clean Windows 7 x64 installed. Seemed daft not to dual boot, in case there's a game I want to play that WINE doesn't like or something.
I like the ASUS driver page, they give the downloads meaningful names (*cough* TAKE NOTE DELL *cough*)
After taking a disk image, it was time for Linux. Arch went on without issue. Notes below. The only thing that took a little set up was the dual graphics card nvidia Optimus thingy using 'Bumblebee'. It worked first time though.
Arch installation:
Installed:loadkeys ukcfdisk /dev/sdamkfs.ext3 /dev/sda2mount /dev/sda2 /mntpacstrap /mnt base base-develpacstrap /mnt grub-biosgenfstab -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstabarch-chroot /mntnano /etc/hostnamenano /etc/hostsnano /etc/vconsole.confKEYMAP=ukFONT=FONT_MAP=nano /etc/locale.genlocale-gennano /etc/locale.confLANG=en_GB.UTF-8mkinitcpio -p linuxgrub-install --recheck /dev/sdapacman -S os-probergrub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfgpasswd rootexitumount /mntreboot
vimcpupower lm_sensors wireless_tools yajlalsa-utils alsa-oss alsa-pluginsnetcat mpg123 wget
wicd(I had to install dhclient - wicd seemed unhappy with the Arch default of dhcpcd)
gpasswd -a USERNAME network
/etc/rc.conf DAEMONS= dbus wicd
dhclient
Fix the grub error message:
# cp /usr/share/locale/en\@quot/LC_MESSAGES/grub.mo /boot/grub/locale/en.moInstalled Xorg and stuff:
xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-server-utils mesa mesa-demos xf86-input-synaptics xf86-video-intel openbox rxvt-unicode feh
Installed yaourt to get bumblebee:~/.xinitrcexec openbox-session
$ wget http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/package-query/package-query.tar.gzInstalled bumblebee and stuff, tested with glxgears:
$ wget http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/yaourt/yaourt.tar.gz
$ tar xvzf package-query.tar.gz
$ tar xvzf yaourt.tar.gz
$ cd package-query
$ makepkg
# pacman -U package-query-1.0.1-x86-64......
$ cd yaourt
$ makepkg
# pacman -U yaourt-blahblah......
yaourt -S bumblebeeInstalled bbswitch to save power and turn off the nvidia card when not in use:
yaourt -S nvidia-utils-bumblebee nvidia-bumblebee
/etc/rc.conf DAEMONS=bumblebeed
glxgears
optirun glxgears
yaourt -S bbswitchRebooted, and tested the power saving (it's off when it shows rev as FF)
/etc/bumblebee/bumblebee.conf
[bumblebeed]
KeepUnusedXServer=false
TurnCardOffAtExit=false
...
[driver-nvidia]
PMMethod=bbswitch
...
[driver-nouveau]
PMMethod=bbswitch
...
/etc/modprobe.d/bbswitch.conf
options bbswitch load_state=0 unload_state=0
# rc.d restart bumblebeed
/etc/rc.d/functions.d/nvidia-card-enable
#############################
nvidia_card_enable() {
BBSWITCH=/proc/acpi/bbswitch
stat_busy "Enabling NVIDIA GPU"
if [ -w ${BBSWITCH} ]; then
echo ON > ${BBSWITCH}
stat_done
else
stat_fail
fi
}
add_hook shutdown_poweroff nvidia_card_enable
#############################
chmod +x /etc/rc.d/functions.d/nvidia-card-enable
lspci|grep VGAInstalled laptop-mode-tools to stop the drive from using whatever power saving settings it has as default (which makes it click every few seconds as it's too aggressive):
(rev ff)
optirun glxgears
lspci|grep VGA
(rev a1)
laptop-mode-tools...and that was it really. I'm yet to test suspend and bluetooth, but they should just work.
/etc/rc.conf DAEMONS= laptop-mode
/etc/laptop-mode/laptop-mode.conf
#
# Power management for HD (hdparm -B values)
#
BATT_HD_POWERMGMT=128
LM_AC_HD_POWERMGMT=254
NOLM_AC_HD_POWERMGMT=254
Hi Steven,
ReplyDeleteHave you encountered any excessive heat/noise problems with this notebook?
Regards,
Marcin
Hi Marcin,
DeleteNope, it's very quiet. I can only hear the fan when gaming/video processing/etc - and even then I've heard much louder laptops.
The hard drive makes an annoying head park ticking noise with the default APM/AAM settings, but QuietHDD/hdparm takes care of that nicely.
Thanks for reply. And have you found the gt610m a bottleneck? I'll do some demanding rendering, perhaps not an overkill, just something that my current integrated SIS somehow makes do with, however I'm looking for a GPU that will do it more efficiently. You've mentioned video processing, so I assume that I could also create animations quite smoothly with it? I'll also run Linux on it - some RedHat's clone.
DeleteHi,I'm Asus lover and bought this notebook to replace an Asus UL30A which I had for several years and loved (my daughter is now using it). The only drawback of the old notebook was that it lacked the power to do heavy duty video editing using Adobe Premiere. I saw that the U36SG had dual core with hyper threading, double the base clock speed, and an additional turbo mode that adds another 25% or so with turbo mode, and finally 2 GB more memory (option to go to 8GB). Well, let me tell you this small, lightweight notebook is awesome! I am now able to create video/slideshow compositions with no hesitation, even as we travel. No more waiting until we get home. I am getting about 9 hours on battery using the recommended power settings and could probably squeeze out another hour by fine tuning. The best part is that I only paid about $50 more than I did for the older notebook....a great value. I absolutely recommend this notebook for travelers who want a lightweight but powerful do everything personal computer that is very close to the size and weight of an iPad. thanks all!
ReplyDelete********************
plug adapter usb power adapter