ASUS G71 Republic Of Gamers: Look And Feel
We’re going to get a bit subjective here. If you’re familiar with ASUS’ RoG motherboards, then you already know it puts a particular emphasis on flashy looks to go along with home-brewed software and a generally higher-end list of hardware. On an enthusiast motherboard, the LED lighting, convenient buttons, and extravagant cooling go a long way to enhance aesthetics. That’s all a bit harder to pull off on a laptop, though. Alienware definitely rocks the “understated class” motif much more effectively.
With that said, ASUS does a fantastic job with its paint scheme. The pearlescent red paint job proves very scratch-resistant and is an exceptional choice for masking fingerprints and small nicks. We could do without the silver accents splashed about, given that black is the second most dominant color and three tones look quite a bit busier than two. Additionally, once the system is powered on, a series of red and blue LEDs add to the LAN party ambiance.
The G71’s shape is superior to the Clevo designs used by Eurocom and Killer Notebooks. And at just over eight pounds, it’s a pleasure to haul around compared to the submissions from either Alienware or Killer Notebooks (we are assuming you’ll be carrying these gaming laptops around with you to some degree).
As with the two whitebooks, ASUS is guilty of drawing air up through a fan at the bottom of the chassis. So you’ll probably not want to game with the machine resting right on your lap. In fact, ASUS adds a pair of pads towards the back of the shell to make sure there’s always airflow while the G71 is on a flat surface.
Pop the notebook open and you’ll look at a full-sized keyboard, complete with the 10-key number pad seen on our other 17” gaming platforms. The touchpad feels decidedly bolted-on, but ASUS, recognizing that gamers have no desire to use touchpads anyway, provides a software tool to disable it on demand.
Making It An ASUS
ASUS is adamant that anyone can take a bunch of off-the-shelf components and create his or her own mobile gaming machine. Where the seasoned motherboard vendor sets itself apart is the software backing its hardware package. For example, the bundled Direct Console application offers a couple of overclocking options above and beyond the T9400’s stock 2.53 GHz: 2.65 GHz and 2.78 GHz. Direct Console also controls the onboard LED lighting and OLED—used to monitor CPU/memory usage, battery charge, email, and instant messages.
The G71 also feature Express Gate, ASUS’ near-instant boot Linux environment with access to the Internet, a media player, Skype, and a photo album. This isn’t really a feature we see being heavily used on the desktop, but it does make great sense on the road, where you might want to check email or a stock quote without fully booting into Vista.
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Please use Propper size pictures as i am not zooming every one (takes 3-4 secs to load each one when doing that)
even when i use the Print option thay are still in 200 x 120 pixels when it should be 450 x 271 pixels for both print and per page viewing
rest of the review is good
Okay, I have no idea about the battery life of ANY of the contenders - no mention of them in the text and that one vital image of the battery chart is missing from Toms. Good going guys!
Not that you can claim credit for any of the graphs on this article - all the rest are borked as well. They do show up - as tiny thumbnails. Nice one. Real classy.
Now back to the actual article subject, aka Rant#2. Hasn't it occured to the OEMs that we have a major niche going unfulfilled here? I can think of several nomadic user bases (how about students for starters anyone?) who want gaming laptops but who are unwilling to part with €5000 for something that has the same performance as a €500 desktop. Even with Centrino 2 bringing the RAM and motherboard back up to scratch the near-inability to run games such as SupCom and Crysis shows that the gap between standard and mobile CPUs and GPUs is now reaching crisis point.
You'd think that with such a large potential user base some of the big facs or OEMs would be innovating, but they ain't. AMD seem to have given up on mid-high-range lappies entirely, which give nVidia and Intel carte blanche to sit there doing very little (note to Nintel fanboys - this is what would happen to desktops if your hated AMD died for you - €5000 desktops to not-run Crysis). And yet OEMs continue to specify WUXGA screens that the tiny GPUs cannot hope to power, and all that HD clarity will go out the door if you drop down the res - LCDs suffer badly when running resolutions that aren't native or a root of 2 of the native (and the root-2 res for WUXGA is 950*600 - nonstandard and way too small for use!). Why aren't OEMs using high-quality (and potentially cheaper) 1650*1080 or even 1440*900 screens instead?
As for processors... if Intel really gave a damn they should have implemented mobile quads that electrically isolate half the cores when away from AC, halving TDP. Even without this some OEMs should have put in BIOS tools that overclock and underclock CPU/GPUs depending on power status (battery, AC...). Nope. Asus did try, bless 'em, but their lappy isn't even a high-end gaming machine! Desktop-replacers take note. Alienware should be taking notes - they could really do with those features, especially as their machine is supposed to be a gaming lappy - unlike Killer, who isn't afraid to admit their "laptop" is really a small desktop light enough to be carried
At least AW got the ventiltion right... everyone else still has easily-blocked fan ports on the bottom. Why hasn't Clevo tried to put some side intakes on their larger units yet?
guess thay do not bother to read these posts any way
them pictures are to small mite be ok if my desktop was at 640x480, mite even be viewable on my PDA (if it was not for the best of media stuff)