Posting from
my new laptop. I got really burned by the last Dell I bought (literally and figuratively) so I replaced it far faster than I usually would (2 years, compared to my last laptop, which gave me around 7 years of great service). Still have to get used to the new keyboard layout, but aside from that I really like it so far. Decent battery life, doesn't get too hot in normal use (my Dell would literally idle at around 55-60C, which is just absurd), and has plenty of power when I need it. Best of all, since ASUS seems to know how to design a proper cooling system for an i7 laptop, this processor is able to stay in turbo for extended lengths of time. I've had it doing some fairly light work for the last several minutes (roughly 20% CPU utilization) and it's stayed at 3.3-3.4GHz, up from the normal 2.4GHz. The Inspiron 17R SE that it's replacing never jumped from the normal clock rate (which, incidentally, is also 2.4GHz) for very long.
Next step is slapping in
the SSD I ordered along with it and reinstalling the OS. Woot!
Edit: Well, the laptop is pretty awesome. Windows 8.1 was a pain in the dick to get installed (it doesn't pull in Windows 8 OEM keys properly, so you have to do a ton of dicking around to get it to work just like you do if you want to make it pleasant to use on a non-touchscreen system [and people wonder why my main system is now an iMac]). I used to praise Windows 8 for how it handled OEM keys, but apparently Microsoft saw fit to break the one thing that Windows 8 truly did well. GG.
It's a bit on the heavy side, but nothing I can't handle.
I'm really impressed at the thermal system that ASUS has. It doesn't use NVIDIA Optimus or anything like that, so it's literally using the GTX 765m for everything, unlike my old system that used the Intel HD 4000 for general tasks.
The UEFI BIOS in the ASUS works way better than the one in my old Dell. That one had a tendency to refuse to boot from a CD/DVD at all if there was already an OS installed. Getting Windows 8.1 reinstalled on there to give it to my dad was just a nightmare.
About the only thing that was truly better on the Dell were the speakers, and that seems to be something that Dell gets right quite a bit. The speakers on the ASUS simply do not get very loud. For some reason they're placed in the small gap between the monitor flap and the base of the system, so they are noticeably muffled. Even with the volume cranked up to 100 they aren't particularly loud. The subwoofer does sound better than the one on my last Dell, however. It has a smoother, more natural sound. The highs and overall volume, however, are nowhere near as good.
The headphone/microphone jacks on the ASUS, however, are much better. For one, the headphone jack is a hybrid port, similar to the one found on most newer Macs. You can get a little 3.5mm to optical adapter plug it into an S/PDIF receiver. I was also much happier with the volume and clarity of the analog ports. I'm not sure exactly how they ran the jacks on the Inspiron 17R SE, but they definitely did it wrong. The audio was fairly soft and was excessively noisy. I'm pretty sure the front audio jacks on my PC (which, by their very nature, cannot deliver acceptable sounding audio) did a better job. I haven't plugged my Sennheisers in yet, but even with a simple pair of basic vintage 2010 Apple Earbuds it sounded noticeably better.
Startup times with UEFI and the SSD in place are just downright absurd. I haven't really timed the cold boot performance yet, but starting up from hibernation is blazing fast, with Windows reporting a BIOS time of 1.5 seconds! I'm pretty sure it wakes up from hibernation as fast as my Android tablet wakes up from sleep (then again, that's most likely because it's running TouchWiz...ugh).
Did I mention how cool this thing runs? I did? Too bad, I'm talking more about that. I had it sitting on a tray table for about 2 hours, watching a bunch of YouTube videos. When I put it to sleep almost the entire system was cool to the touch. The left side of the base felt like it was around room temperature and the right side was just slightly warm. The entire top of the laptop was actually cool to the touch. It felt like the fans were completely off. It doesn't seem to matter how warm the laptop gets, the keyboard and wrist rest don't seem to warm up. I'll have to throw a fairly demanding game on it and see how much that changes things.
So yeah, I like it.
