Update: $299 + Free Shipping! 15" Ultrabook wannabe (great mom laptop)

[Kaido]

Its a very decent laptop. However the best bang for buck ultimately is

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+K...k55a&cp=1&lp=1

Its 420 bucks in most stores right now.

Wow, i5 for $90 more, nice find!

 

[Kaido]

Interesting, OP- Thanks for the review. It's enough for me to go to BB to take a look in person later today. :thumbsup:

Don't suppose it would play any games though huh. "UMA graphics" ...

2D games and HD video is probably about it. I'm surprised at how well it plays 1080p stuff. It can maybe play some basic 3D games. Here's a comparison of GPU performance: (closet I could find was HD graphics in a Pentium G)

http://www.tonymacx86.com/graphics/...-right-now-hierarchy-chart-toms-hardware.html

Integrated Intel HD Graphics (Pentium G) =

Nvidia GeForce:
Discrete: 3 Ti500, FX 5200 Ultra, FX 5600, FX 5700 LE, 6200 TC, 6600 LE, 7200 GS, 7300 LE
Go (mobile): 5700, 8200M, 9200M GS, 9100
Integrated: 8200, 8300

ATI Radeon:
Discrete: 8500, 9100, 9000 PRO, 9600 LE, X300 SE, X1150
Mobility 9700 (64-bit)

So not totally unusable...

 

[VirtualLarry]

Did you guys know that this laptop (well, an X501 with nearly identical specs) is on clearance.bestbuy.com for $309.99, and there are feb promo codes for 20% today?

https://clearance.bestbuy.com/detai...00gb-hard-drive-black/2826?navCode=MHqhIr6V9c

Coupon Code: LOVEYOU20

Here are the codes for the next five days. It all depends how many laptops are left over.

02/04 -- 21% off -- Use code ONLYYOU21
02/05 -- 22% off -- Use code REALLOVE22
02/06 -- 23% off -- Use code SOULMATE23
02/07 -- 24% off -- Use code TOOSWEET24
02/08 -- 25% off -- Use code TRUELOVE25

 

[Kaido]

Intel® Pentium® processor B980
Features a 1333MHz bus speed, a 2MB L3 cache and a 2.4GHz processor speed.
Also , I think the cpu is a 32nm Sandy. Got my mom a b960 Toshiba on sale at BB last year for 349.00, she loves it. It is much lighter than her older celeron 15" laptop.

http://ark.intel.com/products/69669/Intel-Pentium-Processor-B980-2M-Cache-2_40-GHz

The Device Manager on this model says "Pentium 2020M":

http://ark.intel.com/products/71142/Intel-Pentium-2020M-Processor-2M-Cache-2_40-GHz

Which appears to be a 35w Ivy Bridge model:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Intel-Mobile-Pentium-Ivy-Bridge-CPUs-Incoming-291378.shtml

 

[Kaido]

Did you guys know that this laptop (well, an X501 with nearly identical specs) is on clearance.bestbuy.com for $309.99, and there are feb promo codes for 20% today?

https://clearance.bestbuy.com/detai...00gb-hard-drive-black/2826?navCode=MHqhIr6V9c

Very nice! I can hardly build a barebones on Newegg for this price...with a Foxconn H67 barebones, a Celeron, 4GB RAM, 500GB, and DVD burner, I'm up to $290 haha - no OS or screen or keyboard or touchpad/mouse :thumbsup:

 

[jonno]

Thanks OP. I went Saturday night and looked at it; a little bigger than I thought but light and the number keypad is nice. Anyway yesterday I decided to order it online. $343 w/tax. 20 minutes later they made it a clearance item! I called to cancel but they said it was too late to stop the order as it was "in process" Gotta love BB! So I ordered another one w/ the coupon. and 2 day delivery this time and the total was $260. Will return the expensive one next week when it arrives. Incredible deal. Thanks for all the explaining you did here. This will be smokin after coming off a Thinkpad T43.

 

[vailr]

7. Make sure Windows Defender (aka Microsoft Security Essentials) is up & running and updated

I prefer: BitDefender Free Edition
http://www.majorgeeks.com/BitDefender_Free_Edition_d5760.html

See:
Security Essentials fails 'AV-Test Certified' stamp of approval and Microsoft says it does not matter

http://betanews.com/2013/01/17/secu...proval-and-microsoft-says-it-does-not-matter/

 

[Kaido]

Thanks OP. I went Saturday night and looked at it; a little bigger than I thought but light and the number keypad is nice. Anyway yesterday I decided to order it online. $343 w/tax. 20 minutes later they made it a clearance item! I called to cancel but they said it was too late to stop the order as it was "in process" Gotta love BB! So I ordered another one w/ the coupon. and 2 day delivery this time and the total was $260. Will return the expensive one next week when it arrives. Incredible deal. Thanks for all the explaining you did here. This will be smokin after coming off a Thinkpad T43.

Dang $260, nice score! Hope you enjoy it!

 

[Kaido]

I prefer: BitDefender Free Edition
http://www.majorgeeks.com/BitDefender_Free_Edition_d5760.html

See:
Security Essentials fails 'AV-Test Certified' stamp of approval and Microsoft says it does not matter

http://betanews.com/2013/01/17/secu...proval-and-microsoft-says-it-does-not-matter/

Yeah, and I think BitDefender was on sale for like 13 cents the other day...crazy!

 

[btmaximus]

Please let me know how the upgrades go if you decide to do them Kaido. I couldn't resist the price, and just bought one for my wife to use. I checked out that British video, and the SSD upgrade looked pretty easy, but the memory upgrade did not go well!

 

[pukemon]

Questions for the OP: Are the memory and hard drive bays accessible from the bottom, or do you have to dissemble the chassis, remove the keyboard, etc in order to get to it? Also, does it have the wobbly, single sensor spacebar? These were the main gripes with the X401a, and the X501a looks to have similar specs, just with a bigger screen and extra keys on the keyboard.

 

[cnjmorris]

Edit: OOPS, it is the SAME MODEL, just better price at same retailer, right?

Regular Price: $329.00
On Sale: $309.00
After coupon code "onlyyou21" $244.89

https://clearance.bestbuy.com/detai...00gb-hard-drive-black/2826?navCode=yYtEfQd2RP

 

[Kaido]

Edit: OOPS, it is the SAME MODEL, just better price at same retailer, right?

Regular Price: $329.00
On Sale: $309.00
After coupon code "onlyyou21" $244.89

https://clearance.bestbuy.com/detai...00gb-hard-drive-black/2826?navCode=yYtEfQd2RP

Almost the same - the Pentium B980 is the Sandy Bridge chip, the Pentium 2020M is the Ivy Bridge chip. But it appears in testing to be almost exactly the same, so meh - I'd go with the coupon model!

I'd return mine and go with that, but I've already got it setup for my mom, files transferred, etc., plus Best Buy is a bit of a drive from me, so I'd probably burn more in gas than I'd save :biggrin:

 

[Kaido]

Questions for the OP: Are the memory and hard drive bays accessible from the bottom, or do you have to dissemble the chassis, remove the keyboard, etc in order to get to it? Also, does it have the wobbly, single sensor spacebar? These were the main gripes with the X401a, and the X501a looks to have similar specs, just with a bigger screen and extra keys on the keyboard.

I didn't have any gripes with the keyboard, other than the arrow keys are a bit too close to the other keys to find them easily by touch. I also turned off all the weird multi-touch crap in the touchpad software, I kept launching sidebars and stuff by mistake during normal use.

 

[Kaido]

Please let me know how the upgrades go if you decide to do them Kaido. I couldn't resist the price, and just bought one for my wife to use. I checked out that British video, and the SSD upgrade looked pretty easy, but the memory upgrade did not go well!

I think I may just leave it as-is, although a 120gb SSD is tempting just to beef it up a little...spinning hard drives as boot drives annoy me these days :biggrin: Found a settings guide for the SSD install:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/86522-35-asus-x501a-bootable-drive

Ok so I figured it out guys, it was kind of silly but here we go.

So this system is sort of a hybrid legacy and EUFI system, and there a few steps I needed to take to get it to recognize devices that aren't the original HDD

First I had to the Security Options of the BIOS and disable "Secure Boot"
After that go to the Boot section of the BIOS and
- Disable Fastboot
- Enabled CSM (Compatibility Support Module)
- This will allow the BIOS to see other bootable drives (For some reason it keep on being disable when I would restart, so that's why I couldn't see my SSD)

Once those options were set and saved I was able to boot, validated that I was able to change the boot priority, saved again and used the Ubuntu LiveUSB and installed Ubuntu x64 bit

Made sure to reboot several times and the system has loaded successfully each time

Crucial also lists the laptop as having only 1 SODIMM port, capable of up to 8GB:

http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=2EB5AFEFA5CA7304

 

[htne]

Thanks for the information about the clearance, I just ordered one. $265.xx after sales tax, very good deal.

 

[Kaido]

Thanks for the information about the clearance, I just ordered one. $265.xx after sales tax, very good deal.

Nice! It's hard to even recommend a desktop computer at this point...~$270 gets you a 15" LCD (not fabulous quality or resolution, but hey, it works!), a keyboard, a mouse (touchpad), a 500-gig hard drive, 4 gigs of RAM, integrated graphics capable of 1080p playback, a 2.4ghz dual-core processor, and a 64-bit Windows 8 license. Plus you get a USB 3.0 port for high-speed storage, and if you really need one, you can get a bus-powered USB DVD burner for like $30 these days. Awesome!

 

[yhelothar]

For a similar price and used, I set up one with multitouch, stylus, and a 128GB SSD.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2299545

It's sure to be faster for the mom with the SSD, and the multitouch will make it more user friendly.

 

[Kaido]

For a similar price and used, I set up one with multitouch, stylus, and a 128GB SSD.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2299545

It's sure to be faster for the mom with the SSD, and the multitouch will make it more user friendly.

Nice! I'm constantly amazed at how much difference an SSD makes...I put SSD's with IDE adapters into old Dell 2400's and 3000's running single-core CPU's all the time with great results. The speed is limited to the bus speed (a lot of the older ones have some trouble with PCI SATA cards for booting), but since the latency is like zero, they still performance pretty dang well. Even on newer machines, the latency thing is so much nicer on an SSD vs. a hard drive, even a 7200rpm model.

 

[yhelothar]

Nice! I'm constantly amazed at how much difference an SSD makes...I put SSD's with IDE adapters into old Dell 2400's and 3000's running single-core CPU's all the time with great results. The speed is limited to the bus speed (a lot of the older ones have some trouble with PCI SATA cards for booting), but since the latency is like zero, they still performance pretty dang well. Even on newer machines, the latency thing is so much nicer on an SSD vs. a hard drive, even a 7200rpm model.

Yeah I agree! I had a Pentium-M notebook that runs great for just about everything short of HD video. With a SSD upgrade, it felt just as responsive as my desktop if not more.

 

[Kaido]

Checked in on the new baby - the battery is up to 4:30 after a discharge/recharge cycle and a couple day's of use. Much better!

 

[Pneumothorax]

Anyone know how to make a bootable USB stick for win8 so I reinstall a clean copy onto a Samsung 830? Asus no longer puts a media backup software on this laptop or maybe I'm just missing it?

 

[Kaido]

Anyone know how to make a bootable USB stick for win8 so I reinstall a clean copy onto a Samsung 830? Asus no longer puts a media backup software on this laptop or maybe I'm just missing it?

Found some info here, I need to do this next time I look at it:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/1734-73-bios-asus-x501a

When you install or upgrade to Windows 8, or receive a new Windows 8-based PC, one of the first things you should do is create recovery media, providing you with an alternate way to boot the PC and run recovery tools should something go wrong. This process has changed a bit since Windows 7, and now works with both USB-based recovery media as well as disc-based media.

To find the Windows 8 recovery media creator, enter recovery in Start Search and then change the view to Settings. The option you’re looking for is listed as Create a recovery drive in the search results.

The Recovery Media Creator is a desktop-based wizard that will enable you to create recovery media. (Note that you will need a version of this disk that works

After clicking Next, you’ll be prompted to connect a USB flash drive, or you’ll see a list of available drives. If you’d rather use optical media (CD-RW or recordable DVD), you can click the link titled Create a system repair disk with a CD or DVD instead. (This was the only option in Windows 7.) Here, I’ll assume you’re using a USB device, since that’s new to Windows 8.

After selecting the drive, click Next. The wizard will warn you that everything on the drive will be deleted as part of the formatting process. Click Create.

The wizard will prepare and format the drive, and then copy over the utilities and other files that make up the recovery environment.

And … that’s it. If your PC isn’t booting properly, you can boot it from the recovery media to access a recovery environment that includes several useful tools.

 

[jonno]

Kaido- thanks again for great info. Any idea what size media the recovery files need? Will it only work usb or will the card reader work as well? Thanks.

 

[Pneumothorax]

Thanks Kaido, will give it a try when I get home. So far agree with your assessment. Great machine at $329, killer deal for the ~$265 I got it for yesterday with the posted coupons. The hard drive is kinda b@#$! to get to and you can't really upgrade the cpu. My brother got a BF $200 laptop last year and I was able to drop in a i5-2450M (got it for $40 on fleabay) to upgrade the stock Pentium BXXX cpu. The 70 series chipset in this laptop seems to have a wonderful Intel feature that will cause the laptop to shut down after awhile if it detects an 'illegal chip' (anything other than a Pentium/Celeron) that was not present in last year's 60 series chips. Just FYI, if you're one of the adventuresome laptop 'hackers'