Asus Z63A

[Stratosphere]

just wondering if anyone has any experience with this notebook, i think it is also called the W3A... if someone could confirm that

I am in Canada so i have been reading some forums and was recomended CanadaSys as a good place to get Asus notebooks in Canada, if anyone has experience with them i would like to hear about that

i can get the following config
Centrino - 1.73G( 740 )
512M DDR2 ( 512M x1, Dual Channel Supported )
60G 5400r 8M Hard Drive
DVD & CDRW Combo Drive
VGA Shares up 128M
Wireless-G & Gigabit Lan
Logitech Wireless mouse / Carrying Case
14? Enhanced (Crystal View) wide screen
8-cell battery
weight ~ 5lbs

$1220 cdn

Pics:: http://vipforums.asus.com/4583/agenda_files/Z63A/index.html

I don't plan on using the notebook for gaming at all, i got a nice athlon64 system for that...
just want descent battery life 3.5 hours+, it will mostly be used for just word processing, internet, some web design type things... thats about it

Thanks for any comments

 

[inhotep]

hi, I have a Z63A and I love it. I built the systems from barebone myself. I think at price is pretty good considering they customize it for you.
I suggest to goto www.notebookforums.com and go to the asus reivew/pic section there for more technical or detailed info. I think that site is down right now thou.
BTW, that Z63A got a swap bay and in built in mic. you can swap the dvd drive for a modular battery in seconds.

 

[cheesehead]

I would go for it. However, the Z variant (which is roughly 100$ USD more, or roughly 130$ CDN) has a 6600 graphics card, which might be preferable.

 

[Smbu]

Well I've only been using my Z63A for about 2 weeks, but I really like it so far. The different options that I chose were the 1.86ghz P-M (750) and the 8X DVDRW drive, when I bought it from geared2play.com. I bought a 1gb stick of ram from ZipZoomFly and I just tossed in the Hitachi 60gb 7200rpm hd I already had. It really works great and I've had no problems so far. It feels much faster than my "old" Dell Inspiron 600m, even though that one had a 1.6ghz (725) P-M. It might be either the extra 266mhz and change to 533mhz fsb or because I only had 512MB ram in the Dell(used same HD in both).

The screen looks really great on the laptop and I really love it with the anti-glare coating. It looks much better than the 14.1" "regular" SXGA+ screen on the Dell. I just wish it did have a higher resolution screen. 1280X768 is ok, but I had gotten used to the higher res. sxga+ screen on the Dell. I think wxga is the highest resolution available for 14" widescreens at the moment.

The higher version, the W3V, is also available with the Radeon X600 video card instead of the integrated one, and also w/bluetooth, but I just think it cost too much more than the Z63A. I picked up my Z63A for under $1200 total (not counting the HD) and I think the retail for the W3V is $1699, which is a whole lot more, for only a little bit of extra stuff. (all prices are in USD)

As for the sound, at first I thought this was a terrible with sound. It was always REALLY low even with the volume cranked up all the way, but adjusting the equalizer settings fixed most of the problems for me. Also using the DFX plug-in program helps too. Now i don't have any problems with it. I haven't tried the laptop with any games yet, but I don't think it would be too great with them anyways, with the integrated video card. If you're not into much pc gaming though this should be a problem.

Overall I would definately recommend the Z63A laptop. The included laptop bag fits the laptop very nicely(even room for any extra stuff you may need to carry around. The cordless mouse was a good inclusion too, and now I don't have to unhook my Razer diamondback mouse from my desktop system, every time I want to use a real mouse with my laptop.