Any feedback on the 1215B u bought? Any issues with keyboard flex? Touchpad? Build quality? Out of curiosity, why did you chose the 1215B over the DM1-4000? I'm deciding between the two at the moment.

Thanks for the pics, dude. I guess I'll be heading over to lowyat tomorrow to get some hands-on time with it before i decide. I've been leaning slightly towards the 1215b mainly because of the 12.1in screen and the usb3.0, and planned to do exactly what you're thinking - get an SSD, and dump the 500GB HD into an external HD enclosure. But there were issues with the 1215b with the keyboard (prominent flexing) and the touchpad (erratic behavior, forcing some users to disassemble their units to "modify" the touchpad) which had me a bit worried. You can read more about it here : http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=89461

I'm pretty sure both the 1215B and the DM1-4000 have two ram slots.

38mm thickness is correct, as least per official specs. So far, I've found no retailer in lowyat who is carrying the new DM1. In fact, most don't even know that the base price for the DM1 is RM1,099. Kept telling me I was lying until i should him the HP page.

LOL. The 1215B thread is suddenly turning into a DM1 thread. Anyway, to try to bring this thread back to topic... after much mulling around, I have decided that the 1215B is the right choice for me, beating out the DM1, the S205 and the e120.

I considered the S205 (RM1299) and the e120 (RM17XX) largely because I'm a big thinkpad fan, and i love the build quality, especially the keyboards. I would have gone for the e120 with its i3 2nd gen cpu if the notebook is to be my primary pc/notebook, but since it is not, i saw no reason to spend the RM400-500 premium on the e120. Frankly, this was the hardest choice to make - the e450 vs the i3 2nd gen.

Once I narrowed it down to the e450, it was easier to eliminate to other contenders. I liked the S205 for its keyboard as well, but it had a slightly shorter battery life, small touchpad, and no usb3. As for the DM1, it really is a good value at RM1099 and free backpack, but didn't like the keyboard layout as much and do I really need another backpack? In the end I chose to pay a slight premium for the slightly large 12.1in screen, the usb3, a better (to me) keyboard layout, and the fact that i can get it sooner rather than wait for 2 weeks for delivery. Oh yeah, I did consider the MSI u270? that another members suggested. Good price, good features, but didn't particularly like the look of it.

What I do like about the 1215B is that there's already a lot of info on the web about how to mod / improve the 1215B, especially the keyboard flex and the quirky touchpads.

Anyway, I've pm'ed one of the members for my order. Hopefully, I will be able to COD it soon. The first thing to do will be to slap in another 4GB of ram, a 64bit OS, and a lcd protector to cut down on the glare. Eventually, the plan will be to swap out the HD into a USB3 external HD, and pop in a small SSD to speed things along, but that will be a little later when SSD prices come down a bit.

Replacing the HDD does involve removing quite a number of screws. Thankfully, there are a few videos on youtube that walk you through the process. Also, the issue of voiding warranty is not as straight forward. Yes, you will have to cut through warranty stickers, but apparently, as long as you are not doing actual damage to your unit, your warranty is still intact. Or so it seems...

http://wiki.eeeuser.com/warranty

Then again, US and Europe do have better consumer protection laws than we do. Hopefully, this warranty issue applies globally, as opposed to only in countries where they have to, and not applied to wherever they can get away with it. But the reality is that eeepc users have been modding their netbook for years, though.

Wait a minute... does your avatar image mean that u work for asus??

Was thinking about installing Ubuntu, but right now Linux Mint looks pretty good. I'll probably dual boot between Win7 Starter32 and Linux Mint64 until I feel comfortable enough to ditch Windows altogether. Personally, I'd rather spend the RM350 bucks for a Home Premium64 on a SSD.

Right now, the lowest priced DM1 is on the HP website for RM1,099. You have to buy it from HP and wait for them to deliver to you (7-14 days) since no one at Low Yat have any stock yet. Not even the HP shop there has a unit to show off.

The closest thing i found to a review was a quick hands-on video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0YHbVsrQrw
I suspect it will be another week or two before it shows up in low yat.


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Oooppps. I may have spoken too soon. Jayacom is selling the DM1-4010 now for RM1299...or so it seems. Better call them first to see if they got stock for you to fondle: http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/1831685/+300#

This post has been edited by Isky: Sep 21 2011, 09:57 PM

Ordered the notebook from forum member Devour yesterday afternoon. Manage to COD with him today around lunch time. First off, many thanks to Devour for a very smooth transaction. Very nice guy, professional, even willing to come to my area to do the COD. Plus, got a little discount from the standard RM1299 list price.

So on to my impressions. First off, i have to say that right now, a few hours after receiving the 1215B, I am both happy... and annoyed. I'll explain as i go along. (sorry, no pics)

First off, received from Devour the sealed box. Proceeded to break the seal, made sure everything was in the box, and started to boot up the notebook. Confirmed the specs (e450, Radeon HD6320, 500GB HDD, 2GB ram, etc). Wasn't able to confirm whether the ram was 1066 or 1333mhz, or whether it come in 1x2GB sodimm, or 2x1GB sodimm, but will do that later. Build quality is good. No flex on keyboard. Very firm. Mousepad is working fine, and quite big compared to ones I've had to play with. Had to move my thumb further down to reach the mouse buttons. The power brick is TINY. So, that part... happy. The annoyed part... well, after i did the once-over with Devour, we parted ways and I headed off to do some errands. Got home. Unpacked everything, started charging... and then I noticed it....

The black top lid is GLOSSY. I wanted a MATTE lid. I kicked myself, cause I forgot to specify to devour that I wanted to black MATTE. Called him to try to see if I can do a quick trade, but found out that his supplier provided him with only 3 1215B options - Red, silver, and Black. No Black glossy or Black matte, just black. Anyway, went online to check his supplier's website, and true enough, only 3SKUs, and only 1 sku for black. Sigh...

So there you have it... for now. Great transaction with Devour. Happy with the product overall, but annoyed that there was no black matte option from Devour's supplier (and I suspect, most if not all the other suppliers locally). In fact, I checked with Asus Royal Club, and found out from them that the decision to bring glossy, matte or both, comes from the vendors / suppliers themselves. So, the short story is... if you wanted to get a 1215B but were worried about the keyboard flex and mouse issues, those things seem to have been resolved... as least on my unit. If you really wanted to get a black Matte one, make sure you specify (I forgot), but you may have to wait a while. But if do manage you find a matte black 1215B in the next few days, don't tell me.




PS: One more thing - there seem to be some discrepancies in the specs. Some vendors have their units specified as being e450s paired with Radeon 6310, which I suspect is a typo. But I wasn't going to make a deposit without being sure of what I was getting, so unfortunately for those vendors I decided to not deal with them. It did cross my mind that they could be old e350 sets overclocked to become e450s, but still paired with the old Radeon 6310s. In any case, ASUS should make sure that ALL their distributors have the correct specs. In case you were wondering... yes, Devour's specs were correct (Radeon 6320).

Same problem here. I guess I'll need to look for a decent laptop skin that will make the fingerprint smudges look less obvious.

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Added on September 22, 2011, 11:58 pmYeah, I'm just being a bit melodramatic. Good to know about the ram, though.

This post has been edited by Isky: Sep 22 2011, 11:58 PM

Matte silver, but no matte black??

Well, I have had the 1215B for almost a week. Haven't had a chance to play with it much cause of work, though I had the notebook with me in a small messenger bag throughout the whole day, and would occasionally pop it out to surf on the free hotel wifi. Overall, I have to say that I am quite happy with the purchase. Bought it for a little over RM1250, with a freebie cleaning kit(which is getting used regularly). Not the cheapest, but Devour was willing to come to my area to COD, so the extra bit was worth it. There were a few lowyat members pricing it at RM1229, who after a few PMs, stopped communicating. Mmmm.. Anyway, decided to deal with Devour who seemed more reliable. Also, bought a relatively cheap vztec slim vertical messenger bag (12in) to keep it in. Nice fit, but not too much space for anything else, which is OK with me.

External build quality:
Yes, the damn glossy lid is a finger print magnet, and for the life of me I don't know why companies like Asus just luurve to make these things glossy. I was thinking about it before, but now I'll definitely be looking to invest in a decent set of laptop and screen protectors. External build quality overall is quite good, with a few little niggles. The biggest annoyance is the LAN port - internally, it's not aligned exactly with the plastic hard shell. The first time I plugged in an ethernet jack, I thought the laptop would forever have a tail cause I couldn't get it out for quite a while. (Found out later that there was a similar complaint from a reviewer on Amazon)

Keyboard:
Keyboard is good. No flex issues at all. Liked the layout of this much better than the DM1, since I am a pageup/pagedown kinda guy. But lately, I've been doing the two-finger scroll though.

Screen:
My initial impression of the screen was pretty 'meh'. I think the screen is a side-lit led screen, since there is a slight light bleed along the edges. The biggest "turn-off" for me initially was that the screen looked like it was a low contrast screen and the colors not very saturated, especially on battery. Fiddling with the screen brightness either made it too bright or too "grey". It's only when I found some settings in the Catalyst control center and adjusted them (powerplay>varibright settings) that the screens look better. Mind you, putting the varibright settings on high will affect the battery. So overall, the screen is better the 'meh', pretty good overall, but not excellent. But i do like the not-so-thick bezel compared to the DM1 with its 11.6in screen

Haven't had to deal with the reflective screen issue much, since I've been mainly using it indoors. A few times, the reflectiveness was visible and a little annoying. I'm hoping a good lcd screen protector with a matte effect will improve it. I know there's armourone, and then there's the pricey one used for apple phones and ipads (which I have to order online). Haven't decided which one yet.

Audio:
Ok. No issues, though sometimes it does seem a little low. Had to gain / normalize the sound settings on media player classic to get the sound levels to what I want. Maybe I'm just a little deaf.... Haven't played music on it, so I can't say too much on overall sound quality.

Touchpad:
I gotta say, the synaptic touchpad is nice and big, much bigger that a lot of other bigger laptops. Quite usable, especially the multitouch side of things.

Bloatware:
Unfortunately, got quite a bit of bloatware to get rid off. I dumped express gate, and pretty much all of the installed Asus software, and slimmed downed Windows even further. I also dumped the eeepc boot screen. I have to say, the Eee PC logo is pretty damn ugly. I have learned to ignore the eeepc logo on the top-left corner cause I haven't figured out a way to get rid of it.

Heat / sound (loudness):
I don't find the 1215B loud at all, and haven't heard the loud fan issue that others in the past complained about. Nor is it particular hot, though there is more heat when the HDD is being used aggressively. An SSD would solve that issue I think.

Actual Use:
So far, I don't have any complaints at all. I haven't played any games, or done heavy work like photoshop or animation to really test the apu, but for everyday word processing, surfing, etc., the AMD e450 is more than up to the task. No stuttering issues in playing HD videos, though make sure you have the correct amd driver installed. The Broadcom wi-fi is fine, and I haven't had any issues with dropped connections or poor coverage. Haven't used the bluetooth or the usb 3.0 yet. What i particularly like is that i can hit Fn-Spacebar to cycle between power saving, auto power saving, and high performance to adjust cpu performance.

Next steps:
I plan to eventually upgrade to an SSD, and pop in 4GB of ram for 6GB total. Also, need to get a set of laptop and screen protectors.


My Windows Experience Index:

Processor: 3.9
Memory (Ram): 5.5
Graphics: 4.5
Gaming graphics: 5.9
Primary HD: 5.8

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As I said earlier, I am happy overall with my purchase of the 1215B. With its charger and the Vztec bag i bought, the whole bag weighs just under 3kg, which makes it easier to carry the bag through the whole day. However, I think I would certainly have considered the 1015B if it came with the e350/e450 instead of the c50. The 1215B is more like an ultraportable and less of a netbook in terms of size. But then again, it does have a pretty nice almost full size keyboard.

Hope this review helps.

PS - On a side note, if you guys plan to install Windows 7 64bit, make sure you do plenty of research first. Another friend of mine also bought a 1215B and installed a 64bit windows. Although eventually he made it work, it took a while since some of the default 64bit drivers on the Asus website don't work. I do plan to install mint 64bit at some point in time, but I plan to research all the driver issues thoroughly beforehand.

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Added on September 27, 2011, 7:13 amDon't know why the DM1 desktop Graphics rating is only 3.8, since it's 4.5 on mine. Also, their memory and 3D graphics ratings are a little lower than my 1215B.

This post has been edited by Isky: Sep 27 2011, 07:13 AM

Thanks for the suggestion. The Vikuiti screen protector looks promising, but a little pricey i expect.

FYI, Since there's been so much back and forth and conflicting info on this... For those of you considering the upgrade to an SSD, I contacted ASUS support on the issue of whether the new e450 1215B supports SATA2 or SATA3. According to them, SATA3 is supported.

The Service Tech, with the somewhat intriguing name of "Bubble Liu" wrote this:

"Hi, for this issue, your laptop can support SATA3".

This was in response to my question about SSD upgrades, and whether the 1215B can only support SATA2, or is also able to support SATA3. I get what you saying, and yes - SATA3 is backwards compatible. Anyway, I just sent her a follow-up email, this time asking whether the 1215B can support the full 6GB/sec SATA3 transfer speed, or whether the SATA3 will default down to SATA2 speeds. We will see what Bubble has to say.

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Added on September 29, 2011, 1:21 pmI think they filed it under "keyboard filter or KB filter, if I am not mistaken. the ATK driver is 1.0.0.3, the KB Filter Utility is also v1.0.0.3, but does not work properly if I recall my friend correctly. There is another older version in the included files that he installed. YMMV.

This post has been edited by Isky: Sep 29 2011, 01:21 PM

Right... got itchy fingers today, so went to lowyat and bought an extra 4GB ram (Corsair 4GB DDR3 1333) for my 1215B, bringing the total to 6GB. Booted up, tried to refresh my Windows Experience Index... BSOD. Opened up the covers again. Reseated the damn thing agan. Booted up into bios, and confirmed the bios is registering 6GB ram - check. Boot into windows. Run WEI test again... works...RAM score at 5.8... and then BSOD again.

Anyway, after running a few tests (including memtest - no errors, but...), I decided to go back to Lowyat and get it replaced with a Kingston set (Thanks, C-Zone, for letting me swap the corsair with the Kingston! )
Got back. Plonked in the ram, booted up, ran WEI... and success! No BSOD... so far. WEI ram score is 4.8, same as the kingston.

My new WEI scores:
Processor: 3.9
Memory (Ram): 5.8
Graphics: 4.6
Gaming graphics: 5.9
Primary HD: 5.9

Can't say for certain that all corsairs will give the same result, but just thought to share so if you do have the same issues, you should consider changing the brand. Having said that, when i checked the corsair ram using HWinfo64, the info highlighted in the image below was missing from the corsair ram, but present for the samsung and the kingston ram. Also, when ram testing using memtest, it could identify 2 dimms totaling 6GB, but it could identify 1 as being 2GB (samsung), but the other (corsair) as 0GB. Mmmm... Anyway, YMMV.

BREAKING NEWS!!!
Anyway, got an updated email from Bubble Liew from ASUS support. Apparently, she made a mistake - ASUS 1216B DOES NOT support SATA3. So there you have it. I hope nobody ran out and bought a SATA3 SSD based on the earlier and incorrect announcement.

Well, after several months of infrequent but trouble free use, I am now starting to suffer from the dreaded screen flicker. Will now have to spend some time scouring the help forums to figure out what the hell to do to fix this. The screen flickers regardless of whether the laptop is plugged in or not, so it's not due to a faulty adapter or anything.

Some comments to potential buyers of the 1215B. Screen flicker not withstanding (which if I recall correctly is fixable... i hope), I don't have many complaints with the 1215B. The e450 cpu is not as zippy as an i3, and occasionally I do wish for something faster (especially on startup, and running office, especially the java-based Freeoffice), but for my basic use of surfing and occasional word processing, it's more than adequate. I've gamed on it, and it runs most of the older games and some of the newer games (on basic setting) just fine. Great when you want a little de-stressing when you are on the road.

I bought the 1215B for its larger screen, and the e450 cpu / amd graphics combo. I certainly don't have any complaints on these. However, the 1215B plus adapter plus bag, while lighter than a normal laptop, is not as ultralight as say a 10in netbook or one of the newer ultrathin laptops. So those of you who are looking for that eeepc 7in ultraportability, this is not quite it. In retrospect, i think my ideal model would be a 1015B with the e450 / amd 6320.

I have had no problems with either keyboard flex, or wifi connectivity issues. In fact, I am quite happy with the keyboard - solid, comfortable to use. Battery life ranges from 4-5 hrs depending on screen brightness, speed, and usage. This laptop will last 6 hours... if you just sit there and stare at the very dim screen doing nothing.

Well, I am off to find a fix for this stupid screen flicker. Will keep you guys updated on it.

Cheers

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Added on November 25, 2011, 11:53 pmmmm... unfortunately, my go-to forum for 1215B issues at eeeuser is down for maintenance. Tried to install a few older drivers, but for some reason, the drivers didn't downgrade. Ended up reinstalling the must current driver, and that seems to resolve the issue for now. We'll see how long this lasts.

This post has been edited by Isky: Nov 25 2011, 11:53 PM

Never had this charging problem. Once, I thought that the power adapter wasn't working, but found out that I didn't push the power pin all the way (until you get that click sound). Try that first, and if still doesn't work, send it in for warranty. Do let us know, though, how ASUS warranty support treats you - been hearing a lot of horror stories.