X-bit labs

Traditions of Classical Notebook Building: Asus A8J Series Review (page 4)

Category: Mobile

by Alexander Britvin

[ 03/14/2007 | 09:42 AM ]

The touchpad is shifted a little to the left from the center. It merges into the silvery color of the notebook’s body and is surrounded with a small depression you can easily feel with your finger. A dedicated scrolling zone is on the right of the touch-sensitive panel which is flush with the notebook’s surface. There is no scrolling joystick, though. This touchpad has a special feature earlier implemented on the ASUS F3Ja and ASUS S6F: there is no separating line between the two touchpad buttons so you can get an impression there is only one button here.

Our sample of the A8Jp doesn’t offer a special button or key combination to block the touchpad, although the Fn+F9 combination is supposed to do that.

There are two groups of system indicators on the notebook. The first group is placed in the front part of the notebook’s body, on the left panel. These indicators are visible even when the lid is down and their labels are duplicated on the edge of the lid. This group includes:

• Power indicator (alight when the notebook is on; blinking when in standby mode; not shining when the notebook is off or in sleep mode)
• Battery charge indicator (alight when the battery is being recharged; off when the battery is charged or fully discharged; blinking when the battery charge is below 10% and the notebook is not connected to the mains)
• Bluetooth (the optional Bluetooth module is not installed in our notebook, and this indicator never shines)
• Wireless (blinking when the integrated WLAN adapter is sending out or receiving data packets)

Another group of indicators is placed above the right part of the keyboard and includes:

• Storage indicator (it shows that a storage device, i.e. the hard or optical drive, is being accessed)
• Caps Lock indicator
• Instant On indicator
• Num Lock

The notebook offers five instant-launch buttons (from left to right):

• Button to launch ASUS’ exclusive Power4 Gear+ utility which offers several power modes that vary in such parameters as CPU frequency, screen brightness, Windows’ power management scheme, etc. Three Power4 Gear+ modes are available when the notebook is connected to the wall socket and seven when it works on its battery.

Power4 Gear+

• Bluetooth button (it is supposed to enable/disable the Bluetooth interface, but our sample of the notebook doesn’t have one)
• Wireless LAN button (enables the wireless networking interface)
• Splendid button (enables ASUS Splendid Video Enhancement to switch between different display modes – the current mode is shown in the onscreen menu)
• Instant On button (this button allows playing discs without booting up the OS when the notebook is turned off; when the notebook is on, it starts up Windows Media Player)

The notebook’s Power button is located under the right display hinge and is highlighted with a green LED.