Another notebook player revamps its presence

Zatni Arbi, Columnist, Jakarta, zatni@cbn.net.id

If you think a built-in modem, a Bluetooth and a Wi-Fi transceiver, an infrared port, a fast Ethernet port, a DVD-ROM drive, plus more traditional multimedia capabilities are the most that notebook computer makers can stuff into their products, you should have seen the ASUS' launch of their new products at the Hotel Mulia in Jakarta last week.

We all know the Taiwan-based ASUS for its motherboards, which are so well-designed that they get counterfeited. Many of us have also been using its CD-ROM drives, video graphics, cards, and cable modems. This company can really be proud of the huge number of awards it has received from various PC publications over the years for its technologies and products.

For a couple of years, we have also seen ASUS notebooks increasingly promoted through advertisements in local publications such as InfoKomputer and PCMedia. These notebooks are still far behind Toshiba, Compaq, Acer and IBM notebooks in terms of popularity, but they seem to be gaining ground.

I guess the name ASUS on the notebooks automatically gives users the feeling that they are buying a high-tech product with a lot of features and good quality. The event last week confirmed the broad spectrum of their notebook features.

Taiwan is undoubtedly the biggest source of notebook computers, so this company is not a lone player there. Along with ASUS, we have Acer, MiTAC, Twinhead, and many other brands from Taiwan. Even some models under U.S. brands, such as Dell and IBM, are also made on this island state. According to a cover story in Business Week, Quanta is the world's Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) notebook maker, and is also from Taiwan.

As Alfredo Hui from Astrindo Senayasa, ASUS' sole distributor for Indonesia, walked me through their exhibitions in the foyer of Hotel Mulia's ballroom, I kept wondering what else they could add to each of these notebooks to make it a standout?

Notebook Lines.

Not surprisingly, as the industry leader in motherboard design and manufacturing, ASUS leverages the motherboard and chassis components of their notebook computers.

The heat produced by the processor, for example, can be a problem both in a powerful notebook used as the replacement for a desktop computer and, even so, in a so-called thin and light model that has minimal space for air flow.

Alfredo told me that ASUS specifically designs the chassis to serve as a heat-sink that will dissipate the internal heat. It also developed ATDT (ASUS Dynamic Thermal Dissipation) technology that makes its notebooks cooler, without emitting too much fan noise or consuming more power.

Notebooks are usually classified along several lines. They can be classified according to their portability -- with thin and light on one end, and all-in-one on the other. Usually, the thin and light model is also a one-spindle design, which means that it contains only one drive.

A two-spindle design means that the notebook has two rotating drives, like a floppy diskette drive and a CD-ROM drive. And then notebooks can also be classified based on the power that they have under the hood.

Thin and light notebooks are not necessarily donkeys, they may have the capability to dash forward and leave our desktop computer in the dust.

ASUS has several notebook models, including the L3, L2 and L1 Series, the Pentium 4-based B1 Series that features a large 15" screen, a TruPrint fingerprint security system, and a smartcard reader, the T9 multimedia Series, the mobile M2 Series with swappable internal and the all-in-one A1 Series.

On that particular day, however, ASUS launched its S1 Series notebook, with prices up to US$2,000, depending on the processors used. ASUS seems to have a flexible arrangement with the two competing processor makers, it can use chips made by Intel or AMD on its notebooks. Positioned as an ultra-portable, one-spindle notebook, this 1.9 kg machine has a very stylish look.

This notebook, which ASUS claims to be the first to use Intel Pentium III - M CPU, allows processor upgrade up to the speed of 1.26 GHz. It will be difficult to find an application that will require this level of power while you are on the road, of course. With the built-in Power Gear, users can choose a lower speed to conserve battery juice, of course.

Despite its 2.1 cm thickness, the notebook is still equipped with an 802.11b and a Fast Ethernet LAN support in addition to a built-in modem. There is no built-in Bluetooth support, however. At any rate, let us hope for a chance to do a hands-on review of this new notebook.

Interesting Features: One of the other ASUS notebooks, the T9 Series, comes with a module called MP3-DJ that we can pull out of the notebook. Containing a 64 MB flash memory for storage, it can function as a stand-alone MP3 player or a voice recorder that can record conversations and interviews for up to 4.5 hours.

It can also serve as a removable storage device. So, if you have to quickly transfer several large files to another computer -- so long as they do not exceed 64 MB -- you can save them into this module, take it out, and connect it to the other PC via its USB port.

I think more notebooks should be equipped with this module.

Of less practical value is perhaps the B1's digital SPDIF out capability that allows us to enjoy surround-sound effects through 5.1 audio channels with the help of the notebook's built-in AC-3 or DTS support. Personally, I think a notebook computer is way too expensive for a home-theater system.

As you must have guessed, during the event last week, ASUS also introduced a number of new motherboards for the PC, including the A7N266-E. This motherboard, which used very fast Dual Data Rate (DDR) RAM, and nVidia's GeForce2 graphics chips, was claimed by ASUS to be the first to receive Dolby Digital Labs' certification.

With this motherboard, we can use Dolby's 5.1-speaker setting to get a surround-sound effect usually found in a home theater. Unlike the notebook, a desktop computer is less expensive and at the same time lasts longer, the idea of using it as a component of a home theater system does not sound too far-fetched to me.

In addition to the new motherboards, ASUS also launched a series of new video graphics cards based on nVIDIA's GeForce4.

There was also the new 52X CD-ROM drive, which spins the CD platter faster than a fast hard disk.

If you want to buy a bare-bones PC, however, this Taiwanese company also offers their products, including an interesting, slim, Pentium 4-based Prodigy PC that comes complete with a PCMCIA slot, multimedia capability and both the 4- and 6-pin IEEE 1394 FireWire ports, as well as an optical SPDIF port.

Indeed, ASUS also made the move into making PCs and servers, although it may still have a long way to go down that path.