ASUS W5Ae ultraportable...

[nickv31]

Hi, I'm new to the forum, but long time reader. Does anyone have any experience with the ASUS W5A or W5Ae? Seems like ASUS has been putting out some nice laptops that will be competing with the other big dogs in the industry.

The W5Ae has caught my eye with the white carbon fiber casing, 1.3 mp web cam, 3.5lb weight, and nice hardware (1.83Ghz M, 512 DDR2 400Mhz, 100GB 4200 RMP hd, integrated video, DVD+/-RW Super Drive). The price will be $1799, and I might be able to get a small discount so something in the neighborhood of $1900 OTD.

My question is:

1) Any experience with this laptop or other ASUS laptops in terms of quality, use, durability?
2) Should I wait for the Yonah (I know there are a lot of discussions on this) if I'm mainly using this for web browsing, office productivity? Seems like the processing power is sufficient, but in about 4 months ASUS will be releasing a W5f (Yonah processor and chipset).
3) Is $1900 OTD too pricey for a machine with these specs?

Thank you and hope to hear some responses.

 

[hp79]

Hi, I'm new to the forum, but long time reader. Does anyone have any experience with the ASUS W5A or W5Ae? Seems like ASUS has been putting out some nice laptops that will be competing with the other big dogs in the industry.

The W5Ae has caught my eye with the white carbon fiber casing, 1.3 mp web cam, 3.5lb weight, and nice hardware (1.83Ghz M, 512 DDR2 400Mhz, 100GB 4200 RMP hd, integrated video, DVD+/-RW Super Drive). The price will be $1799, and I might be able to get a small discount so something in the neighborhood of $1900 OTD.

My question is:

1) Any experience with this laptop or other ASUS laptops in terms of quality, use, durability?
2) Should I wait for the Yonah (I know there are a lot of discussions on this) if I'm mainly using this for web browsing, office productivity? Seems like the processing power is sufficient, but in about 4 months ASUS will be releasing a W5f (Yonah processor and chipset).
3) Is $1900 OTD too pricey for a machine with these specs?

Thank you and hope to hear some responses.

I heard it's a real nice laptop from alot of users in Korea. But, I think it costs too much. Most of laptop prices dropped, but I don't know why W5a is not dropping. It's like seeing Dell laptop sale without using any coupons or discounts. Some things you should know is that the white model resolution is 1280*768 while the black is 1280*800. About the onboard RAM, older models have 256 MB while newer ones has 512 MB, and they are not replaceable. So you have only one extra DDR2 slot. Since I have a Dell latitude D410 (Dothan 1.86, 1GB RAM, 7200 RPM HDD) I will use this for about 3 years, and thinking of changing my laptop to a newer model of W5 series later on. If I had to buy it now though, I would be waiting for couple more months so I can get W5a cheaper, or maybe look for other chaeper models from Asus. W5f Yonah platform probably will be expensive when it first releases just like all other laptops. Or get $400 AMD laptops and use them for about a year, sell off ebay, then get the Yonah ones.