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Now Asus have a thin powerhouse laptop too (and its 4k)

There's one thing that all of these new gaming laptops have in common that really sucks. They only run Windows. I'd get one if I could dual boot OSX on them. Until then, I'll stick with my 15" rMBP with 750M and boot into Windows whenever I want to game.
 
SVTmaniac said:
There's one thing that all of these new gaming laptops have in common that really sucks. They only run Windows.
Click to expand...

I somewhat agree it's an issue, but maybe not for the reason some will think.

I ordered one of the new 14" Razer Blades but sent it back last week because support for high res displays is woefully lacking in Windows right now. Windows itself looks good, but so many things (I'm looking at you, Steam) look like crap. Granted, if you're buying a gaming laptop you may not care too much about how Steam looks or how fuzzy Chrome is, but I couldn't stand it.

If the shining star of the notebook is its display, then I want everything to take advantage of said display (I'm not claiming everything works perfectly in OS X, but Apple--and the third-party developers--have had an additional year to get support in place for HiDPI). Never mind I was lucky to get 5 hours of battery life on it (so long as I didn't even think about playing a game). The keyboard, however, is fantastic on it (as well as the display). I could go into other details, but this thread is supposed to be about the Asus notebook and I've gone off-topic enough already. ;)

The Razer Blade is a hell of a product, just not for me.
 
kic said:
I somewhat agree it's an issue, but maybe not for the reason some will think.

I ordered one of the new 14" Razer Blades but sent it back last week because support for high res displays is woefully lacking in Windows right now. Windows itself looks good, but so many things (I'm looking at you, Steam) look like crap. Granted, if you're buying a gaming laptop you may not care too much about how Steam looks or how fuzzy Chrome is, but I couldn't stand it.

If the shining star of the notebook is its display, then I want everything to take advantage of said display (I'm not claiming everything works perfectly in OS X, but Apple--and the third-party developers--have had an additional year to get support in place for HiDPI). Never mind I was lucky to get 5 hours of battery life on it (so long as I didn't even think about playing a game). The keyboard, however, is fantastic on it (as well as the display). I could go into other details, but this thread is supposed to be about the Asus notebook and I've gone off-topic enough already. ;)

The Razer Blade is a hell of a product, just not for me.
Click to expand...

I agree, even on my MacBook, when I boot into Windows 8.1, the desktop and Windows itself looks great, but Chrome, Office and just about anything else non-Windows looks horrible. They really need to sort out the high resolution stuff soon.
 
I think its great that the laptop companies are finally able to compete on specs and elegance factors with their designed laptops. But they need to think and tread carefully......

think about coke, if you make a knockoff, it better be much MUCH better tasting, or else:

1) if you sell it for cheap, everyone views it as a cheap knockoff
2) if you sell it for more, then.....just go buy a coke
 
But hose other machines are not running OS X.

Due you purchased a computer first because of the OS it runs or, because of the hardware it has? Personally I don't care what HW stack is running a Windows OS. :D
 
SVTmaniac said:
There's one thing that all of these new gaming laptops have in common that really sucks. They only run Windows. I'd get one if I could dual boot OSX on them. Until then, I'll stick with my 15" rMBP with 750M and boot into Windows whenever I want to game.
Click to expand...

Hmm, my Asus laptop hasn't run Windows since the day I got it home. ;)

But if you're not going to use BSD or Linux and don't want Windows, then I agree it's a disadvantage. Asus still makes great laptops.
 
556fmjoe said:
Hmm, my Asus laptop hasn't run Windows since the day I got it home. ;)

But if you're not going to use BSD or Linux and don't want Windows, then I agree it's a disadvantage. Asus still makes great laptops.
Click to expand...

Yes I forgot about Linux.
 
I recently bought a cheapo Asus as a stopgap between Macbook dying and saving for a new one.
All was fine, used it for a couple of months. It sat around a month or 2 then decide to sell it, presuming you could just go and grab the software online or get some off Asus I removed the internal drive and stuck it in a caddy to use as an external, deleted all the Windows stuff on there etc just kept the other data.

Only when I came to sell it did the nightmare begin, rang up Asus and was told there were no factory discs whatsoever and the only way of getting windows put back on it was to pay a £50 courier to return it to Asus + a service charge on top of that, wow. Either that or buy a retail copy, failing that the laptops dead. Ended up selling it as it is for £80 despite being 3 months old as it effectively needed £100+ of repairs.

Fix up Asus. I'm a long time OSX user and certainly didnt rush out to buy a usb stick and make an installation stick and I presume i'm not the only one. There needs to be a massive warning, considering its a budget model then people buying it are likely not going to experts. Seems other brands offer an online back up.
 
Wow, that was an expensive assumption, I must admit I am nervous about deleting any licenced software....

I guess you would be better posting that also on the AsusRumours site (or whatever they have for Asus users)
 
Crugga said:
I recently bought a cheapo Asus as a stopgap between Macbook dying and saving for a new one.
All was fine, used it for a couple of months. It sat around a month or 2 then decide to sell it, presuming you could just go and grab the software online or get some off Asus I removed the internal drive and stuck it in a caddy to use as an external, deleted all the Windows stuff on there etc just kept the other data.

Only when I came to sell it did the nightmare begin, rang up Asus and was told there were no factory discs whatsoever and the only way of getting windows put back on it was to pay a £50 courier to return it to Asus + a service charge on top of that, wow. Either that or buy a retail copy, failing that the laptops dead. Ended up selling it as it is for £80 despite being 3 months old as it effectively needed £100+ of repairs.

Fix up Asus. I'm a long time OSX user and certainly didnt rush out to buy a usb stick and make an installation stick and I presume i'm not the only one. There needs to be a massive warning, considering its a budget model then people buying it are likely not going to experts. Seems other brands offer an online back up.
Click to expand...


That's not really Microsoft's fault. Download the Windows .iso .torrent and install legally (there's either a license key you can use or it's just tied to your motherboard) is probably the easiest way.
 
Its not Microsoft I agree but Asus definately need to look at it.
Spending an evening trying to figure it out reminded me one of the reasons I moved to Apple a while ago.

As for this ISO thing, does that definately work?, the license was on the bios as you say.

Still its all a bit of a pain.
 
Crugga said:
Its not Microsoft I agree but Asus definately need to look at it.
Spending an evening trying to figure it out reminded me one of the reasons I moved to Apple a while ago.

As for this ISO thing, does that definately work?, the license was on the bios as you say.

Still its all a bit of a pain.
Click to expand...

The license is on the underside of the laptop. At least for my ASUS N53SV.

I agree with you that ASUS and other OEM's don't provide install discs anymore. But then, neither does Apple. Everything is being offloaded to the cloud.

My ASUS is also a stop-gap till my next Apple laptop (my trusty black macbook's screen is cracked and doesn't make sense to repair it). I have OS X running in VMWare on my ASUS. :D
 
SVTmaniac said:
There's one thing that all of these new gaming laptops have in common that really sucks. They only run Windows. I'd get one if I could dual boot OSX on them. Until then, I'll stick with my 15" rMBP with 750M and boot into Windows whenever I want to game.
Click to expand...


The issue is Apple, they simply do not want you or anyone to run OS X unless it's a genuine Apple product meant for it.
 
kic said:
I somewhat agree it's an issue, but maybe not for the reason some will think.

I ordered one of the new 14" Razer Blades but sent it back last week because support for high res displays is woefully lacking in Windows right now. Windows itself looks good, but so many things (I'm looking at you, Steam) look like crap. Granted, if you're buying a gaming laptop you may not care too much about how Steam looks or how fuzzy Chrome is, but I couldn't stand it.

If the shining star of the notebook is its display, then I want everything to take advantage of said display (I'm not claiming everything works perfectly in OS X, but Apple--and the third-party developers--have had an additional year to get support in place for HiDPI).
Click to expand...

The battle.net client looks crap on my 13'' rMBP. Diablo 3 itself looks so-so. Obviously I can't run it on 2560x1600, and the lower resolutions look pixelated.

PowerPoint is only halfway done with retina support. The main documents screen looks good now, but the navigation bar with previews are low res.

Then, on the side of Apps that fully support retina in OSX: Preview scrolling is laggy, and much worse than on my 2011 MBP (on the integrated GPU!). Same for websites and some other text/book viewing apps. I feel that OSX and many Apps still struggle with displaying content in retina resolution. If Win8 is further behind here, I don't want to imagine using it.


I love OSX, and as long as they don't screw it up, I'm gonna stick with Macs. I find the Asus and Razer machines interesting, but I think squeezing more power in a thinner form factor is a mistake. I mean the unibody MBPs would get very hot, the rMBPs have improved a bit, but still the fans are noisy and it is not exactly comfortable in the summer.
So if you put something more powerful, e.g. the 860M, you need more space for cooling. So in order to keep the same form factor, they have to cut on the battery, and I have no idea how well the cooling will work. I've already read about the Razer that they defined "no touch areas" between the keyboard and the screen... sounds awful. And of course 100W+ power bricks are bigger and heavier.

So for people who really want a mobile gaming station, ASUS and friends are providing nice machines. For everyone else I think the MBPs still offer the better compromise of power, portability and usability. On top of having my favourite OS!
 
If I could run OS X on that Asus laptop I would buy one in a second.

Apple needs to update the rMBP with a 4K display so we can have a pixel doubled 1920x1200 desktop without fuzzyness.
 
SVTmaniac said:
There's one thing that all of these new gaming laptops have in common that really sucks. They only run Windows. I'd get one if I could dual boot OSX on them. Until then, I'll stick with my 15" rMBP with 750M and boot into Windows whenever I want to game.
Click to expand...

Why would you want Os 10 and 4k? Os 10 can’t even handle 4k right. If it was 4k and only had Os 10 it would be stupid.

I personally think this laptop is a great option when comparing with the macbooks.

Also if you want to use something that supports 4k better than Os 10 linux might have some options for that.
 
Anitramane said:
Why would you want Os 10 and 4k? Os 10 can’t even handle 4k right. If it was 4k and only had Os 10 it would be stupid.
Click to expand...

OS X certainly handles HiDPI resolutions better than Windows. And let's not even start about Linux :rolleyes:
 
friedkimchi said:
The license is on the underside of the laptop. At least for my ASUS N53SV.

I agree with you that ASUS and other OEM's don't provide install discs anymore. But then, neither does Apple. Everything is being offloaded to the cloud.
Click to expand...

The new Asus cheapos dont have a license as such, its hidden in the bios.

You literally need an internet connection, a Macbook with a hardrive installed and an itunes password to install OSX now. I think you install it from Apples servers.
 
I'm glad high-end Windows laptops exist to give Apple a little competition, but as of right now, getting a 4K screen on a Windows laptop is almost useless until third-party apps support HiDPI. 4K with unoptimized applications means you'll see them more blurry than they would on a 1080p, non-HiDPI display.

Then comes the usual stuff associated with Windows laptops: poor quality fit & finish, bad trackpad/trackpad drivers, no official OS X support, the usual bloatware, low resale value, etc.

I'd also be worried by the battery life of this thing. It has a larger and higher-res screen than the rMBP on top of running Windows and having a higher-end GPU, while not having a larger battery. I suspect this will get roughly 60% of the rMBP's real-world battery life. There also appears to be visible backlight bleeding on the top of the screen in the pictures of the article you posted.

So in short, not interested at all. But it's still cool to see manufacturers try to cram high-end GPUs in relatively small form factors.
 
I'm not a Windows fan, but I think it's all about re-adapting myself to the OS look-and-feel. Actually OSX and Windows are both great operating systems. I would miss the GPL tools greatly compatible with OSX, but Windows has Cygwin or even GPL apps compiled specifically for Windows without needing an unix layer.

Visual C++ Express is way better than Xcode too (ok, Xcode is even less user-friendly than Eclipse). That is, Windows actually could be better to my developing needs.
 
brdeveloper said:
I'm not a Windows fan, but I think it's all about re-adapting myself to the OS look-and-feel. Actually OSX and Windows are both great operating systems. I would miss the GPL tools greatly compatible with OSX, but Windows has Cygwin or even GPL apps compiled specifically for Windows without needing an unix layer.

Visual C++ Express is way better than Xcode too (ok, Xcode is even less user-friendly than Eclipse). That is, Windows actually could be better to my developing needs.
Click to expand...

Personally the way Apple is integrating their products together, iPad, Mac and iPhone it is becoming less and less likely that I'll ever switch back to a Windows PC.

I already rely heavily on iMessage and I will use continuity in OS X 10.10 multiple times a day. There is just no equivalent.

Maybe in time Microsoft will add these features to Windows 9 when you use a Windows Phone and/or a Windows Tablet. But those products just plain suck. Windows on the desktop/notebook side is great but Windows Phone? Just sucks.

As time goes on Apple is investing in the gaps between their products, making those gaps smaller. iCloud for syncing reminders, chats, mail, calendar entries and notes has existed for a while already and has been very convenient. But now including SMS, Voice Chat and App continuity across everything? Even word processing, pro apps and so on? This is gonna be hard to turn away from.

In my opinion the biggest issue today with personal technology like phones, tablets, computers and set top boxes is their lack of negotiated presence. These devices should be aware of each other, what they can do and serve the right interface to the right device at the right time. Apple is delivering solutions to this problem and I don't see Google or Microsoft doing that, their solutions are not automatic, they aren't smart. Clicking share buttons, drilling into menus and making conscious decisions to sync activities and data between devices is the problem and Continuity in OS X and iOS fixes it in the smartest way.
 
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