Deadhouse Gates

I guess the preferred term these days is “notebook computer,” but I still call it a laptop. In any case, it arrived a few days ago. It’s a ASUS M6Va.I spent about two or three hours removing all of the excess crap that’s installed on it. I thought I got it all, but when I booted it this morning, I was greeted with an advertisement on how I had to upgrade my Norton 2006 IS to a full version. The only button to click was: “Upgrade now!”. Nothing that says, “Forget it, you ignorant moron”. I ended up formating the entire laptop, re-partition and reinstall WinXP and the utilities and software needed. No more sneaky idiotic advertisements has appeared since.
My initial impression is that I paid around $2,000 for a box full of software and online service advertising. That computer was just packed with trial versions, and as you go through the set-up screens there’s a sales pitch at every opportunity. The worst is the Norton crap — it’s like a damn virus. It kept popping up, trying to scare me.

Here’s a list of just some of the unwanted stuff that that I had to get rid of: AOL, Earthlink, Symantec, Norton, Get Hi-Speed Internet, Word Perfect Office, MSN, QuickBooks, Web Cybercoach, MusicMatch Jukebox, Real Player, PaintShop, MS PhotoStory, Windows MovieMaker, and probably more that I forgot about. But in the end the magic button “Format C:” saved me from all of them.
The first thing I installed after the reinstalling of WinXP and updating it was Firefox 1.5 (with AdBlock), WinAmp, Thunderbird, Total Commander, Daemon Tools, WinRAR, PHP Designer, Photoshop CS2 and some regular video codecs for playing anime. That’s my primary list of everyday software — and probably all that I’ll need on this laptop.

If I had to rely on the built-in touchpad to do all of that installing and uninstalling, I’d still be at it. Rather, I plugged in a wireless USB mouse, and that made the job bearable. I absolutely hate that touchpad. I’m sure it gets easier with practice, but I plan to pack an optical mouse. The built-in keyboard on this laptop is rather relaxing. Its not tiny like those Dell notebooks, but has a rather good space for typing.
The widescreen display is amazing, especially after I specified the Crystal View option. It’s 15.4″, and displays at 1680 x 1050 resolution. I took it outside, and I didn’t even have to adjust the brightness on the screen to make it look properly. I watched part of a movie, and it looked great. The built-in speakers are one of the best I’ve heard on a laptop sofar, but I’m still prone to use my Sennheiser PC 165 USB. In the end headphones are not required if you want to listen to music or a movie.

It works great with my wireless network. I went over to my neighbors house, and it still showed “excellent” signal strength. The laptop also came with a 8 cell lithium battery which works very well. With the battery option set for “office/email” use, it lasted 6.5 hours. For gaming purposes it didn’t last that long, by using its maximum performance ability it only lasted little over 2 hours (2 hours 21 minutes). With normal WinXP settings for battery is lasted 4 hours and 38 minutes
Overall, I’m happy with it. It’s just a shame ASUS has to load it up with so much garbage. I pity the poor novice user who buys a computer and doesn’t know how to get rid of all the garbage on it. Most of them probably think this stuff is useful, and actually believe that everything is installed for their own good.