ASUS UL30A Thin & Light Core 2 Duo Notebook Re-boxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,890 words · ~9 min read
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so we have kind of a unique unboxing today this laptop was already open when
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I got it so we're going to do a reboxing so let's start with everything about it
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because that's what we have in front of us this is the ASUS ul30a this is from
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their thin and light Series so I guess why don't we just look at how thin and
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light it is now the first thing that I noticed about it is that while it is
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very thin impressively thin it's not actually that light ASUS has made some
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compromises on this notebook in order to deliver the all day Computing experience
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so this notebook actually has an 8 cell
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battery in it so besides the fairly
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decent spec you've got a core2 Duo su7300 13.3 in screen 3 gigs of RAM as
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well as a 250 gig hard drive Wireless N all of that good stuff you have also got
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considerable battery life to go along with it that's great another way that
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they've achieved this long battery life on their thin and light series of
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notebooks is by using a green LED panel so that's going to reduce your power
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consumption a little bit and it's also going to give you a better quality
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screen so ASUS talks about a couple other things on the front of their box
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here first thing is they've got HD vision sticker here okay then they have
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Cino inside sticker over here then they have that it has DDR3 up here ice cool
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Palm rest that's kind of interesting so what they're basically saying is that
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this part of the notebook where you actually rest your hands when you're
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typing doesn't get that hot cuz that's a big problem that I've run into with
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notebooks in the past is that it'll have like some kind of uh hot component sort
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of right around here and so whenever you're typing your palm starts to get
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sweaty and it gets kind of gross and it's not not that great okay so let me
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see ASUS is also saying that they've got Health Assurance with this notebook
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ultra low electromagnetic interference interesting okay so why don't we have a
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look at the keyboard like most premium notebooks these days it's using a
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chicklet style keyboard which while I'm not the biggest fan of everyone in their
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dog seems to seems to like these so um
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who am I to judge they've got a very very sensible layout to it here you can
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see that all of the keys are in there correct and full-size locations for easy
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access I have someone with relatively small hands I hate seeing a half length
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backspace key because I I can't I can't hit it over there and actually keep my
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hands on the keys so they've got nothing unusual or stupid on there and why don't
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we have a look at the screen itself
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so as we mentioned before it is a 13.3 in screen I don't actually have wireless
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but I'm booted up into ASUS's Express gate technology so that is pretty much a
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way of just getting right into whatever it
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is you need to do so we can launch the web browser and you don't actually have
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to boot into Windows 7 Professional which comes pre-loaded on this notebook
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so it's kind of cool if you have your wireless setup then it'll actually work
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but it's a little Linux based thing so you can use Skype chat on online games
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music web I've never actually used
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Express gate before even though I've had lots of products that have featured it
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so yeah this is the first time I've seen it interesting okay why don't we have a
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look at what this notebook has in terms of connectivity so I'm going to go ahead
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and close it on the cameraman there on the top first of all we've got kind of a
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brushed aluminum sort of finish and I took off a little sticker thing you've
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got a silver sort of um embedded ASUS
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logo that looks really really sharp so this is what you'll what it'll look like
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when you're using it and people are looking at you see looks all stylish and
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thin very nice okay so let's go and have
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a look at what we've got in terms of connectivity first of all you've got an
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air vent here so the fan is
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exceptionally quiet I don't think that's realistically going to bother anybody
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next you've got VGA more importantly you've got HDMI video out along with one
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USB port on this side then moving around to the front you've got a couple of what
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appear to be either speakers or air vents hold on give me a second here yeah
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those are going to be speakers up on the front here then around on the other side
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we've got an SD card reader you've got your headphone jack microphone Jack two
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more USB ports gigabit Ethernet and a
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power in so the connectivity is actually a lot like a netbook in that you've got
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sort of three USB ports your network your sound and that's mostly it now one
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thing that they have added obviously is the HDMI port and that's huge but what
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you've noticed already hopefully is missing is an optical drive so you will
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need to use an external optical drive if you want to use uh any sort of DVD or CD
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media with this particular notebook now I'm going to go ahead and turn it off oh
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the cameraman's looking at the multi-touch touchpad good job cameraman
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so that's a multi-touch touchpad so you can use gestures it's uh looks like up
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to three fingers which is pretty cool okay so why don't we take the battery
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out because when you're holding this notebook you can easily tell that by far
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the heaviest part of it is this side right here so ASUS in order to achieve
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the 12-hour battery life that they've got with this notebook has designed the
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battery to be a huge amount of the
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actual size of the notebook so let me see how many wat hours so this is a 5600
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milliamp hour battery rated at 15 volts If That Matters to anybody and um okay
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let me see what do we have on the bottom here so on the bottom you've got easy
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access panels to access the hard drive or the RAM and wireless uh upgrade
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module so you can see the two sodiums that are installed right here and I'm
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going to go ahead and assume the wireless is over there somewhere in here
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is the hard drive so now we can actually get along to the accessories included
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with this laptop so I'm not going to bother
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putting back stuff like oh actually this is interesting though so isus talks
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about their Global Warranty so 360° notebook service so you got a 2-year
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Global Warranty that means you buy it in Canada you move to Europe you're still
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covered a lot of companies companies won't do that two-way overnight shipping
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for your uh for your 360° notebook service and then it also includes if you
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register within 60 days of buying your notebook one year of accidental damage
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warranty which covers drops fire spills and power surges that's pretty awesome
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to be including without any additional purchase on uh on their notebooks so
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then we can put the cardboard thingies back on the laptop itself here yeah if I
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could make them fit then that would work really well why don't we just open up the box which I appear to have lost
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there it is okay so let's see what we find inside here I'm going to go ahead
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and guess that yes this is a power adapter so the power adapter is very
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very small so since Theus is using Intel's lowest power CPUs other than the
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atom you're only using a 2.1 amp power
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adapter so this thing is just just tiny very convenient to carry around because
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the last thing I want to see when I buy a low power uh thin and light notebook
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is a huge bulky power brick that I have to carry around with it that's just
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stupid so you got a power cable to plug into your power brick and then what else
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do we have inside here we've got a Windows 7 Recovery media okay so they're
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not using a recovery partition but they're actually including a DVD with
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64-bit Windows 7 that's pretty nice and
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then they've got some uh applications that you can use Aus DVD power to go
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media show then you have drivers and utilities on yet another disc and
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finally a recovery DVD ROM so
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huh I'm not sure which one of these is the recovery DVD and which one of them
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is the recovery DVD but this one's
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sealed so maybe this is it let me open
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that up find out what's in
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here H Windows 7 to XP Alternative
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Program oh I see so this must be Windows XP there you go so this maybe was back
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when they were doing the Windows 7 downgrade or maybe they're still doing
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it I don't know okay next we have
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uncompromising performance one less than 1 in ultra slim so this is a little
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sticker that was on the screen when this was new and sealed then we have a
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notebook warranty card which is uh has the registration information that you
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can cut out and send to Aus to get your one year of accidental damage
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warranty Express gate manual so that
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tells you how to use that software that I couldn't figure out how to use uh
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right off the bat there so it boots up in only a couple seconds and then you
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can do all of this stuff so you can pause that if you want to read it I'm
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not going to read it out okay next we've got a cable tie so you can use that to
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manage the uh the cables for your plugs
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okay and then last but not least you have an assus users
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manual and the users manual includes useful things like a picture of a
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notebook as well as some safety precautions
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and how to plug in your notebook PC okay
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oh it also shows you some of the gestures that you can use for your multi-touch interface that's pretty nice
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okay well thank you for checking out my unboxing today and uh thank you for
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watching my video blog