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Asus probably isn't the first company that comes to mind when you think of big desktop replacement laptops that are optimized for gaming. The Asus G75VW, however, is the latest in a long line of gaming laptops produced by the company under the "Republic of Gamers" brand. Considering that gaming laptops often go for well over $2000, this big machine is relatively budget-priced, and it isn't awful--but it isn't great, either. Although it suffers in general performance, audio quality, and battery life, it has a nice screen, and the price may be right.

Our review model, priced at $1500 (as of May 23, 2012), sports an Intel Core i7-3610QM processor, 12GB of RAM, 1.5TB of hard-drive space, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M graphics chip. It also has built-in 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, and a Blu-ray/DVD combo drive. The G75VW runs the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium.

Performance

In our WorldBench 7 benchmark tests, the G75VW posted a paltry score of 97. This means that the G75VW is 3 percent slower than our baseline system, which is not an impressive achievement for a desktop replacement laptop. After all, our baseline system is a desktop PC with an Intel Core i5-2500K processor, 8GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics card. A WorldBench 7 score of 97 is far from outstanding for an all-purpose laptop, let alone a desktop replacement specifically designed for gamers.

The G75VW's performance in our graphics and gaming tests was a little better than its WorldBench 7 showing, and much closer to what we expect from the desktop replacement category. In our Crysis 2 graphics tests, the G75VW managed a frame rate of 30.8 frames per second (high quality settings, 1980 by 1080 resolution), which isn't terrible. For context, on the same graphics test the Origin EON17-S produced a frame rate of 43.1 fps, while the MSI GT70 managed a frame rate of 33.8 fps.

Like most huge desktop replacements geared toward gamers, the G75VW doesn't boast impressive battery life. In our tests it lasted for 2 hours, 35 minutes, coming within 3 minutes of the Origin EON17-S, currently the highest-rated product in this category.

Design: Chassis, Keyboard, and Touchpad

There are few ways to make a hulking, 9.5-pound desktop replacement attractive, but Asus does a decent job of it by giving the G75VW a wedge-shaped chassis with slick angles and a soft, rubberized plastic black cover. The G75VW looks a lot like its predecessor, the G74SX, but it's a tad lighter (9.5 instead of 9.9 pounds) and a bit thinner (2.04 inches at its thickest, versus 2.4 inches). It still comes with a hefty 2-pound power brick, however.

The interior is also attractive, with a brushed-metal keyboard deck, a rubberized wrist-rest area, and a silvery Republic of Gamers logo. A few pinprick-size white and green LEDs on the bottom-left corner of the computer indicate battery status, Wi-Fi, eco-mode, and the like. The LEDs are bright, but not distractingly so.

As for ports, the G75VW is fairly packed, with four USB 3.0 ports (including one sleep-and-charge), ethernet, headphone and microphone jacks, and a three-in-one card reader. You also get HDMI-out, VGA-out, and a mini-DisplayPort connection.

The G75VW sports a full-size backlit keyboard with matte-black island-style keys. In addition, the keyboard deck is large enough to fit a 10-key number pad, which is located about an inch and a half to the right of the keyboard (some computers cram the keyboard and number pad right next to each other, which is inconvenient for users--especially gamers). The G75VW's keys are widely spaced and easy to press, and offer good feedback.

The large, soft plastic black touchpad has two big, discrete mouse buttons. The touchpad supports multitouch gestures such as pinch-to-zoom, and the buttons are easy to press. Regrettably, the touchpad isn't as responsive as I like to see in gaming laptops, and the cursor seems to drag slowly across the screen. Fortunately, you don't have to use the touchpad: Asus includes a USB-wired gaming mouse that has five buttons and a scrollwheel. Since gamers will probably prefer to use an external mouse with this computer regardless, the sluggish touchpad isn't a deal breaker.

Screen and Speakers

The G75VW has a 17.3-inch LED-backlit matte screen with a native resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels. This screen is an improvement over the glossy display of the Asus G74SX (and that screen was actually very good, save for some backlighting glitches). The G75VW's screen is bright and offers an excellent range of off-axis viewing angles. Colors look great, and images and text appear crisp. Media playback--both streaming HD footage and Blu-ray video--looks fantastic, with sharp images and deep blacks.

The laptop has two speakers and a subwoofer, located above the keyboard and placed under a gray metal mesh. The speakers are loud enough, but the default setting has the subwoofer delivering not only the bass, but all of the other sounds as well. The result is a harsh-sounding mess of audio, delivered predominantly from the left side of the machine. You can tweak the sound settings for slightly better results by going to Control Panel > Sound > Speakers > Properties and adjusting the mono-bass from the default setting of 80 down to about 45. This improves the sound quality a little, but audio still tends to have a harsh, raw edge that's painful to listen to. Thankfully, the headphone jack provides clean audio with plenty of depth.

The Bottom Line

The Asus G75VW / Asus a32-f3  is a budget-priced gaming laptop, and in this case you kind of get what you pay for. Don't get me wrong: The G75VW can play most games at an acceptable level, and it's a fairly attractive machine to boot. Plus, it has a great screen with excellent viewing angles.

That said, it's lacking in general performance, and it's nothing like some of the higher-end gaming laptops we've seen, such as the Origin EON17-S. On the other hand, though the EON17-S has twice the WorldBench 7 score of the G75VW, it also costs more than twice as much.

If you're looking for a somewhat budget-friendly gaming laptop, the G75VW is quite capable. But you will need to use headphones.

Intel had great success with its new 'thin and lite' Ultrabooks in 2011, but that was primarily with consumer products which were the first to come to market. The company says that will change in 2012, as commercial-focused Ultrabooks will hit the market by the second half of the year. And that means a significant opportunity for the channel.

"With Ultrabooks, we've undertaken an effort to revolutionize computers, again," said C.J. Bruno, VP Sales and Marketing Group, President of Intel Americas, to the audience at the Intel Solutions Summit executive keynotes. "We've only just got started, with a host of innovations from a platform perspective. We will redefine what computers are and will scream from the mountaintops that we are doing so."

Kirk Skaugenz, corporate vice president and general manager of the PC Client Group, also stressed this message that what has been seen so far in Ultrabooks is just scratching the surface.

"We are delivering compelling new user experiences rather than just transitioning up," Skaugenz said in his keynote. "This will be a transformational year." Skaugenz promised that with the Ultrabook, Intel would deliver the ultimate in performance in a no-compromise device, in terms of graphics, media and compute performance.

"We will introduce incredible new form factors and shrink them over time," Skaugenz said. "There won't be a need to carry both a tablet and a notebook."

Intel's vPro security technology, embedded hardware technology for malware protection developed by working with McAfee, will also produce "the most secure experience on a device we are aware of," he added.

Skaugenz said that 18 Ultrabooks are presently on the market, which he said would rise to over 75 by the end of the year. But what's more important for the channel is the appearance of models targeted explicitly at the commercial market.

"Until now, Ultrabooks have been focused on consumers, but beginning in the second half of this year we will have ultimate Ultrabooks for business , with the security, manageability and stability of vPro," Skaugenz said. "There will be no more 'business notebook that's thick' vs 'consumer that's thin."

Skaugenz said 2012 will being stunning visuals to the market with the third generation Ivy Bridge chip.

"The third generation chip will have significantly better --- 80% -- graphics, and better security, embedded into the hardware so you don't have to carry around keys, and 80% better media transcode," he said.

Skaugenz said Touch capability, which they have delivered for over 10 years in embedded devices, would also come into the volume mainstream this year with Windows 8.

"We have the ability to put every sensor into an Ultrabook that is available in tablets today," he said.

For the commercial market, which has historically been slightly less receptive to 'wow' factors than the consumer market when extra expense is involved, the question will be if buyers will respond with the same enthusiasm they have on the consumer side, and Intel says every sign they see points to a robust positive response.

"Consumers, whether they are in personal lives or employees of a company dictate to the industry and IT departments what they want -- things like instant responsiveness, long battery life, light and sleek," Bruno said. "That's what consumers want, whether for business or in their personal life."

Bruno said there has been a premium for Ultrabook of $100-150 so far, and we will see that in the commercial segment as well.

"The delta will continue over time, but people have told us they are willing to pay for these features," he said.

Intel will support its channel partners -- both system builders and resellers of branded products -- with Ultrabook enablement efforts.

"We will be delivering it into the channel in North America with both branded and ID share programs," Skaugenz said, with the latter referring to programs to assist system builders by reducing costs by partnering with Asian ODMs, something that Intel began on regular notebooks and which it is now using on Ultrabooks.

"ID share programs let them share the cost of tooling while not competing against themselves in their home market," said Steve Dallman, Intel's venerable VP/GM of its Worldwide Reseller Channel. "They can deal with ODMs in the Pacific Rim. "We have an enormous number of friendly ODMs that are willing to deliver those building blocks."

Skaugenz said five ID share form factors are already available, and they anticipate having 10 designed in the marketplace by the end of 2012.

Skaugenz said they are also investing in training to take branded Ultrabook systems into the marketplace.

"We are making sure with training materials that they know fully what the Ultrabook value proposition is," he said.

Finally, Intel will drive Ultrabook demand with a massive campaign beginning in April targeted at end users.

"This campaign is bigger than anything that Intel has done in a decade," since the Centrino campaign in 2003, Bruno said. "It will explain to end customers why they want to have this as their personal device of choice."

Bruno said they are very excited about the campaign.

"Great marketing comes from great products, and these are pretty innovative and pretty compelling," he said. The campaign will have very heavy online and social networking aspects as well as more traditional broad reach channels.

Tagcloud: Intel , laptop  technology , Ultrabooks , business notebook , laptop battery , toshiba pa3534u-1bas battery , hp pavilion dv6 battery

I think the idea of the "post-PC era" needs some clarification. There is much hoopla and fanfare being dedicated to dwindling PC sales, and the idea that tablets--specifically the Apple's new iPad--are going to be the death knell for PCs. It's not a "death", it's an "evolution" and the tablet is just the new PC.

What is a "PC"? It simply stands for "personal computer". I have had debates in the past with people telling me that PCWorld shouldn't write about Macs. But, a Mac is a "personal computer", and our name is not "Windows PCWorld" (it's funny that nobody ever seems to make that distinction when we write about Linux).

But, I digress. Back to tablets. The advent of tablets may be a harbinger of doom for traditional operating systems like Windows and Mac OS X, but not for PCs. The tablet is a PC itself--it is a device or platform a person uses for computing.

When mini-towers came along, nobody ran around claiming that the sky was falling and that the PC as we know it is dead. When laptops became notebooks, then netbooks, then ultrabooks there was no panic about the end of the PC. They're all just variations on a theme--different sizes and shapes of personal computers. The same is true for tablets.

Will the iPad impact traditional PC sales? Probably. It should. For the vast majority of both business and consumer PC users, the iPad (or tablets in general) provide all of the core functions, such as email, Web surfing, basic productivity, casual gaming, social networking, etc.. And, they have the added benefit of being slim, light, and having battery endurance that can make it through the entire day...and then some.

Ultrabooks offer a close comparison in terms of features and benefits while still fitting the mold of the traditional PC. The MacBook Air is a huge success, and it seems like there is significant demand for the coming onslaught of Windows-based ultrabooks.

There will certainly still be pros and cons to both, but the primary difference at some point will be price. If an ultrabook is $1000, but an iPad 2 is $400, the iPad 2 represents a better value for those who only need the capabilities a tablet can deliver. It makes sense to go with the new PC form factor--the tablet.

If you want more evidence that tablets are the next evolution of PCs rather than a conquering hoard intent on crushing the PC market, just look at Apple and Microsoft. Both of the major desktop operating systems are being merged and transformed to adapt to the new mobile world--evolving to meet the needs of the latest PC form factor.

As the mobile and desktop operating systems for both Apple and Microsoft seem to converge and meld into one, the line gets blurry on the differences between the two in terms of experience, and it just comes down to picking the size and shape of PC that works best for you whether that is a desktop, ultrabook, or tablet.

Tagcloud: Tablets , PC  , Apple's new ipad , ultrabooks , laptop technology , laptop batteries , battery for Dell vostro 1500 , dell battery inspiron 6400