Have thought about an ASUS already? I have one right now (B1).

I need a new one this month. The M3N looks great I think. Or do you have something against the Centrino concept?

Best Regards, René Knierim

Rene,

I did look into upgrading the graphics card, but the card in the laptop is integrated into the motherboard.

Hellow,

Its not the problem of the graphix card.
Its the cooling witch is bothering you.

Because the laptop slowsdown when the
tempreture is going up. Some games cant
handle the changing of the speed of
the processor or the graphics card.

So dont blame the hardware when the
programers makes the faults. :D

Greetz,

BlackTux

OK... so the entire laptop sucks because you can't play games on it? Newsflash wingtits, most people don't buy laptops to play games. They buy them to do work.

Louder than your XBox? Play your games on your XBox. Do some work on the laptop.

How's the battery life with such a large screen and moster processor? How well did the laptop do for your other tasks? (developing, connecting to your employer's VPN, etc) Do a real review next time.

Hey, I have a new J4 with a 2.6 P4. I love it, I do not like to play games on a little laptop. Notebook machines are not really designed for games, unless you want a $4k Alienware monster. As for ALL other purposes.... The J4 Rocks.

In all fairness, the J4 is heavy to drag around, it is a bit loud (due to P4 cooling), and the battery life isn't great.

But all around, it's a VERY good machine for the price.

i own one too, and it sucks more dingaling than madonna on prom night. winbook can kiss my black @$$

I've had this laptop for about a year now. I am ambivalent about this machine Winbook is always prompt and helpful when I call them with problems, but I've had some annoying problems.

I've had to send this machine back 2 times, so far. The first was a problem I had with a clumsy neighbor. Although I had to pay for the repairs, Winbook allowed me to ship it back for free. My second return was due to a faulty audio out connector. They fixed that and returned it very quickly (within a week) as a warranty job.

My biggest annoyance with this is that 1. those little flip down feet kept breaking within a few weeks. Winbook always replaced them for free when I'd send it in for repairs, although they claim they charge $10 for replacement pairs. Finally, they figured out that flip down feet weren't so great and replaced them with solid pieces of plastic. 2. They sold me a bum battery and will not replace it under warranty work. The battery has progressively gotten worse. They recommended that I run the battery calibration from the BIOS, which I did, and that cut the time the batter would last at full charge by half each time. I'm down to a max of 10 min of batter life now. I'm peeved that they won't replace it. I'm not really interested in paying another $150 - $200 for something that was sent to me faulty. This might make me try Dell next time.

The laptop is a bit loud when the fan is on, but then again, so is my car. It has never bothered me. I expect that because of the small nature of laptops and it's big 2.6GHz P4, that some sort of robust cooling system would be required. It's not a giant open desktop case, after all.

I've found that for most of my computing needs, this laptop meets them. It's relatively fast and can sometimes run software that won't work on my desktop. It's heavy which I wasn't expecting. I'd really rather something lighter to lug from home to work. But it really gives me a workout!

Anyway, I hope this helps some folks considering Winbook.

I just sent mine in for repair. The stupid thing is under warranty and the clips that hold the keyboard broke. Guess what they sent it back unfixed in worse condition and they had the audacity to think I'd be happy they flashed my bios. I'd never buy winbook again if I would have waited I could have had a better machine.

Long unhappy tale: bought a J4 April of 2003; first machine sent was a 'lemon' - (seemed to be an unrefurbished reject); sent it back for replacement (Winbook charged shipping! on return) had to re-register machine from Virginia to get the 3 year gold seal warranty (no explanation why they won't warranty machines bought in Florida); 5 months later, stopped working - turn it on, it turned off, repeatedly; tech servces thought it was a bad battery (had done monthly callibrations); ran it without batteryb to see if that was the problem - seemed OK and id not send machine for repair since I only use it as a desk top - it never goes anywhere sicne it'oo heavy; one month later, F6 key sticks - permanently - oh well, don't use an F6 key anyway; next right and left arrow keys won't work - uh oh, I'm a writer, this hampers speed; call for an RMA number since I'll be travelling for ten days and can do without machine that long; before leaving my techie spends three hours backing up everthing - machine working properly except for problems mentioned; Fedex machine on December 12th; December 15th check to find it ahs arrived; no word from repairs; Dec 18th call and ask what goes? am told, "warranty has been voided because of customer abuse"..!!! What abuse? told they can "prove" water damage, liquid accumulation, have pictures..Really! how can anyone prove something that never happened..? they demand $589.00 to fix machine and return it claiming it needs among other things a new motherboard; refuse to send a detailed repair list - just want money! I give my credit card to recoup machine - planning on arguing later - and it takes THREE WEEKS before machine is returned - and when we get it; DOESN'T WORK! Put in battery, it turns itself off - and never has worked since. All data lost; no use for machine not even to offer for sale on EBay; bought a brand new Toshiba the next day - machine still lying here and I'm out $2,000.00+ so far. Interesting sidelight - tech notes in box with returned machine do not indicate motherboard replacement as claimed or anything other than new keyboard! $589.00 charged to my credit card mysteriously retracted 6 days later before I could launch fraud charges against the company. Not done yet. Will see them in court. My home techs tell me the machine probably has faulty design causing heat damage which is why it started turning itself off to begin with - and still does. DON'T BUY WINBOOK!

Bought winbook in january of "03" warranty went out Jan. of "04"
you guessed it, my cd/dvd/cdrw went out without warning exactly two months afterward. was told by tech support would cost $500.00, was told laptops are expensive to repair. Very noisy drive,very disapointed at winbook as well as tech support. Hadn't even sent to be repaired before was told how much.

"In all fairness, the J4 is heavy to drag around, it is a bit loud (due to P4 cooling), and the battery life isn't great."

But - why are we buying a laptop?

I think "sucks" is a perfect way to describe this machine, with which my employer has saddled me. I get maybe 30 minutes of battery life - so useless that I simply pulled out the battery to make the thing lighter. As soon as the P4 is asked to do any useful work, all the fans kick in and it sounds like a dentist's drill. The first time I used it at home my came in the house and asked "what's that sound"?

This product was obviously "designed" by some marketing dweebs who said buyers want a P4, so give it to them, whatever it takes.

I'm praying it dies a quick death so I can get a nice quiet Celeron. I'll happily wait for my compiles/links to complete in silence.

Purchaced my winbook for gameing. thought I would save a few bucks you know. Wish I would have busted out and baught the Alienware 51. Save your change up and get the good stuff. This doorstop sucks and boy is it slow. May be great for spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations but I'll never know.

Reading all the reviews posted here, i start to think that i was one of the lucky ones. Had the 1.7 winbook j4 for about 2 years now, and it's been great. I've mistreated the unit in any imaginable way: opened it up in the smalles pieces possible a couple of times out of boredom, encoded dvd's on it for weeks at a time, forgot it straight down on the soft carpet with processor working at 100%, dumped liquid on keyboard and knocked the unit down a couple of times off the desk by accident.
All being said, the ONLY problem that i had so far was the stupid plastic feet - they broke off farily fast, but i attributed it to me using them as a grip to move the laptop around. Even with this, it only took 2 drops of superglue and they;ve been like new for ages.
Battery still runs perfectly fine, and even after 2 years i get over two hours out of the thing, doing normal work. This computer has been my best machine in terms of speed in my house for a while - dvd ripping is no easy task, and compared to a full 2.4 hyp. desktop it was performing close to the theoretical limit of 1.7 Ghz that it has. The graphics card was perfect for all the games I threw at it, including the new Unreal games and so on. Recently because of carelessness on my part, i installed linux to get rid of stupid windows worms - no problem whatsoever, everything got recognized during install.

Given all the above i can live with the fact that it's not feather light and that i have to buy wireless cards every once in a while when i step on them. As to the noise, I'm not playing quake 3 or encoding favourite pet/child movie during meetings, so fans always keep to unhearable low. Placed next to the projector, you can hardly tell it's on just by the sound.

Sorry to hear from other people that the particular units they got ended up being crap - if i ever replace this one, i'll make sure to go by the winbook site and check the new models out.

Here ya go people.

If you want to play games use your XBox.

If you want long battery life, do not get a notebook with a P4. This processor requires lots of juice. You will have to look at a machine that does not use the P4. Try Centrino.

The fan is loud, yes. It has alot of work to do. It's got a P4. Go get your Celeron and enjoy. Meanwhile, stop whining that your wife always asks "What's that sound?"

I have had my 2.6ghz J4 for 6 months. Works like a charm, but then again, I know what I'm doing.

Dont ever buy a Winbook! It is a 2300 dollar mistake. The fact is they overheat and will eventually fry the motherboard. I have chatted with several other people that have had the same problem. If you want to find replacement parts the only place is on ebay. Winbook does not sell replacement parts (ie new motherboards). Finding parts is impossible. So all you are left with is an expensive, overheated, dead toy you can let your kids bang on. If anyone has an idea where to get J4 motherboards let me know, actually alot of people would probably like to know!

Matthew

Win book is an inferior product. You get what you pay for. Mine broke after 4 months. The ac plug receptor broke due to an outside force, the jack that it was intended for. $200 later they repaired it, one week later it broke again. Now they want $160. I want a dell!

The j4 sucks hard. Mine overheated and got rmaed. The modem broke and it got rmaed. Now the motherboard is dead and I'm out of warranty. Dammit.

The j4 was a bargain but never again will i even look at one. It's been almost a year and the battery gives me barely enough time to find the ac adapter. Graphics card sucks.And it weighs a ton. Other than that i'm happy.

WELL, looking at the other posts, I don't feel quite as bad.
I purchased my J4 in 2002. Worked fine for awhile, then the modem connection came apart when I extracted the cord one day.
The battery was down to just a few minutes. And it starts having boot problems. SO, I send it to Winbook...Well they wont cover the modem connection because they say it is user caused abuse.
I say it is made of less than adequate plastic. They do whatever they do to mess up a computer and cause me to lose all my hard drive info. BUT...hey, they gave me a new battery. SO, I go out and purchase a small USB modem for $50 and the thing runs at faster mhz speed on the net now...Funny huh...BUT thats not the end...I go start noticing the power connection in back is really getting lose. Then one day I go to plug in the power cord, and the power connection inside snap and breaks. Same cheap piece of junk plastic...SO I know they will want that $385 to fix a part they say I broke...but I refuse to give them the chance...I go ahead and solder the piece and it works fine....BUT then the solder breaks and again im screwed....this time I drill a little hole to hold the solder and again it works fine for two months..then, to my dismay...the whole plastic piece shatters
I send it to a repair place that actually has the part...but they say...when it shattered it shorted out componenets and needs a new motherboard...and I also shouldnt have drilled a hole...even though it worked fine for a month...NOW I have a useless computer with ALL my work product on it just like some of you. YES...WINBOOK SUCKS. OH one more thing..I placed a complaint on their site for posts and they wrote me back and refused to print it...

I bought a J4 and love it. I tweaked the purchase a little by asking for a gig of RAM and the 3.06 Penitum. This machine has handled everything I have requested of it thus far with ease.

Note: I use this machine for web/graphic design mainly and push it often. I do not use it for gaming.

12-11-2004 Saturday @ 04:20a in the morning.
My friend just GAVE me his $3,000.00 J4 bcause he says it's othing but a three thousand dollar dust collector. After reading the above 20 POSTs, I'm wondering if I should take it home. He just put it in the car for me to take home. Should I??? I haven't seen it yet. I know nothing about LAPTOPS or PC's.

yer all a bunch of whiny geeks. nuff said.

Well, since I can not START my WINBOOK J4 that my friend gave me, I ended up calling Tech Support. They tried with me over the phone with no success.
They said they need to send me a spaeial CD to load from the CD-DRIVE. The cost would be $19.99 plus $6.00 for shipping.

HI,
Same problem here with the G732. Lets make clear: the nervewrecking noise is caused by the fan of the radeon 9000 (think its called). The noise of the cpu cooler is not too much of a problem.
As far as I know there is no replacement fan...
I tried contact with the manufacturer (it's a Elitegroup -ECS- product) but they don't know or don't respond.
Though the machine is quite stable and fast now, after long time, the noise really sucks. I'm a sound engineer and hoped to record with it, but that I must forget...
Keep us informed if there are silent fans discovered by one of us.

can someone tell me if its possible to unlock my winbook to become a multi region dvd player

02-24-2005 Thursday at 12:50am in the morning my time.(U.S.A. Chicago, Illinois)
With your question, did you get an answer?
If not, are you asking if: your Winbook can have a DVD in it and have it play at 2 or 3 other laptops?
Tony

the g732 is a great machine, its never given me a blue screen or complained when i open more than 5 applications at once. The only niggle i can find is the keys sometimes fall off the keyboard when playing unreal tournament but i got around that with a usb keyboard.

Another thing i noticed that impressed me is all my burnt dvds work in the notebook with no problems but when i tried them on a compaq laptop the machine wouldnt even recognise the dvds. You guys should return them and switch to another notebook cause u giving them a bad rap when they don't deserve them at all.

anyway, if u r getting a free g732 u should just take it cause u r missing out on a great machine.

Tuesday March 15, 2005 at 04:43am my time in the U.S.A. time zone .
Well, I accepted the broken Winbook J4 730 Green model given to me by a friend as I mentioned in above POST.

Winbook Support Team was able to help just a little. The CD they sent me still did'nt get the Winbook to work.

After all the different procedures me and a friend went through to try and get this Winbook to work, we finally found the problem.

The problem was one of the two 512MB of RAM was bad. This was causing the Winbook to CRASH and constantly go to the BLUE SCREEN too often.

How we found this out was,: we took one of the 512MB RAM boards out and kept one in. Then we tried to BOOT. Nothing happened.
We did the same for the other 512MB of RAM and the BOOT worked this time.

Once the Winbook was up, we did all kinds of TESTs on just the one good 512MB of RAM while it was in the Winbook. No problems occured.

I sent the BAD 512MB of RAM back to the manufacture(not Winbook) and it took a month from December 30th to return a new one. The 512MB of RAM was FREE to replace. Just $20.00 I had to send them for SHIPPING COST. The company that made the RAM board and gives a LIFETIME warranty was KINGMAX(a branch in Ca.) main office in Japan .

Now Both 512MB of RAM(1GB) are in the Winbook and working great.

So for the past all-most 2 months, I have just been fiddeling with the Winbook.

I went into the BIOS and did an ERASE HARD DRIVE several times just to do something and possibly have a clean HARD DRIVE slate and no VIRUS.

Also I just recently signed onto AOL for 3 months free trial and COMCAST HIGH SPEED for 1 month free trial.

Now I don't know what to get into with this Winbook. Any suggestions out there?

Also, I was wondering if anyone on this site ever heard of the company that makes PSION hand-held computers. This company is basically overseas in the UK but shipped some models over here. I have the model PSION 3c. This 3c is one great information keeper that I have had for over 7 years. I have all kinds of data stored in it from SPREADSHEET files, WORD PROCESSING files and PHONE files all of which I would like to transfer to my Winbook if possible.

I'm a winbook fan. I have purchased 4 for myself and several for friends. I'm currently using a 2.4 P4, J4 that I purchased 2 years ago for my wife to use at work. A couple of months on the machine the cd went out. They replaced it no problem, along with the poorly designed feet that broke off (under warranty - no problem). Soon the feet broke off again along with a friends so I informed Winbook of their design flaw (I use to report design flaws for the Air Force). They then replace them with solid stationary feet. The feet are there for cooling, I used them all the time and still do. The machine was sent for repair for one other problem. Warranty covered, no problem but the first time I sent it out I think my battery got swapped with another machine because it was crap after that.

Personally I think the machine is a good buy. The only thing I don't like is the keyboard. I had a Winbook J1 that had a great keyboard and this one feels more like a desktop keyboard which I do not like. I purchased another J4 off eBay for my daughter. Somehow the fan broke and the machine over heated and shut itself down. I removed a couple of blades to balance the fan and she is up and running fine. The only game I play is www.ToonTown.com. It's an on-line game that my wife and daughter play and it handles that just fine.

I outgrew the J1 model. This J4 that I'm using has 512 ram and I usually have anywhere from 6 to 12 different programs open at the same time with no problems at all. I like the big screen, speed, and the support that winbook gives. They usually answer the phone on the second ring with real help. I'm looking forward to getting a newer W364 with a DVD burner. It's a lot lighter than this machine and has a built-in card reader. It also has an execellent keyboard. I hope Winbook never stops selling notebooks, I have never owned a desktop.

I've had my J4 for about two years now and I've been having problems with it as well. About a year ago the battery started to crap out, finally getting down to the point where it would only hold about five minutes of charge. That wasn't too terrible, since I mostly just use it in places that have A/C anyway, and five minutes was enough time if I wanted to unplug it and walk from the office to the living room. However, it had started to really crash a LOT, mainly when I was doing something processor intensive. Then about a month ago, the cable on the A/C adapter broke. I don't really blame the manufacturer for this, since it was wear from a couple of years of me bending it in a way that I guess wasn't really good for it. Anyway, I was patently unable to find a replacement in the Chicago area (FYI: Microcenter is staffed by a team of complete imbeciles, don't believe ANYTHING their telephone tech support tells you) so I called Winbook to see what they recommened. I spoke to someone there who was actually very helpful. He ran next door to tech support to ask them about universal A/C adapters, and advised me that anything less than 120 wouldn't be enough to run the laptop AND charge the battery. This was a revelation, since I realized what was probably happening was that in times of duress, it was trying to draw power from the battery and, since there wasn't much juice there, it would crash. So anyway, I bought a Belkin universal from CDW and that worked fine...for awhile. Let me tell you, the Belkins are crap too. The plug from the wall into the adapter is literally about two inches long, so wherever you put it, it's just dangling there putting all kinds of pressure on the joint, which is why after about a WEEK, it stopped working, unless you held the cord in exactly the right angle. So anyway, since this is my only XP machine, I broke down and ordered a new power supply from Winbook and a new battery to boot. They said it would take about a week to even ship, but I ordered it Thursday and it just got here on Monday, which was a nice surprise. HOWEVER, it's still crashing! Now sometimes when I'm not even really doing anything on it, so I guess it wasn't a power issue. Should I assume that it's a heat issue? It is a bit warm in my apartment (spring is here, but of course the radiators are still running) but how can I be sure that's the problem?

From Calloway, A. on 04-06-2005 @ 2:24am Wednesday .
Hi,
From what I have read from your POST, it sounds like you have the same problem I had and solved myself. If you read the POST I wrote on Winbook Site and do it, you might just solve your problem. If you have trouble, send me a POST and I shell work it out with you.
Why just the other day I trashed my MAIL-IN BOX(the thick box to send your laptop in for repairs) because I feel so confident about Winbook.

I purchased a Winbook J4 in July of 2003 before my daughter started her freshman year in college.I purchase the Winbook J4 G731 w/Windows XP Professional, 2.0 ghz Celeron Processor,30 gig hard drive, CD-RW/DVD combo, 512 mb RAM, 802.11b wireless. I purchased the machine on the recomendation of a techy friend.She has experienced two problems with the machine. After about five months the LCD had a diagonal line. I contacted Winbook got an RMA number, they sent a box for it with prepaid FEDX postage and a tracking number. I returned it to Winbook and got it back in ten days. She is now having a problem with the battery. The machine powers on and shuts off. The J4 is definitely too heavy to carry around so she uses it as a desk top. She does not use it to play games. The Winbook J4 has sereved her well. I would purchase another Winbook in a New York minute. The Winbook J4 G731 series has held up well and it continues to perform well. I would recomend the Winbook.
Can anyone recomend where to purchase a replacement Lithium Ion battery.

06-08-2005 Wednesday @ 00:50am my time zone U.S.A. .
I am just reading my mail and saw the POST.

I read the above POST and I am still satisfied with my J730. But I am sorry that I can not help you on the location of a bettery.

The only problem I have with the J4G732E is that the keypad pops out due to bad clips. Also, this giant battery lasts for 40 minutes. Now it's dead and I'm supposed to buy a new one from Winbook.com for $169. But I'm thinking of just taking the battery out - it's too heavy to travel with and it's no use running it on battery for woohoo 40 minutes. Do I really need the battery?

We bought our daughter a Winbook C from Microcenter, we also bought the three year warrenty. Waste of money, they will tell you that you need the warrenty in case anything were to happen to the laptop and they would fix or replace it if anything did, this is BS. The power connector is integrated and soldered to the motherboard, the connector housing is very weak and broke inside the laptop on the motherboard. we took it in to get it fixed, they service desk told us that it was physical damage, and that isn't covered. The odd part was that they knew exactally what was wrong, it sounded like it was a common issue. They then told us that we could have them look at it for $95 plus parts. I told them that we paid $300 for the warrenty and it should cover at least the estimate, they continued to say not covered. Another issue is the keyboard, keys fall off, but of course that is pysical damage also and not covered. I would not reccomend that anyone buy a Winbook because of the design of the power connector is weak and will break easily, and if you do buy one, don't waste any money on a warrenty from them.

From Calloway, A.
My friend Tim, I hear you. And you are right.
These company are so slick. Seems like they should just always satisfy customer.
Don't they know if the company screw a customer, all the customer has to do is get on the W.W.W and start typing bad comments and so on , and so on, and so on...... .

I am kind of suprised that people have had so many problems with their winbooks. I just bought a used one from a freind who bought a nice viao (sp?) He had his 1.7 Celeron J4 for 3 years, dragged it to Iraq twice, and it still works just fine. It is slow and the 1.1 USB ports are a real drag. I got it cheap enough that I cant complain about the speed (this thing is sloooow compared to my AMD 3000+ PC) and I am gonna install a bigger hard disk and a DVD combo drive. They are heavy, this one is slow, but they are durable. Battery life about 1-1.5 hours.

Finally got another WinBook, my new one is a W362. Since my last post I have purchased several broken J4's off eBay. Most have fixed easily. I have sold a few of them and the buyers have not complained (except for the person that called after they overheated the machine). I have even taken them apart down to the mother board replacement. I can not get Sims2 to play on my daughter's G730 model. It does not support Direct X9 at all. I'm trying to get her a G732 model to see if it will. The Sims website says the graphic card is supported but I don't think the mother board will.

Besides that my W362 rocks except for the modem. It does not support voice functions and I have a killer voice mail/fax software that I like to use (SuperVoice). Now I can not get notices on my cell phone that my computer has received a fax and e-mailed a copy to me. I have to check my e-mail to see if it has arrived. The J4 was great at that.

As for the J4's, don't let them overheat. Always run them on a hard surface and keep the bottoms elevated with the feet or a sutible sub.