NVIDIA 3D Vision Ready Notebook – Asus G51J 3D Review

While there are exceptions, it’s expected that when you buy a system from any major vendor you’re going to find software pre-installed which may or may not be entirely useful. Bloatware is a nuisance and most consumers deal with it by uninstalling it, or worse by not even realizing it’s installed on their systems.

There is a lot of software factory installed on the Asus G51J-3D, and while it all attempts to deliver a cohesive suite most of it you can uninstall.

Image courtesy of Asus

Here are the bits you may want to hang on to:

• Splendid Utility: colour profile switching to suit personal taste or for the task you have at hand.
• Power4Gear Hybrid: controls CPU and memory clocks, and LCD brightness to give you some extra performance when needed, or a cooler system but slower system for longer battery life or for less fan noise.
• TrendMicro Security Trial: Windows 7’s firewall allows all outbound traffic by default. With TrendMicro at least you have a chance of catching some of those sneaky packets. It’s trialware, so you’ll have to buy or find a free alternative.

All the other preinstalled software is fit for the recycle bin: frivilous toys like FancyStart which customizes your POST boot-up screen image, SmartLogon which doesn’t really work well at detecting your face, and Virtual Camera which doesn’t even seem to do anything at all. In total, 8 applications should be uninstalled at first opportunity.

In the Asus LifeFrame software, there is a feature that measures supposed compatibility between

two people by taking their pictures. Looks like Creepy Shadow Chat Roulette Guy and Blue Una Bomber aren’t going to get along.

As good as Windows 7 is over its predecessors, there may be a point when you’ll need to blow everything away and start all over again. Asus includes two DVDs for you to use to get your G51J-3D back to it’s original state, but minus the new computer smell.

The whole process of restoring the system from Asus’ discs is an easy process, as long as you catch the boot-up sequence to load from the optical drive, or get into the BIOS to change the boot sequence. In total, it takes about 1 hour to get the system reinstalled, halting twice to choose your language, and another time to insert the Asus driver disc. Once restarted, everything will be restored, including the pre-installed software mentioned above.

Overall an effortless process to get your Asus G51J 3D back into factory condition.