ASUS M50 Entertainment Laptop Hits U.S. Market

Asustek’s latest 15.4-inch entertainment notebook – the ASUS M50 with the Intel’s “Penryn” 45nm processor and NVIDIA GeForce 9500M GS video card – is now available in the United States.

The M50 is offered as the Asus M50Sv-B1 model, featuring the Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 CPU at 2.1GHz and a HD DVD optical drive, and the M50Sv-A1 with the T9300 at 2.5GHz and a DVD burner. The both laptops come with the GeForce 9500M GS 512MB dedicated video card, which manages 15.4″ 1440-by-900 displays. There are also Dolby Home Theatre technology, Altec Lansing stereo speakers, 3GB of RAM, and a 250GB hard drive in the both models.

Asustek’s press release says the M50 notebook will be also available with the ATI Mobility Radeon HD3650 1GB graphics (M50Sa) and HD3470 with 256MB of video memory (M50Sr). According to the earlier report, some models will include up to one terabyte of hard drive space, provided by two Travelstar 5K500 500GB HDDs. In addition, the M50 will feature a Blu-ray optical drive and a built-in optional analog/digital TV tuner.

The ASUS M50Sv-B1 and M50Sv-A1 sport an integrated 802.11 a/g/n wireless module and a Bluetooth receiver. The M50 systems include Gigabit Ethernet and 56k modem connections, a built-in 1.3-megapixel camera, HDMI and VGA outputs, an eSATA/USB combo port, three standard USB ports, an 8-in-1 media card reader, Firewire port, and an infrared port for remote controller. There is no word on ExpressCard and PC Card slots in the specifications sheet.

Regarding security, the M50 provides a fingerprint reader, accompanied by the Trusted Platform Module.

The new laptops run Windows Vista operating system.

The ASUS M50 Series M50Sv-B1 and ASUS M50 Series M50Sv-A1 models are available through NewEgg and are priced at $1,499.99 each.

Well so I bought one of these and its very nice. Except for one thing: I can’t seem to control the screen’s brightness and it keeps going to dark for me so…. I bought a USB light and put it over the light sensor and Voila! It’s a hack but until they upgrade the bios or something it will have to do. Otherwise, what a great machine.

You can just do a “Fn-A” to disable the sensor.