ASUS CM1740-US-2AG Desktop Repair Guide

What you can get for $500 keeps getting better and better every year and the ASUS CM1740-US-2AG is certainly a nice step up from the model just six months ago. 

This is a good all around system thanks to its quad core AMD processor, 8GB of memory, dedicated graphics and wireless networking. 

It may not be as fast as an Intel based desktop at this price range but it still provides more than enough for the average user. 

The one downside is that the power supply does limit the potential to upgrade the graphics even further for those looking to get a low cost gaming setup.

Pros

Dedicated Graphics Card

8GB Memory

Wireless Networking

Cons

Processor Slower Than Many Dual Core Intel Based Systems

Low Wattage Power Supply Limits Graphics Upgrades

Description

AMD A8-3820 Quad Core Desktop Processor

8GB PC3-128000 DDR3 Memory

1TB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive

24x DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Burner

AMD Radeon HD 7470 Dedicated Graphics Card With 1GB Memory

5.1 Audio Suuport

Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n Wireless

Two USB 3.0, Six USB 2.0, HDMI, DVI, VGA, 6-in-1 Card Reader

Windows 7 Home Premium, Office Starter

Review - ASUS CM1740-US-2AG

Aug 20 2012 - The ASUS CM1740-US-2AG is extremely similar to the CM1720-US-2AF that I reviewed six months ago. It uses the same base components with a few minor upgrades. The processor has been upgraded from the AMD Fusion A6-3620 quad core processor to a slightly faster A8-3820 quad core processor. 

In addition to the processor, the memory was upgraded for 4 to 8GB of DDR3. This is one of the largest capacities you will see in this price range and provides it with the extra boost it needs for dealing with multiasking which is one of the key benefits from the four cores. There are even four memory slots so the RAM can be upgraded further if needed. It should be noted though that in many tasks, the A8 processors still falls behind many of the Intel dual-core processors. Still, for the average user, this should provide it with more than enough performance for the web browsing, media viewing and productivity software.

Storage features for the ASUS CM1740-US-2AG remain unchanged from the 2AF model I looked at six months ago. It features a one terabyte hard drive that provides it with a large amount of space for applications, data and media files. This is typical now for most desktop in this price range. The drive does spin at the full 7200rpm spin rate which does give it a slight speed advantage over those that use the green class drives. If you need addition space, there are two USB 3.0 ports available for use with high speed external hard drives. This was pretty unique six months ago but many more computers now features these ports. A standard dual layer DVD burner is included for playback and recording for CD or DVD media.

The big difference between this system and the last model I reviewed is the graphics system. The AMD A8 processor does feature an integrated Radeon HD 6550D which is a very good system that offers some decent 3D performance and a step up from what the A6 had. What ASUS has done though is include a dedicated AMD Radeon HD 7470 graphics card. This is still a relatively low end graphics card that won't do much beyond basic 3D but it does have the ability to run in a CrossFire setup with the internal graphics to offer even better 3D performance. 

Now, it isn't going to be as good as a midrange card and it does have its quirk in certain programs. This also offers improved acceleration for non-3D applications which is becoming more useful. The graphics card can be swapped out for a higher model but it is still restricted by the relatively low 300 watt power supply.

For those that already have a wireless network setup in their home for use with mobile devices, the CM1740-US-2AG does come with a 802.11b/g/n wireless networking adapter. This makes it easy to setup the system without needing to stretch an ethernet cable between the desktop and your broadband connection.

In terms of the competition for ASUS, the closest desktop system in the $500 price range would be the Acer Aspire AM3450-UR10P. That system offers an eight core processor for additional performance but comes with less memory. While it also features a dedicated graphics card, it falls short of this ASUS system with its newer 7000 series card and the ability to work with the integrated graphics core.

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My HP Pavilion DM1-4010EZ Installing Linux Mint 12 Experience

When we last left off working on our lovely new HP DM1-4010EX Sub Notebook, I had just finished installing and configuring Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium.

Now with the windows operating system out of the way it is time to move into installing a real computer operating system on it, and for the sake of variety the choice this time will be Linux Mint 12 and Cinnamon 1.1.3.

The very first thing to do is prepare the internal hard disk drive. As I said in the previous post, all four of the Primary Partitions are used in the default configuration of this system.

The disk layout looks like this in GParted:

So there is a tiny bootloader partition, a huge Windows C: partition, a small Windows Recovery partition, and a very small HP Tools partition. One of them has got to go, because the antiquated MBR disk labeling/management system can not have more than four partitions.

I will say this one more time... Make Sure You Have Created A Set Of Recovery DVDs. Once you delete the Recovery partition, you will never have another chance to create them.

The other consequence of deleting the Recovery partition is that you can not do the F11-Recovery procedure, if you ever really need to restore Windows you will have to do it from the DVDs.

Now we are ready to delete a partition. The obvious candidate is the Recovery partition, both because of its size and content (we know we have it copied on DVD).

The simplest and most direct thing to do is to delete it in GParted, since we already have that running. But in this case it is probably better to go back to Windows and delete it using the HP Recovery Manager, so that it knows that the partition is gone. Either way you do it, once the partition has been deleted the disk will look like this in GParted:

Although it is quite small, that is actually enough free space to load Linux - especially if you are only "sticking your toes in the water" at this point, and want to see how it goes.

If you want more space you can just shrink the Windows partition (/dev/sda2). The next step is to create an Extended partition in the free space, and then either create two more logical partitions within that for the Linux root and swap, or just leave the extended partition empty and let the Linux installer create the partitions it wants.

It's finally time to actually install Linux Mint 12.

Download the ISO image from the Linux Mint Downloads page. I just about always use the 64-bit images now, but of course you can still use 32-bit if you want or need to, or if you are just extremely conservative. The ISO image can be converted to a bootable USB stick using the "Startup Disk Creator" utility on any running Mint 9/10/11 system, or of course it can be burned to a DVD-R (sorry, too big for CD-R).

Insert the USB stick or connect the USB DVD drive, turn on power and press F9 (the boot device selection key for HP systems). When booting from USB stick, it still stops with an error about the vesamenu not being a COM32R image, and then says "boot: ". Sigh.

I wish this didn't happen, because it confuses an awful lot of inexperienced users. All you have to do is type "live" and press return, but figuring that out can be daunting. I haven't tried burning a DVD for Mint in a long time, does this still happen when booting that way as well?

The Mint Live system then comes up, and you will be presented with a normal Mint 12 desktop. One of the icons on that desktop is "Install Linux Mint", which gets you to the Mint installer (duh). The first installer screen asks for the language, which will be used for this installation dialog and as the default for the installed system.

The next screen informs you of the status of disk space, power and Internet connection. You can do the installation just fine without an internet connection, but you really should have power connected, or at least be sure that the battery is full when you start. It's not much fun to have the system die halfway through the installation.

Next you get a chance to connect to a wireless network. This is useful if you want to install updates or additional packages during installation, but as I said it is not absolutely necessary, and I seldom bother with it.

Now comes "Installation Type", which is where you define the disk allocation. If you just created an Extended Partition and left it empty, you can leave this on "Install Linux Mint Alongside Them" and it will do what is necessary. If you like to control things, you can choose "Something Else", which is what I typically do. If you want to ditch Windows and have only Linux installed, choose "Erase disk...".

Next you can decide if you want to use the Windows bootloader or Linux GRUB. At the bottom of the window, if you leave the Device for bootloader installation on its default (which is the MBR of the hard drive), you will get Linux GRUB for a bootloader, with Windows listed as a boot option. If you change this to put the bootloader in the root partition of the installed system, you will still have the Windows bootloader, and you will have to follow the instructions I posted a while back to configure that to multi-boot Linux as well.

At this point the installer will actually split off and start doing the installation in the background while it continues to ask you a few more questions about the configuration. First is your time zone:

Then comes the keyboard layout...

Then comes a series of screens for the the user information.

You get to choose a picture for your account - if there is anyone here who really feels that whatever random picture might be taken by the webcam while you are installing is something you might like to have on your account permanently... well, congratulations, you are doing better than I am...

If there is anything else already on the disk that the Installer recognizes and might take over user account information from, it comes up in the next screen.

Once you have gotten this far, you will get some entertaining propaganda screens while the installation finishes. Hooray! When the installation finishes, reboot (and configure the Windows bootloader if you need to), and you'll be up and running Linux Mint 12.

That might seem like quite a long process, but each of those steps only takes a short time, and the entire installation can be done in 30 minutes if you are reading everything very carefully and thinking about the answers, or as little as 15 minutes or less once you are familiar with it and you're doing it on "autopilot".

Now comes the good news - it works! As far as I can tell, with one small exception, everything works very nicely. Screen resolution is correct (1366x768), wired and wireless networking are ok (although the signal strength looks weak, as it did under Windows), the touchpad works just fine (SO much better for my nerves than the ClickPad), the Fn-keys for brightness, audio and WiFi control, Suspend/Resume (and it does each of those in less than 5 seconds), Mobile Broadband with my Huawei USB dongle... the only thing I have noticed which doesn't work is Bluetooth.

This is a bit of an inconvenience for me, because I sometimes use a bluetooth mouse or printer, but it is certainly not a big deal. By the way, in addition to showing the default Mint 12 desktop, I'll include the simplest way to tell if Bluetooth is working. It seems to me that the Bluetooth icon used to not show up in the panel if Bluetooth wasn't actually available, but now it looks like it is always there - perhaps this is something new with Gnome 3, I haven't really cared enough to look into it yet.

But if Bluetooth is actually available and working, when you click on the Bluetooth icon you will get options for "Send files to device..." and "Set up new device...". If you don't see those, as in the screen below, then Bluetooth is not available, so don't waste a lot of time tearing your hair out trying to figure out how to add a Bluetooth device, as I did, when Bluetooth isn't working at all.

I expect this problem to be taken care of by an update in the near future.

So, there you have it. I hope all of the detail was worthwhile - I'm certainly not going to be doing this on a regular basis, but I really wanted to show that installing Linux, whether it be openSuSE, Mint, or any of the other popular distributions, was not black magic, and really wasn't even all that difficult or dangerous.

What we have ended up with here is a very nice sub-notebook, it looks good, feels good, works well, and when we turn it on we can choose whether to run Linux Mint 12 (loud cheers in the background) or Windows 7 Home Premium (boos and hisses, and I am ducking lemons and rotten tomatoes being thrown from the cheap seats).

Next on the agenda: add the Cinnamon desktop, and compare it to Gnome and MGSE.

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The secure remote access virtual desktop gateway application connects remote users to Windows desktops and applications, from anywhere in the world and from any device

Cloud based technology applications provider Pinnacle Technology Group has entered into an agreement with DVS Soft ("DVS") to market and distribute its secure remote access virtual desktop gateway application in the UK.

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