Asus laptops?

[SMOKEU]

Thinking about buying one. Have any of you got one, and what's the quality of it like? Does ASUS have decent support in NZ?

[Headbanger]

When I had my Computer shop Asus was the only brand of laptop I sold.

They aren't flashy but they are solid, good specs, good quality, good performance and aren't generally loaded with too much add-on filth.

If I were to buy a laptop I would in the first instance look at Asus and Lenovo.

Back when I was in the industry there suport was top class but I believe the importer/agent has chamged since then, However I would still regard the suport behind the brand as excellent.

[HenryDorsetCase]

When I had my Computer shop Asus was the only brand of laptop I sold.

They aren't flashy but they are solid, good specs, good quality, good performance and aren't generally loaded with too much add-on filth.

If I were to buy a laptop I would in the first instance look at Asus and Lenovo.

Back when I was in the industry there suport was top class but I believe the importer/agent has chamged since then, However I would still regard the suport behind the brand as excellent.

I wouldnt buy one: I want all my filth to come added on from the factory. Presumably theres a good line in Asian and bukkake?

[SMOKEU]

I was thinking about buying this one here http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=446597144

The Sandybridge i7, 8GB of RAM and dedicated GPU make it seem pretty good for the money.

[Scuba_Steve]

Thinking about buying one. Have any of you got one, and what's the quality of it like? Does ASUS have decent support in NZ?

No. They're alright, good quality, last alright, nothing flash. Not particularly their service is done in OZ (at-least it was when I was dealing with them)

[bogan]

I go Asus for any computer stuff if I can. Have had a laptop for almost 3 years now and it is still going strong, apart from it always thinks there is audio plugged in to the jack, and I have to mod a reg key to get it to play through the laptop speakers.

Doesn't have apple levels of build quality, but doesn't have apple levels of BS or price either, and the build quality is still very nice. I think if you are after a good to great quality laptop, asus are the way to go.

[Scuba_Steve]

I was thinking about buying this one here http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=446597144

The Sandybridge i7, 8GB of RAM and dedicated GPU make it seem pretty good for the money.

yea but the CPU leaves something to be desired


Processor: 2 hertz Intel Core i7

2hz? :rofl: must be where they cut costs

[SMOKEU]

yea but the CPU leaves something to be desired



2hz? :rofl: must be where they cut costs

Don't worry, I have an overclocked i7 2600K at 4.7GHz in my gaming rig so it all balances itself out.

[Usarka]

Never trust a brand that puts U in an ASS.......

[Gremlin]

Never trust a brand that puts U in an ASS.......
:laugh:

Realistically, they aren't my horizon when I spec laptops for clients. Sometimes they make some really good models, others aren't so good. Ultimately, when all the components are ex Intel etc, there's only so much that can be differentiated. If ASUS is cheaper, then they have to save somewhere.

Lenovos are my current favourite I'd say, but not the consumer stuff.

[Headbanger]

:laugh:

If ASUS is cheaper, then they have to save somewhere.



Yeah, No wanky shit.

They built their entire ruputation on quality, I haven't seen anything to indicate that has changed.

[SMOKEU]

I've always been using Asus motherboards and it's often said that Asus make the best enthusiast motherboards so I figure the laptops can't be too bad seeing they know how to make good components.

[Gremlin]

I've always been using Asus motherboards and it's often said that Asus make the best enthusiast motherboards so I figure the laptops can't be too bad seeing they know how to make good components.
I'd never assume that. Gigabyte mobos in my experience have proven to be reliable... tried their power supplies several years ago and they were disastrous, with most failing. Urgh.

[SMOKEU]

I'd never assume that. Gigabyte mobos in my experience have proven to be reliable... tried their power supplies several years ago and they were disastrous, with most failing. Urgh.

I've had around 7 Gigabyte boards and only 2 didn't fail. 2 were DOA, one of the others failed within a week, and the rest within 6 months with the exception of one which lasted 2 years. I've had 3 Asus motherboards and 1 failed. As for PSUs I only go for Corsair.

I haven't tried Gigabyte motherboards for around 4 years now so things might have changed.

[Buyasta]

I've always been using Asus motherboards and it's often said that Asus make the best enthusiast motherboards for people with too much money so I figure the laptops can't be too bad seeing they know how to make good components.

FTFY.
Seriously, Asus make decent stuff, but a lot of their stuff is overpriced - look at a board with an identical chipset and featureset from Asus and Gigabyte, and the Asus one will always be more expensive, and while the price disparity is fairly minor at the entry level, it gets downright ridiculous at the enthusiast end of the spectrum.
As for reliability, I've used a fair few of both and of about 12 Asus boards and about 30 Gigabyte boards, I've had one failure from Asus and none from Gigabyte.

[Scuba_Steve]

I've always been using Asus motherboards and it's often said that Asus make the best enthusiast motherboards so I figure the laptops can't be too bad seeing they know how to make good components.

yea just cause a companies good at one thing don't mean they're good at others.
like Philips were awesome with CRT monitors, absolute crap with LCD
But this is the sort of "brand recognition" they rely on to push their non-specialty products

[Headbanger]

Similar specced Gigabyte and Asus boards tend to be within $10 of each other in the low end of the spectrum, But higher up the product range and Asus market their gear as the premium brand so you can expect to pay more if you want it. If not then there are plenty of other manufacturers.

In my experience both are reliable brands, out of 150 or so builds I had maybe 3 dead motherboards of each brand, I had a couple Asus boards returned by punters but I put that down to them being "enthusiasts" without knowing what they were enthused about (seriously, I could almost bet on which twats would munt the gear and then try and return it)

And just to throw a spanner in the works, I done a line of budget systems using ECS motherboards and in 6 years of selling them I only had one fail.....

[Headbanger]

But this is the sort of "brand recognition" they rely on to push their non-specialty products

In that Asus own 2 or 3 of the major laptop assembly plants on the planet and prodce gear for all the big "brands" including Apple Macbooks, H&P and Dell laptops......as well as being a major player with their own branding.

They are more specialised in laptops then just about any other company you can name.

[Headbanger]

Fuck, Just relised, Im an Asus fanboy.

[Gremlin]

like Philips were awesome with CRT monitors, absolute crap with LCD
Get 5 techs in a room and you'll get at least 6 opinions. Had an awesome run out of Philips (but business, not consumer - never in any brand). Two have failed in the last 6 odd years, and uh... god I have no idea how many we've gone through. Must be approaching 100. Monitors we put in 5 odd years ago are still tootling along, but being on for most of the time starting to look a bit fuzzy. My advice would be to avoid the ones with cute power packs. They always seem to crap out and you can't do a straight cable swap.

[Scuba_Steve]

Get 5 techs in a room and you'll get at least 6 opinions. Had an awesome run out of Philips (but business, not consumer - never in any brand). Two have failed in the last 6 odd years, and uh... god I have no idea how many we've gone through. Must be approaching 100. Monitors we put in 5 odd years ago are still tootling along, but being on for most of the time starting to look a bit fuzzy. My advice would be to avoid the ones with cute power packs. They always seem to crap out and you can't do a straight cable swap.

Used to work for sales & we ended up all but dropping the philips brand in LCD's (i.e. we stopped stocking them they were order only) due to higher than industry standard failure rates.

Admittedly this was a couple years back now so they may have improved, but I still wouldn't touch one

Same goes for Acer laptops incase someone finds 1 that looks like a "good deal"... They're not :no:

[Gremlin]

Same goes for Acer laptops incase someone finds 1 that looks like a "good deal"... They're not :no:
And to buck the trend again, my last work lappy was an Acer Travelmate. It's still in a cupboard, but after 4-5 years of service, several rebuilds of the OS and one hdd (it didn't fail, put a faster one in) I said to my boss it would probably fail when I needed it most, so got another. Still works fine. However, it was the last made in Taiwan, the model which replaced the old one was made in China and utter crap. Had one as a loan laptop for clients.

Current work lappy is a Toshiba Portege M600, again, it's over 4 years old now, even survived bounce bounce tumble from the bike (inside bag etc of course), screen got broken so replaced, and the chassis is slightly twisted, but still working. Either I have the luck of the gods for good laptops or I look after them well?

[Headbanger]

Personally I want a Sager

http://www.sagernotebook.com/

This one

http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=category_browse&selected_cat=1

i7, 18.4 LED display,12GB ram,dual 560m video chipsets

[Headbanger]

According to this article the only three known brands that actually build laptops are Asus, MSI and Lenovo.

http://www.powernotebooks.com/articles/index.php?action=fullnews&id=17

Virtually none of the "Name" brands manufacture their own laptops, with about the only exceptions being Asus, MSI and Lenovo.

Instead, Multi-National Brands (MNB) like DELL, Toshiba, HP, Compaq, Acer and Sony buy their laptops pre-built from what is called an Original Design Manufacturer (ODM). Some of the largest ODMs are Quanta, Compal, Clevo, Wistron, Arima, and Inventec...most of these names are unknown by most laptop users.

The ODM designs the shell and motherboard, and then assembles them with the screen, keyboard, processor, memory, DVDRW and Hard Drive, battery, wireless and Bluetooth card, and then installs the Microsoft Operating System to produce the final laptop that is then labeled and sold to the MNBs (who are sometimes erroneously called OEMs...erroneously because they rarely if ever touch the laptop until after it is completely built, labeled and boxed).

The MNB only advertises, sells and supports (usually outsourcing support to foreign companies) their "branded" laptop, and when warranty repair is required they will usually send it back to the ODM or some other 3rd party repair center instead of doing the warranty work themselves. They never built it, and they are not really equipped to do repairs

[EJK]

Support? Who needs support? Just don't go to dodgy porn sites. But then, it's SMOKEU we are talking about :msn-wink:

[Spuds1234]

Support? Who needs support? Just don't go to dodgy porn sites. But then, it's SMOKEU we are talking about :msn-wink:

And if you do, use a combination of noscript (for FF) and Sandboxie (for everything dodgy in general).

[SMOKEU]

Would using a VM for "dodgy" sites prevent the host from getting any malware?

[avgas]

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/IjhbCYQketY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[avgas]

According to this article the only three known brands that actually build laptops are Asus, MSI and Lenovo.

http://www.powernotebooks.com/articles/index.php?action=fullnews&id=17

Virtually none of the "Name" brands manufacture their own laptops, with about the only exceptions being Asus, MSI and Lenovo.

Instead, Multi-National Brands (MNB) like DELL, Toshiba, HP, Compaq, Acer and Sony buy their laptops pre-built from what is called an Original Design Manufacturer (ODM). Some of the largest ODMs are Quanta, Compal, Clevo, Wistron, Arima, and Inventec...most of these names are unknown by most laptop users.

The ODM designs the shell and motherboard, and then assembles them with the screen, keyboard, processor, memory, DVDRW and Hard Drive, battery, wireless and Bluetooth card, and then installs the Microsoft Operating System to produce the final laptop that is then labeled and sold to the MNBs (who are sometimes erroneously called OEMs...erroneously because they rarely if ever touch the laptop until after it is completely built, labeled and boxed).

The MNB only advertises, sells and supports (usually outsourcing support to foreign companies) their "branded" laptop, and when warranty repair is required they will usually send it back to the ODM or some other 3rd party repair center instead of doing the warranty work themselves. They never built it, and they are not really equipped to do repairs

Yes and No.
While ODM makes the laptops......the designs come from head office. Also the gear that goes into the design sometimes does not have anything to do with the ODM (and example of this is the HP Touchscreen desktops are actually an NZ Design - company called "Next Window").
I used to think that "Oh its from the same factory, its the same quality"........but you forget how much a good design can save you time, and improve reliablity.
I am sick of fixing CLEVO's Quanta's and Foxconns. They are cheap POS.

Likewise you can see the difference between a Chinese screen and a Korean one (more expensive).

Usually I defend the chinese stuff - but fact of the matter if it being designed in China it sucks. If its designed elsewhere and made in china it rules.

[Edbear]

I've always been using Asus motherboards and it's often said that Asus make the best enthusiast motherboards so I figure the laptops can't be too bad seeing they know how to make good components.

I've had one for a few years now, but can't comment on back up service as it has never let me down or gone wrong in any way so far. Works brilliantly for my business, too.

[Spuds1234]

Would using a VM for "dodgy" sites prevent the host from getting any malware?

Just use Sandboxie for shit like this. It will be a lot easier to setup (takes a few seconds) and it is very good at what it does (allows a program to run and read files it would normally read, but if it tries to write a file it stores the new file in a temporary location -the sandbox- which can later be accessed to pull files out of or just deleted altogether).

Great for surfing dodgy sites on the internet as any malware gets stuck in the sandbox which is easy to delete.

You can also run any program inside sandboxie.

[Madmax]

ASUS G74SX-TZ358V 17.3" GAMING NOTEBOOK

this is my next laptop

have had my current ASUS one for 5 years have never had a problem

:love:

[Madmax]

new model

ASUS G75VW-DS71


:love:

[scracha]

FWIW, I think Asus have lost the plot over the past 12 months. Their higher end stuff is good quality but very overpriced. Sold quite a few in the past but I barely look at them these days. They're trying to compete with *shit* brands and as such you'll notice their warranty has dropped from 2 years to 12 months (their website doesn't even state this). NZ support is a joke and Asus do not supply parts for their notebooks. They HAVE to go back to their authorised (read overpriced) service center. I've ended up getting parts stateside (far cheaper and often quicker) for Asus notebooks (official, non parallel ones...bought through their official distributor) I've sold as Asus wouldn't send me parts. I'm not even sure it's legal for Asus to take this stand. The last straw was when they tried this malarky with a $14 cooling fan that was noisy on an 18 month old notebook.



I'd go Toshiba or Samsung these days. Even consumer grade Toshiba are reliable and when $hit does hit the fan their support is exceptional. Free courier pickup/delivery, 2 or 3 day turnaround being the norm once Toshiba get it and unless the hard drive is farked they normally come back working (unlike HP who's first course of action always seems to be factory reset or just replace whole laptop and not bother to transfer data).


Motherboards and video cards...yeah....I try and stick with Asus stuff.

[SMOKEU]

Motherboards and video cards...yeah....I try and stick with Asus stuff.

In my current SB build which I've had for about a year I've had to have 2 Asus motherboards replaced under warranty.

[Brian d marge]

well I just bought an asus , for work , cheap as 40 k yen can handle most of the stuff I throw at it , 4 ram 1.8 chip , battery actually does last 4 hours , and its so cheap it doesnt matter , I save to ubuntu cloud .

right price right product ,
if I get a year Im happy
Stephen

ps I tried for my windows rebate , as Im not paying for window as I wont use it .....not a hope in hell

[Madmax]

my new one has just arrived more later

ASUS G75VW-DS71 GAMING NOTEBOOK

:devil2:

[SMOKEU]

my new one has just arrived more later

ASUS G75VW-DS71 GAMING NOTEBOOK

:devil2:

lol at "gaming notebook". Post up some benchmarks.

[Madmax]

check the stats online
Its the latest Republic of gamers laptop

http://rog.asus.com/notebook/17-inch/g75vw/

[SMOKEU]

check the stats online
Its the latest Republic of gamers laptop

http://rog.asus.com/notebook/17-inch/g75vw/

Did you get it with a SSD?

[jasonu]

Thinking about buying one. Have any of you got one, and what's the quality of it like? Does ASUS have decent support in NZ?

Over here they are a 'budget' brand. I would be sure there is some sort of after sales service and or warrenty before buying one. You get what you pay for...

[scracha]

In my current SB build which I've had for about a year I've had to have 2 Asus motherboards replaced under warranty.

That's very unusual. I've had about 4 Asus boards RMA'd in systems over the past 4 years...that's less than 1% (all my systems have 3 year warranty). Are you using shitty power supplies, overclocking it or running it in an airtight cupboard? :Police:

[SMOKEU]

That's very unusual. I've had about 4 Asus boards RMA'd in systems over the past 4 years...that's less than 1% (all my systems have 3 year warranty). Are you using shitty power supplies, overclocking it or running it in an airtight cupboard? :Police:

PSU is a Corsair TX950, i7 has been running at stock clocks for the past few months and temperatures are not a problem. I have had the i7 overclocked in the past on that board, but that has nothing to do with the motherboard failures.

[Madmax]

Did you get it with a SSD?

poverty option 2x750Gb HDD

Will try a SSH drive next OS rebuild

:devil2:

[SMOKEU]

poverty option 2x750Gb HDD

Will try a SSH drive next OS rebuild

:devil2:

RAID 0 the HDDs if the laptop supports it.

[Madmax]

RAID 0 the HDDs if the laptop supports it.

It does raid 0, will wait until this OS is buggerd

[Gremlin]

RAID 0 the HDDs if the laptop supports it.
And double your chance of failure? I hope you have good backups :mellow:

[SMOKEU]

And double your chance of failure? I hope you have good backups :mellow:

HDD's are slow as fuck for a boot drive unless it's a 15,000RPM model (which you're not going to find in a laptop obviously), so RAID 0 would be the obvious choice to use in conjunction with an external backup drive.

[Gremlin]

HDD's are slow as fuck for a boot drive unless it's a 15,000RPM model (which you're not going to find in a laptop obviously), so RAID 0 would be the obvious choice to use in conjunction with an external backup drive.
Not really worth the hassle. SSD's are incredibly fast, especially the latest batch, even in singular installations.

We've already had a couple of SSD's die and had to RMA them, so they're not bulletproof. Also, you have to use them correctly, and there are guides on setting up a machine that has an SSD. Follow them, or your SSD faces an early demise.

[SMOKEU]

Not really worth the hassle. SSD's are incredibly fast, especially the latest batch, even in singular installations.

We've already had a couple of SSD's die and had to RMA them, so they're not bulletproof. Also, you have to use them correctly, and there are guides on setting up a machine that has an SSD. Follow them, or your SSD faces an early demise.

I'm guessing you've had Sandforce drives. I bought a 60GB SSD second hand off Trademe about a year ago and haven't had any issues with it. All you need to do differently on a SSD is remove the page file to save space if you have enough RAM, disable hibernation to save space and disable disk defragging as that causes unnecessary write cycles to the drive for no performance gain. There is no other difference to setup a SSD compared to a HDD with either Windows 7 or modern versions of Ubuntu based OS's. Not sure about other OS's.

As for the early demise, defragging on a regular basis will do that, but modern SSD's have wear levelling built in to significantly increase the lifespan.

[scracha]

HDD's are slow as fuck for a boot drive unless it's a 15,000RPM model (which you're not going to find in a laptop obviously), so RAID 0 would be the obvious choice to use in conjunction with an external backup drive.


Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooo x 10^ fucking lots


I've had the joy of correcting a Win 2003 server that some "expert" had setup with raid0 instead of 1. Guy that owned it blew a gasket when I mentioned double chance of failure. With modern OS's, controller caching and a fuckload of ram, you'll see next to fuck all difference in performance. Raid 1/5 (never used the other flavors) is great but if you've only got 2 drives then do yourself a favor and use the second one for a backup as raid is no substitute for backups.

Unless you're running some high performance DB server or need the tickbox that says "HP" or "IBM" etc for an onsite server warranty, then why the hell would a home user buy super expensive 15000rpm drives these days? For desktops, the Seagate XT hybrid drives are a good compromise as you don't need the ruggedness. Proper SSD's....they make startup and loading seriously quick. But in fairness, most users now do a proper cold boot about once a month (99% of the time they're coming out of standby) and unless they're doing something data intensive, who gives a monkeys if it takes 1 second or 2 to load your browser ?

[SMOKEU]

Proper SSD's....they make startup and loading seriously quick. But in fairness, most users now do a proper cold boot about once a month (99% of the time they're coming out of standby) and unless they're doing something data intensive, who gives a monkeys if it takes 1 second or 2 to load your browser ?

I built up an i7 rig last year with a 6970, and it was great for gaming, and gave good benchmark results, but the whole system felt slow in general day to day use. It didn't feel any better than an ordinary, cheap computer for 1/3 of the price. Then I put a SSD in (only a SF1200 model), and it made a huge difference. The whole thing felt significantly faster and it was the best value upgrade I've ever spent my money on.

Then my main computer killed another motherboard last month so I put the SSD out of that into my spare Pentium 4 Linux box. With a HDD the Linux computer is almost unusable because it's so slow, but with a SSD it's like comparing a GN250 with a GSXR1000. So yes, a SSD is by far the best value for money upgrade money can buy.

My SSD only has a sequential read speed of 200MB/s, so it's no where near as quick as the modern ones which give over 500MB/s sequential read.

[Fast Eddie]

Never trust a brand that puts U in an ASS.......

haha except a strip club...

[Gremlin]

My SSD only has a sequential read speed of 200MB/s, so it's no where near as quick as the modern ones which give over 500MB/s sequential read.
Sequential is not where you will see the biggest gains. Random reads and writes is where the huge difference is, as the SSD effectively has 0 seek time.

[Usarka]

My SSD only has a sequential read speed of 200MB/s, so it's no where near as quick as the modern ones which give over 500MB/s sequential read.

Defrag it.

[SMOKEU]

Defrag it.

What's the point?

[scracha]

What's the point?

It'll teach a young kiwi about sarcasm

[imdying]

Bought three over the last two months on the strength of their motherboard performance over the years (been good boards for me, as have Gigabyte). Two 53s and one of the aluminum cased super thin jobbies with an SSD. The keyboard on the thin one is cheap crap, but other than that can't fault them yet. Two are replacing Acers, one a Toshiba, none of which have ever given any trouble. Oh, and WMP Play To stopped working on one after a Windows Update. Weird, but not really brand related, JOOTT.