Asus laptops?

[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

[Gremlin]

Same goes for Acer laptops incase someone finds 1 that looks like a "good deal"... They're not

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.p...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/articl...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

[Spuds1234]

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

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]

[avgas]

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

http://www.powernotebooks.com/articl...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.