My Horrible Experience with Asus Laptops

[PVTCaboose1337]

Back Story
I have always been an Asus customer since I bought my first motherboard from them 6 years ago. I have many motherboards of theirs in my desktop computers, and my friends computers. When I was going to buy a laptop for school, I choose Asus, thinking of my satisfaction with their service. I was wrong.

I bought the laptop from Newegg, the model is a N81VG. The first time I boot up the laptop, it crashes. Crap. I reboot, it is fine. I install all my important files, games, etc. I soon realize I have random crashes, but not when you would expect them. I browse on Firefox, random crash, I played TF2 for 8 hours one day, no crashes. So I send in the laptop. For repair.

RMA 1
I call Asus, they accept my RMA, I just told them I had done all the system restores and stuff cause I was 100% sure of a hardware error after getting some help here on TPU. Free Fed-Ex from Asus, great! I pack up the laptop, ship it back, and 7 days later it comes back. Before I shipped out the laptop I ran a SMART test, memcheck, and all those other ones, meaning my HD and memory were fine. So I get my laptop back, they say "WE REPLACED THE HARD DRIVE." Same problems as above. I ship it back. Again

RMA 2
I call Asus, they accept my RMA, still free shipping, but this time my note in the box is about a page long, has diagnostics, and me saying, "This is a motherboard or graphics problem." So I send in the laptop, get it back 7 days later, and they say, "WE REPLACED THE FAN." Why would they think the fan was the issue, I played TF2 for 8 hours straight no crashes. It is obviously not the fan! I boot it up, same issue, and ship it back the same day.

RMA 3
I call Asus, same thing blah blah over phone, takes longer, I ask for new laptop, they say put it in your note. Ok so I put it in my note that basically abridged says, "The problem is the fucking graphics processing unit, fix it or give me a new laptop." So I ship the laptop, 10 days later, I get it back. "WE REPLACED ONBOARD 3G CARD." WTF I don't even have onboard 3g how did they do anything? After booting up, I figure out it works, and after I call Asus, they say that the onboard 3g is actually the graphics card! So I got my wish, they replaced what I told them to. On the third time.

Reflection
I am never going to buy Asus laptops again, the service is horrible for them. I fell inclined to type out this story to educate the community on the problems I have had with them. I will still buy their motherboards, but in all seriousness, this was a horrible experience for a college student who needed a laptop during midterms.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

this is why i dont even own a laptop not poking at asus almost all laptops generally suck so as far as im concerned your experience is nothing out of the ordinary

 

[DanishDevil]

3G = 3-D Graphics? LOL. That's pretty much how it goes with laptop companies, unfortunately.

 

[PVTCaboose1337]

It said this:

PROBLEM: Onboard 3G Card (HSDPA) Fail
REPLACED PARTS: N81VG VGA_BD./NVIDIA

So yeah they are pretty dumb. I had to get that from a phone rep. They emailed me the sheet.

 

[lemonadesoda]

PROBLEM: Onboard 3G Card (HSDPA) Fail
REPLACED PARTS: N81VG VGA_BD./NVIDIA

Profound incompetence! Official.

But does it now work? Remember, ASUS may still be a great company and have great products, and you have just discovered a poor warranty sub-contractor. Sucks for you. Sucks for ASUS... make sure ASUS gets the feedback... the subcontractor will do their damnedest to hide that info.

 

[Jstn7477]

I had a similar experience with Toshiba. My laptop (Satellite X205-SLi4) came with 2 NVIDIA 8600m GT (the first known cards to have the faulty solder bump problem that NVIDIA covered up). I get the laptop brand new, and notice that when I play a game, it slows down after a few minutes. Extensive analysis on my part led to the extremely poor design of the cooling setup. Basically, each graphics card is its own board and they are stacked, so in one portion of the laptop, you have a tower of 3 PCBs chained to each other. Since you can only do SLi on the 8600s through the PCIe bus and an Intel chipset was used, they incorporated a lane splitter chip on the master 8600m GT card, and put it under the same heatsink. So there are two heatsink systems, one for GPU1, its 4 GDDR3 chips, and a lane splitter, and another heatsink system for GPU2 and it's 4 GDDR3 chips. Anyways, the GPU heatsinks become warped, and in addition, the cooling part of the systems (the end of the heatpipe with the radiator fins) consisted of 1 fan blowing over the heatsinks in series (GPU 2's heatsink is right in front of the fan exhaust and the air coming through GPU 2's heatsink passes through GPU 1's heatsink and then exits the laptop.

So, long story short, I had (and still have to an extent) a faulty cooling system. The cards burned out not once, twice, but 3 times before they finally replaced the heatsinks. I can only run 1 card (no SLi) because when the GPUs go over 95c they throttle, and just using 1 GPU gets you up to 90*c, so yeah. I could have been better off with a $1200 Gateway with an 8800m GTS laptop if I didn't get suckered into this $2400 Toshiba with all it's gimmicks (Harman/kardon speakers which sound awesome, 1680*1050 screen, the now extinct HD-DVD drive, etc).

 

[MRCL]

A friend of mine has an Asus laptop, he had a similar issue... it took him one RMA only, tho he had to wait over a month to get it back. I guess Asus' talent lies within making PCBs rather than making whole laptops. Altho, my Eee is great.

 

[Steevo]

I like Toshiba, had one dropped from 12' and after a screen replacement it is now mine for work, I have upgraded the RAM and tweaked it out a bit.


Have had some with spills, minor drops, dust, dirt grease.....no issues.

THe only minor inconvenince I have had is a few screws fell out of the twin to mine by the power plug in and USB, so the solder joint broke. A 30 minute fix.

 

[Hybrid_theory]

This is an odd experience in my eyes. Im on my asus laptop and love it. i did have an issue with the screen flickering blue horizontal lines. i sent it in for rma. they had it back 5 days later over a long weekend. and they replaced the motherboard on it. works great now. no issues. N50Vn model.

 

[qubit]

Thanks for sharing this with us - the level of service sounds about right for the monkeys that run their customer services department.

I've had somewhat similar with www.ebuyer.com Been buying from them for years and no problem, even had to return a couple of things. Great all-round service.

I now buy Vista Ultimate Full Retail, expecting to get the equivalent Windows 7. I "eNote" them on 22nd October and get some lame response that they aren't sure what I mean or something. Several messages later, I'm still waiting. They just sit on their hands and don't say anything unless I chase them. In the meantime, they had directed me to a page that's supposed to explain how to claim, but does nothing of the sort. It's just an offers bundle page.

Today, I finally accuse them of a fraudulent offer and threaten them with Trading Standards. I get back a reply that they don't have any stock yet and will try as soon as possible.

As rubbish as that is, I actually believe them and suspected this, because the full retail version isn't advertised for sale. Why the fuck couldn't they have simply said there was a delay at the start and said it would take a month or so to get 7?! Although annoying, I would have stuck it out without too much fuss, had they been upfront about it.

Contrast this with amazon.co.uk. I bought 8 Vistas. On 20th October I automatically get an email with 8 redemption codes. I have to place 8 separate orders, one at a time using the code, but hey, never mind. The next day they all arrive well packed and undamaged in a small cardboard box. Perfect.

I will think twice before buying from ebuyer again and well done Amazon.

And why did I buy so many Vistas I hear you cry? Because I'm selling all my Vistas and 7s on eBay for a profit. All completely legit, too.