Asus Notebooks

[plachon]

Anyobdy have any personal experience of ASUS notebooks? I'm thinking of buying one, so want to hear any experiences - good, bad or indifferent.

Alternatively, can anyone provide a hot tip for a notebook in the sub-50,000 Baht category, which will carry an international warranty, with durability being more important than gizmos and widgets.

Cheers!

[nikster]

Anyobdy have any personal experience of ASUS notebooks? I'm thinking of buying one, so want to hear any experiences - good, bad or indifferent.

Alternatively, can anyone provide a hot tip for a notebook in the sub-50,000 Baht category, which will carry an international warranty, with durability being more important than gizmos and widgets.

Cheers!

I don't have an Asus but I hear only good things.

I sometimes enviously peek over to the Asus satisfaction thread on notebookreview here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread...6459&page=5

Some of the people defending Asus there are professional Asus resellers. But - there are lots of other genuine people there who post mostly good experiences with their Asus machines.

Asus started out with an excellent reputation as a maker of high-end motherboards and is now expanding into other electronics devices.

One thing that is clear is that Asus is one of the best when it comes to releasing updated BIOS and driver versions.

An anecdote: The X1600 graphics card in my Acer TM8204 had an annoying problem, heavy dithering on some colors. You wouldn't notice much except when trying to edit photos or graphics when this was really bad. After much research with the help of notebookreview I found out that this problem affected all X1600 cards in all machines and could only be fixed with a VGA BIOS upgrade.

Long story short the first manufacturer who had an updated BIOS out was Asus. Acer followed, but months later, and only with an unofficial BIOS upgrade.

[meadish_sweetball]

I am currently using my second ASUS notebook, and have nothing bad to report about ASUS.

I think I would advice you to pay the price to get a high end machine - it will last longer and give you a lot less grief.

My first ASUS notebook, the one that got stolen was a fantastic computer, L5 series. It ran day and night for 3 years without any complaints whatsoever. But it was the strongest notebook on the market at the time of purchase, so it set me back just under 90 000 baht. Still, I think it was well worth it considering what I got.

My current ASUS is an A8Js, which is not by any means the best you can get at the moment, but it still works ok for me. 62 000 baht with original Windows XP (and a lot of bundled software I honestly could have done without in retrospect), bought from Sweden and not here in Thailand. You may be able to get it cheaper here and opt out of some bundled software, I don't know.

Apart from these two ASUS machines, I have had a Dell and an HP Omnibook (before HP merged with Compaq).

The Dell was ok but nothing special, and the HP was very reliable (but this was back in 1998-2000) - from what I have heard HP's quality was reduced when they merged with Compaq.

The most important thing for you though is probably to look at what models have a good track record, regardless of make. The quality can vary between different models made by the same manufacturer.

[astral]

Recently I have been advising a friend who wants a new notebook.

Looking around I was appalled at how many notebooks are being offered with Vista and only 512Mb of memory.

I am talking about companies like Dell, Lenovo etc

The machine my friend settled on (a Sony) came with 1Gb as standard and a free upgrade to 2Gb.

Even with very little running Vista is eating up +700Mb of the available memory.

[plachon]

Thanks gents for the replies. Sounds like I could do worse than plump for an ASUS. Other machines sold in Thailand seem to get a local warranty, but the 2 year international warranty with ASUS suggests they have confidence in their own machines. Might stretch the budget up a bit over 50 K, if a brand new machine happens to come on the market in next few weeks, but other than that will mainly be looking for a 15 " screen and max RAM available for the price.

My only other criteria is to try and avoid US companies and China-made products, so think I'm alright with ASUS?

[nikster]

The machine my friend settled on (a Sony) came with 1Gb as standard and a free upgrade to 2Gb.

Even with very little running Vista is eating up +700Mb of the available memory.

I agree Vista is a pig for both HD and RAM.

But how much it's "using" is not an indication of how efficient it manages the memory. The more the OS is making use of the better - it just needs to manage it well.

Put it another way - if you have 1GB free memory that means the OS isn't doing as well as it could with application and data caching - it's letting a whole GB go to waste. I know OS X always tries to make use of all the memory you give it.

Not defending the piece of crapola that is Vista, just a general observation

[Eureka]

I have been in the computer industry for 20 years with the last 7 in Thailand and I will only sell products that I would use personally.

Warranties here are not close to those of Western countries, regardless of the manufacturer, as they are normally handled (one way or another) by agents. ASUS Thailand are usually above average and warranties of computers purchased in Thailand ARE covered Internationally. I checked the warranty of a local purchase with ASUS Australia and the only difference was the Warranty was Return to Base and not On-Site as provided to Australian purchases.

They do not overheat as some other brands are prone to and the design and layout both external and internal is excellant.

Test the online support for any notebook you are considering and I would bet money that ASUS has the better driver support.

Pros:- Good design, support, features, reliability, ease of use, compatability

Cons:- A little more expensive

[britmaveric]

Finally have my Asus G1 - great notebook. I've only had it for a week, but I'm rather impressed thus far compared to my previous toshiba and compaqs.