A rant about a certain laptop/PC manufacturer

[jbutlin]

Hi folks, this is not a technical query for once- I just wanted to vent my frustration with a particular well-known maker of laptops and PCs! I always try to approach kit with an open mind, after all you hear so many conflicting pieces of advice about who to use and who to avoid. Anyway, lately I've found Asus products to be especially poor, with a much higher failure rate than other manufacturers!

 

At our infant school, we bought 16 Asus laptops for children to use, of those at least 3 (but potentially more) have terrible trackpads which are really unresponsive and extremely difficult for the children to use. Asus' advice in every case I've logged with them has been to reinstall/update drivers, although this does not fix the issue.

 

At our junior school, we've leased Asus Transformer books: of the 90 we leased, at least 6 have problems turning on, in fact they just won't come on at all, and others that worked in the first week have stopped working. They are being investigated currently. One of the ones I sent off to Asus which won't turn on has been replaced by another unit, however this came back to me in a really dirty condition, covered in other people's sticky fingerprints everywhere! Also, this new unit won't turn on either.

Another Asus transformer book I sent off last week has come back with a reinstall of Windows which will not activate! Pretty poor service as well as poor products I would say. Maybe I'm being unduly harsh, but maybe not.

[RichCowell]

I quite like the ASUS kit I've seen and used and can't think of any issues I've had with any of it, but they wouldn't be my first choice for use in a school by the students... The build quality doesn't come close to the robustness of other kit like Fujitsu / Dell / Toshiba etc.

[Dos_Box]

As regards the trackpad, is it listed as a Microsoft Precision trackpad? If so, there are widely reported issues with these (as well as some workarounds).

I have a Dell XPS 13 which has issues because of this particular trackpad.

[jbutlin]

I'll have to get back to you on that one, although I don't think it is a Microsoft Precision trackpad. I actually suspect it is a glue issue - some of these trackpads are really unresponsive, you practically have to thump them to get them to do what you want!

[sted]

after the last batch of asus i agree with you 3/4 of 12 either only run from mains or no at all. I used to love theit stuff my desktop is all asus stuff (ive had an asus laptop before ) but this last load have been pants and a real pita to put ssd's in and i wasnt impressed with the previous lot