Formal thread of complaint

This thread is written with the purpose of deliberately attacking Asus.

The members of this board are very encouraging, even though all I've done in my past 2 years of ownership is lurk and use the find function to mediate my problems, this community by far exceeds what this terrible brand deserves.

I have owned 3 Asus machines in my life. G53, GV-50VT, and my current G73jh. All of which have had problems FAR BEYOND the nightmare M1730 I owned.

The G53's display went out 2 months into its lifespan and was sent in for RMA. It returned half baked, noting that it had only been repasted. Strange, I never knew repasting could resolve the problems with loose ribbons. Nevertheless, the machine worked. It never occured to me at first, but my touchpad had died when the machine returned. After spamming the fn-key to see if that could be the problem, it was final. It broke. I opened it up and redid all of the ribbons, touch-pad was still broken. When I think back to it, I should have complained to a CSR about this issue, but at the time, I was only working from home and the touchpad wasn't a huge issue.

The GV-50VT belongs to my daughter. The machine came into our house unable to boot. For a good 3 days, she hadn't used the thing at all. I fiddled around with it during the weekend and determined that the harddrive had died which was partitioned with the OS. I thought about it. Should I RMA this machine? Do I really want to wait another 3 weeks so an incompetent bloke can repaste the machine and call it a day? I did the next best thing, bought a hotplug adapter and put in a 1TB HD. Costed almost $200 but there was no way I was going to send my daughter's machine into the house of horror.

And my G73jh. Oh my god the G73. This. This machine. This machine is the bane of my existence. The reason I have nightmares at night. The reason why I can't stomach to watch any of Asus's CES demonstrations anymore. Everyday, I wake up to a machine that has either

A) crashed during the overnight run
B) crashed because of a windows update
C) crashed because java was updated
D) crashed because DirectX was installed again
E) crashed because I wanted to install mumble and talk to my friends
F) crashed because I installed seemingly any program that runs off an XNA framework.

I've sent this machine in for RMA 3 times. I've given up. I don't think I need to elaborate why I hate this machine so much. Everytime something bad happens, I feel compelled to break this machine into pieces. I'd also film it and put it on youtube for the world to see. This is by far the worst $1.8k I have ever spent in my life. The problems are not limited to above, there's countless more. But after 2 hours of troubleshooting my fn-keys again, I can't be bothered or have the energy to elaborate further. I hope I have conveyed my disgust with this machine, and with Asus with this post.

If a mod closes this thread, at least have the courtesy to pm me some sort of rebuttal. Because I believe all of my points written in exhaustion to be 100% viable.

For all the others, potential Asus buyers, or anyone in the market for a laptop. Don't buy Asus. Don't make the gamble. For what it's worth, you might get a decently priced machine. On the otherhand, you risk turning psychotic like me.

 

Your complaint is completely understood however and you are not alone many have faced the exact same problems while others enjoyed a problem free fantastic experience. I faced the niggles personally but my JH lived through the hell I put it through and still came out smelling of roses.

A company like Asus will never enter into a public argument on a forum either so sadly your complaint here is in vain but you could direct it to Chastity as she has a nack for resolving the majority of issues that us forum workers are unable to fix for you.

If all else fails you could do what I did and move to Clevo/Sager until Asus change their production line to cater for the exact people who buy their products, gamers.

 

I don't see the formality of posting in a forum that is not affiliated with Asus in any way. Post on Asus ROG forums or contact Asus if you want your complaint to be heard.

 

I do see the OP's point, If I was in the market for a used G73, it would serve as an absolute warning to do a thorough test before buying it. IF not for the excellent support from Donald at powernotebooks.com and Ken Lee of GentechPC as well as too many to mention forum members I would have sold my long ago.
IMO the least Cantevenidlecrysis deserves it a working replacement unit.

 

Not to knock the original poster's technical expertise level, but it appears that many of the issues could have been related to software/drivers.

I have had my G73JH for a little over a year now, and although it has not been completely free of problems (imperfect touchpad, GPU died requiring RMA), I've never enjoyed a computer as much as I do this one.

I have reinstalled windows and applications several times, updated all my drivers independent of what's available on ASUS website, and have for the majority of my time with my system had nothing but completely smooth error free operation.

I had crashing at one time that I can relate to a pre-SD28 Seagate Momentus XT firmware that causes data corruption (latest SD28 firmware doesn't have this issue), and the GPU failure was the other major issue in my time of ownership. Since the system was repaired though, I've had complete 100% stability. I'm actually at 2 weeks running without shutdown/reboot of Windows 8 Consumer Preview, and haven't had a single crash of any kind.

While I can understand frustration at things not running perfectly, reformatting/reinstalling and ensuring that all drivers are up to date can do wonders for stability.

Even with the G73 starting to get a bit long in the tooth compared to the newer systems that are starting to come out, I am in no rush to get rid of it. I might start looking in a year when it'll be worth upgrading, but for now I'm ecstatic at how well my desktop replacement runs.

 

I think I'm lucky because I only had the GPU problem at the beginning and that it . I never had problems after and its being almost 2 years that I have it.

 

I like to think I am technically apt. I've formatted literally donzens of times, made my own autoinst driver package, replaced the stock ribbons with my own, repasted dozens upon dozens of times.

This brand just sucks. You got very lucky.

 

Gotta say I feel for ya and I have been waiting for problems on mine, but have had none to date since I bought it in Aug/2010.

 

My ASUS is the best laptop I've ever owned, and I had three so far, HP, Toshiba, making ASUS the third.

It doesn't even spring any funny errors in Event Viewer.

& I also love the freedom ASUS gave me to install the drivers I find, and to enable all neccessary features with just two lightweight ASUS applications (ATK package and Wireless Console).

 

The only benefit to posting in any forum is for the sake of those
researching and still deciding on a laptop/brand. Current problems
and history can be a good indication of what you will get.

For the record I happen to have one of the less troublesome G73's.
Really never had much to complain about it and still rocking after
two years of heavy use.

 

Read and understood you, however I believe that posting official complains here won't really do much :x

 

LOL, I am with you there, partner.

My own G73 experience was flawless, so I am sorry yours was not. Maybe you have bad luck with ASUS. I've owned too many ASUS machines to count, including from the G-series: the G1S, G50V, G51J, and G73Jh, and none have had significant problems that weren't eventually resolved with firmware. I have had my own frustrations with RMA service on both the desktop component side and notebook side, and also with all other vendors' repair services, so it's not unique to ASUS. If you ever have a good RMA experience you should feel extremely lucky.

 

Yup. Mine crashes every 7-10 days and has for the past year. I've had it in to be repasted, and it runs cooler but still crashes (and temp doesn't matter).

I do have one recommendation. Google G73JH realtek and get a couple different versions of the drives for the sound card.

When mine crashes (happened today) I just uninstall/reinstall the sound drivers, rotating between versions. It gets me 7-10 days of trouble free operation...usually.

 

ASUS Reps do read this forum. I know this for a fact because I've e-mailed my rep the link to this and the G75 thread.

 

Being a mostly computer illiterate person (the inner workings of one anyway) I mostly just avoid updating things in general with my G73-JHB1. It's great while it works, but it does kinda fizzle out when stressed or when there are changes taking place.

To this day I still find the stock Graphics Driver with no CCC to be the most stable.

 

lol, that just can't be right. they make new driver releases for the sake of improving them, not making them worse. and I cant believe you're still using the stock GPU driver, that must be ancient.

 

The stock GPU (9.10?) driver found on the restore CD is actually the most stable out of all revisions.

 

I would be the last person to call out stability issues if not running the latest/most updated driver version for each and every hardware device in the system.

As I said previously, I'm running Windows 8 with the absolute latest and greatest drivers for every single device in my system, and I can't make my system crash.

Previously I had locking up every week or so when I was running a Seagate Momentus XT with an older firmware, but that was found to be a known corruption issue sporadically caused by the old firmware and fixed in SD28. Since updating, my system has been completely stable.

Yes, a single piece of malfunctioning hardware or even a bad firmware on a device can cause you grief, but the statement that running older drivers will net stability improvements over the latest versions is just not correct.

I'm running latest Intel chipset, Mass Storage, MEI, Wireless, latest Realtek HD/HDMI, latest Radeon W8 Consumer Preview etc, and have an uptime of over 2 weeks.

If I were you, I'd check the hard drive, and if you're running a Momentus XT update to SD28 and then perform a complete wipe/reload and reinstall of all drivers. If things are not stable at that point, you're looking at either a flaky motherboard/RAM/GPU. These systems ARE stable though when running the latest drivers.

 

Windows 8 Change Log:

Remove the start bar.
Add a childs drawing of a fish.

£799.99 Retail Price.

 

Or, get free licensing through your job (like me) and appreciate it for what it is... I'm also going to throw out there that I expect a ~$100 upgrade cost.

As for the removed start bar? I enjoy Metro. The fish was actually drawn by Steve Ballmer from what I recall and was an MSPaint drawing. It's his "Beta" fish drawing and will definitely be replaced for the final release.

Love or hate the changes, you can't argue that the OS itself is as stable and solid performing as Windows 7. Time will tell if they ship it the way it is now, but I personally would be fine with things as they are.

 

Personally it is awful and removing the start bar was without doubt the biggest mistake ever, it practically removes all possibility of the OS being run on a 10 inch netbook with that awful main screen.

Windows 7 is the next best thing to XP so I will be staying put.

 

I've had my share of problems with my laptop (I killed it once doing a repaste), and my touchpad is junk (but I have a decent wireless mouse so I have the touchpad turned off). Beyond that, I've had mine almost 2 years (in May), and its been pretty good for me.


I'm slightly curious, though. You never mentioned anything you've DONE to the computer itself. Most people who found that the stock drivers being stable were pre-vBIOS updates. Have you done that? I don't mean to insinuate that you aren't taking care of things, but stability issues with drivers are either a) you haven't maintained and updated everything or b) a faulty unit. If it is a faulty unit, then so be it, but if you aren't doing the updates, blaming ASUS isn't the right way to go about it.

 

I've flashed to chastity's bios multiple times.

 

Well, a painter, an artist in disgusting disguise?

That bipolar, screaming, insane CEO monkey is a joke, he will grind MS to a halt sooner more than later, it´s crazy..

I´ll stay with Win7, works perfect, I hate the new Win8 look.

Oh, forgot the topic:

G73JH: 3 RMA´s - GPU and MOBO burned, and now the keyboardlights are gone, the RMA morons broke it, totallly.

What a piece of awesome troublesome hardware, eh?

 

The keyboard lights are managed via power to a secondary ribbon cable under the keyboard... Did you pull the keyboard out and make sure that both ribbon cables are connected?

I lost a couple of screws on RMA, but they replaced the GPU and Mobo. Since the system came back though, things have been running beautifully.

Windows 7 vs Windows 8 is really preference I guess. For me, I work with/support Microsoft products as my job, so using Windows 8 gives me a head start and makes me comfortable with it prior to users having it in production...

The Metro start menu with the ability to pin applications easily is actually pretty damn useful/easy. Can you do the same in Windows 7? Sure. I do see where they are going with Metro active tiles though, and I believe it's going to be very useful when all of the modern applications take advantage of them. Most people I hear complain about Windows 8 though complain because they are having issues doing things the way they used to and can't figure out the Windows 8 equivalents. Personally, I've adjusted to the changes and have no real issue with them. I can understand where people are frustrated because things changed, but there's always going to be some pain in moving to a new way of doing things.

Then again, no one is saying you have to go to Windows 8 if you're happy with 7. In my opinion though, every OS has had some nice/neat features that have made them worth the upgrade (even Vista with it's bloated first iteration of UAC).

 

I have the same model, JH, it is the most piece of junk of a laptop I have ever had. The mouse pad is just junk, the cleaning process is a pain in the a**, and the Asus drivers are a POS. I had to RMA this laptop 3 times and each time it has come back worse.

I am going back to sager when the new models come up. My G73jh is already listed on ebay to sell. I am going back to my HP elitebook until I buy a sager once again. Thank you Clevo for making a very decent laptop.