Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
After reading lots of threads on these forums regarding faults experienced with Asus G1S machines (and the associated RMA procedures), I thought it prudent to share my own experience with the rest of the community on this matter.
*I apologise in advance for the relative longevity of the post, but I'm sure fellow posters can respect the need to be thorough when describing these procedures, if only to provide a further rare European perspective on the Asus RMA procedure.*
I live in the Republic of Ireland. I purchased an Asus G1S-A1 machine in June 2007 from an online retailer in the United Kingdom (UK). The machine worked flawlessly for almost a year and a half. No problems, and I must say I was very impressed with its performance and style.
Onto the main points regarding the RMA procedure itself:
In early November, the display on the machine stopped working. After doing some research, it became obvious that the GPU was faulty (I'm sure everyone here is aware of the poor fault tolerance issues surrounding the nVidia 8600m GT cards), a suspicion further confirmed when I viewed the corrupted output on an external LCD monitor. Due to prior commitments, I was unable to attempt an RMA for the next week, upon which the laptop miraculously returned to working order, only for the display to stop working after a further week of operation, upon which I purchased an external HDD and backed up all my data in preparation for return.
On Thursday, the 4th Dec, I requested an RMA number from Asus online. They replied the following day (Friday) with the RMA. On the following Monday, I received a pre-paid UPS airmail label by email, with instructions for shipping the machine to the UK for service. The destination address was a 3rd party company named Anovo UK, who are obviously contracted to perform servicing and repair requests on behalf of Asus.
I contacted UPS the next day (Tuesday) and within 2 hours they had come and collected the packaged G1S for delivery to Anovo UK (I merely attached the printed label Asus had sent me by email and noted the RMA number and return address on the outside of the box). Needless to say, I was highly impressed with the prompt service from UPS.
The following Friday, the 19th Dec, the laptop was delivered to my door exactly 2 weeks after first contacting Asus with a small note attached inside that simply read 'no display .... replaced mainboard .... tested and checked'. Nothing else, apart from the machine itself, was included (I had not sent anything else, apart from the machine itself). I must admit, I was not entirely happy about the packaging used to return the laptop, which was basically sealed into the middle of a large box using binding cellophane and protected with 2 sponge cushions - a simple solution, to be sure, but not one that lends itself very well to reuse, particularly if I ever need to return the laptop for another service/repair.
The laptop itself was in fine condition, though I did notice that the ExpressCard was loose on the laptop (in fact, it had fallen out during transit) and subsequently required several tries to get seated properly. I have read several people also having issues with their ExpressCards, so it appears to be an indirect result of having to replace the mainboard on the G1S due to the faulty graphics card. No big deal.
Finally, onto the juicy bits that fellow G1S owners want to hear about:
Yes, they replaced the G1S mainboard with a G1Sn mainboard including the updated nVidia 9500m GS 512MB card. However, they did NOT notify me that they had replaced the mainboard with a different model (and indeed, they had not notified me about ANYTHING to do with the repair procedure - the laptop had simply shown up on my doorstep from the repair center). I had my suspicions of course, especially given the fact that the machine had no graphics driver installed save for the basic 'VGA Adapter' driver that comes with Vista. I had to download Astra32 to confirm the mobo had been replaced with the G1Sn.
Now I won't lie, this was good news as far as I was concerned. The last thing I needed was another 8600m GT that would fail as soon as my warranty was finished next June. The kicker though, is that they did not include an updated recovery disk or driver disk for the new model mobo. They had installed a copy of 32-bit Vista Home Premium with accompanying Asus bloatware (a quite substantial amount of it, actually). Sure enough, I went to reformat my machine with a fresh install of Vista from my original G1S recovery disk, and there was an error. The recovery disk won't work with the new model mobo, and my machine now gives me a 'BOOTMGR is missing' message making it impossible for me to boot into the version of Vista they had installed on the machine. Most annoying!
*I'm sure fellow laptop owners can appreciate the need to know that you have a legit, working copy of Windows Vista that can get you out of trouble should your laptop decide to stop working 6 months down the line.*
As it stands, I intend to contact the Asus UK Helpline tomorrow (they don't work at weekends) and attempt to get a new recovery disk from them. Failing that, I don't see much option but to buy a copy of Windows Vista off the shelf - I could install the copy of XP that I have perhaps, but I know the G1S (or should I say G1Sn!) is not really designed for that OS. The only saving grace is that I do not need the laptop urgently at this point in time.
Phew! That was a long post, thanks for reading (assuming someone did!). Perhaps other Asus G1S owners in the same boat as myself could reply and let me know if they received updated recovery disks for their replaced mobos. It appears some did and others didn't (some got driver disks and others didn't).
An Irish customer's experience with Asus G1S RMA
Discussion in 'Asus' started by Aaron M, Dec 21, 2008.
