Apparently there are no Windows XP drivers for the M70VM?!

So I was having a problem getting some bluetooth headphones I just bought to work in XP, it appears I didn't have the widcomm software installed...

Anyway before I found the widcomm software and the driver via a search of the Asus download pages I emailed Asus asking them if they could help. The reply I got is below along with my original email.

What's my point? Well the point is Asus as a company are telling people that there are no XP drivers available for the M70VM which is blatantly false because their Vista drivers/utilities disk contains drivers that support both Vista and XP. And I have a fully working XP install that proves that their are XP drivers available that will work just fine on the M70VM, sure they may not be specifically for the M70VM but there aren't many drivers that are tailored to one specific machine as I understand it.

I know that companies are being pressed into supporting Vista only but do we really have to be treated like idiots and have answers to technical queries like the one I received?

Not to mention the fact the customer services rep couldn't even be bothered to address me by name, which you will see is on my original email right at the bottom!

From what I had read I thought Asus tech support was pretty good, I'm starting to think that's not the case...

Is anyone else getting bad support from Asus and if so please share what and why.

 

Point of correction, as this same issue has been raised in the past:
Asus does not provide explicit support for XP in newer models, as this is an outdated (from Microsoft's perspective) OS and they (Asus) don't provide legacy support for OS' in existence prior to a model's initial release if that was in the Vista era. Pretty much all major manufacturers follow this general policy regarding XP on newer equipment, unless they provide a specific downgrade option. So they were technically correct in their correspondence with you.

That being said, it is well established that Asus recycles drivers between models and most/many Vista drivers are simply variants or direct ports of the XP ones, so they work in XP. But as they are not officially supported by Asus, they do not provide support for it.

In the end, you're both right --- just in different ways .

 

Thanks for explaining it so clearly. I wanted to do it this morning, but I felt too lazy I'm ashamed to say... (besides, I partially did it a couple of times this week already)

 

Hmm well ok. I just find the whole lack of support for XP when quite a lot of people are still using it unnecessary. Just because M$ say it's outdated doesn't mean companies should just stop supporting it.

And besides all the guy had to do was advise me to search their downloads page or point me in the direction of the page I found, not particularly hard to do.

I work in customer service (I'm a helpdesk advisor for a company which resells BlackBerrys and supports the BlackBerry Enterprise Server solution and handsets) and I bend over backwards to help our customers, I don't care if someone at the top has said "we're not supporting this", if I can help I help. Granted my superiors don't generally care if we do give out info RIM have told us isn't supported, as long as the job gets done it's all good. But at the end of the day I am as helpful as possible and that gives the customer a good impression of the company.

Asus and other companies out there could do with taking a leaf out of our book imo.

And it's not just the XP thing, I have an ongoing, seemingly dead, support ticket for the speaker issue I have with my M70VM and the other week one of their reps replied to the ticket with advice for a Asus Eeee PC, the support ticket doesn't even mention the Eeee PC!

 

the drivers are definitely there. We mod every single notebook with xp to date. a few of us dealers do. i still do not know why we dont sell xp images that we keep on hand. Its just too time consuming.

 

Well I must be going mad and seeing things because Asus seem to have now put an option for XP on their download page when you have to select the OS for the M70VM, so what was it I was told, oh yeah "There are no available Windows XP drivers for the M70Vm notebook."...

There isn't all that much on there at the moment (4 bios updates and the util for flashing the bios, a manual and some ATK Hotkey stuff) but I feel a minor victory for XP users coming, assuming they put some more on their site...