Asus Reliability and Support

The search for the perfect laptop for me has been exhausting to say the least. I've been through tons of manufacturers trying to find "the one".

You see, I'm about to head off to college. My college offers a deal on the IBM ThinkPad T42. The problem with that is when you buy it, it comes preconfigured and all this software that I either don't want, or would rather install on my own. IBM does not provide a recovery CD or Windows CD so I cannot just reformat and start over.

The benifit of purchasing the IBM is that my college is an IBM authorized repair center. If something goes wrong, they repair on site. If something goes REALLY wrong, they have loaners on site that they can give me instantly. I consider myself fairly well educated when it comes to computers so I don't anticipate a software issue or something that was caused by human error.

My fear is that I am going to get another computer type and have it crash one day. I would then have to send it off to the manufacturer and would be without a computer for as much as a few weeks.

I have been eyeing the M6NE and the Acer 2025 with the Asus taking the slight lead. What I am worried though, is that something is going to happen to my Asus and I would be screwed for possibly weeks.

I know it took forever to get here, but my question is: how reliable is the Asus laptop? What are the odds of me getting bad parts if I order from a barebones site like Computer Brain. If I do and get the three-year warrenty, how good is Asus support (is it through the site?) and fixing computer problems?

I really appreciate your support!

 

me too! i'd like to know [ ] any asus owners out there care to help?

 

I traded in my Asus D1 for a M3N for nearly 4 months now and I also built a M5N for a friend. I think Asus notebooks are great for DIYers. I buy both notebook in parts and put them together. But I do feel reliabilty and chance of DOA of Asus notebooks are not as good as IBMs. Because my M3N has a little problem with the headphone (will not mute the external speakers instantly when plugged, but do so after a few minutes). It also suffer from occational 100% system load problem, which I suspect it's related to IE or Netcaptor, since when I close them, the system return to normal. And also the first M5N I got for my friend had a DOA CDROM Drive, which my dealer replaced it(the whole barebone).

On the IBM side, I had a chance to played with a T40, and I think the keyboard(quality) is much superior to Asus's, but I like the layout better by Asus. A warning that I have yet to see my store carry the M3N keyboard replacement. But you can be ensure that IBM will carry replacement for years to come, although at a price of course.

My M3N touchpad is also not the best to use, it works fine if you have one finger on it, but when you put your 2nd finger "near" it, the mouse cursor will start to jump. I think it's very strange because my 2nd finger is NOT even touching the pad... oh well, now I have a mini-mouse connected to the M3N all the time. I am not a track-point or touchpad kinda person anyway I did the same two finger test on the T40 and it had no jumping problem at all.

My final complain on my M3N is when I bought the barebone parts, there's no Asus stickers included, so there's no way to show off to other that you are using an Asus notebook, which is bothersome since people just keep asking!!

Asus online support is ok, quick but not too informative. It's also hard to find the right the place on Asus's website(s) to submit your problem... you will see many support links pointing to no where....

Anyway, despite all the shortcomings, I still like my M3N very much since it was cheap to build, great battery life, light weight, nice screen, and the system is very stable just like all other Asus products I owned.