Help me with my why question!

Hi everyone

I am in the market for a new laptop. I have narrowed down to the Z61t and D620. Recently I have been recommended to the Asus Z35f and Z62J. Then I realized there are quite a lot of Asus fans out there, especially the Asus forum is the largest in NBR.

Here are my questions:
What makes you like Asus laptops so much, especially when you can't look at it in stores and the asus website has limited pictures and information (hence my hesitation to consider Asus). How does its build quality compare with the Thinkpad and Latitude?

 

I bought my Z33Ae because IBM doesn't make an ultraportable with a built in optical drive, and because the performance rice was better with the Asus.

Build quality is as good as any Thinkpad or Latitude...

 

To answer you first question, many will state they like ASUS products in general because they good looking, well equipped for performance, and most of all better build quality.

You can see them in stores, mainly in Canada, however if you want to see ASUS laptops in a store, you will have to search extremely hard for the US, the big box stores do not carry ASUS (except a few).

That is why we have the forums, and reviews, and resellers, and fans, showing the world what ASUS has to offer. Dell has a different marketing strategy which allows them to sell direct to the consumers, whereas ASUS sells through Resellers.

On the ASUS website, find the laptop your looking for, they only list the Ensemble units and have those pictures, click on Enlargement, then browse through the different angled pictures.

The laptops you mentioned above are bare bones, meaning you will have to go to the reseller/website, and configure it the way you want. Some resellers are allowing ASUS Ensemble units to be configured to spec of the customer. Then the warranty is covered by the reseller.

In general you can look here to find information regarding ASUS laptops, and see real opinions and engage in discussion about them.

Build quality of ASUS laptops in general are better than Dell laptop, and some are on par with Thinkpads. For example the W7, W3, V6 W2 are some of the best in terms of quality. Other laptops like the entire A series is more on par with Dell laptops or slightly better.

I hope this clarifies your understanding of ASUS Laptops

 

Just to add on to wahat jumper has mentioned, ASUS has a variety of notebooks, that may appeal to a certain market, just like in his case, he found what he was looking for.

Others may be looking for portable gaming laptops, then no doubt you want to look at the A8j series, W3J and even the W7J.

If your looking for something for home uses, look to the 17" notebooks, the A7 series and W2J series.

Basically what ever your looking for, find it, and compare it to what the other brands have to offer, and see what ends up being better in your opinion, then also check the forums for what others have chosen in a similar case to yours.

 

I recently made the change from the 4 lettered "D" word to Asus. I bought the W3J a month ago or so and have not been disappointed at all.

I made the change because of the build quality, spec's, size, and the W3J is one of the best looking laptops (IMHO), and most of all, I spent a month or so on this site researching and looking at what everyone had to say about Asus in general. The Asus community here is the greatest group I've seen. There is much comfort knowing that this group is here to pick their brains. Not many questions posted go unanswered. I like that!

I used this web site HERE (I DID NOT BUY FROM THIS LINK) to do most my comparing of specs and photos, quite a lot of detail for each model in one place. Once I narrowed it down, I was able to find a store about an hour away to see and touch the model of my choice (so might be possible if you look hard enough), but ended up just buying one without seeing it and have not been disappointed at all. I like the Resellers here on the forum and will buy all future Asus equipment and computers from them.

My one fear in changing to Asus was that there was no type of accidental coverage like Dell, but then I read someones post recently that says they have it insured and pretty much has the same type of coverage for around $50 a year, that's around the same price as you would pay from Dell. I will be looking into this option with my insurance company tomorrow.

Good luck in your search