I'm about buy an Asus A8Js...a few questions!!

Hey!

I'm going to buy an Asus A8Js next week from a retail outlet here in Hong Kong. I've just a couple of questions I want answered.

1. They say it comes with a 2 year international warranty. Is ASUS support good? I'm a student who will be moving to the US in a couple of months time, to the state of Wisconsin. How is the support in North America?

2. The hardrive. Is it FAT32 OR NTFS?

3. I want to upgrade to 2Gb's of RAM. If I ask the retailer to upgrade for me will it void the warranty?

4. It comes with Vista Home Premium. Has anyone encountered any problems with this? Im talking about major problems....especially dealing with programs and games...any suggestions what to install and what not to?

Thanks so much for any help you can give me!!!
dda

 

1. Should be fine, maybe slow (1 -2 weeks). Nothing like Dell's at home service.

2. You can have it whichever way you want.

3. No.

4. No. I use Vista 64 Business, and everything works well.

 

To clarify question 2, I believe Asus ships with the drive formatted to FAT32... but it's a fairly painless operation to convert to NTFS. There'll either be an icon on the desktop, or you can follow the instructions here.

 

I have the pre-installed vista version, It came formatted in NTFS.

RAM upgrade should not void the warranty, since the manual says only HD/ CPU removal does.

My laptops is from the US and I live in the Netherlands, I have not had any problems with it so far, although I know I can ship it to asus here and they will fix it, if anything happens. But keep in mind you will probably have to pay for the shipping, since you are in a different country.

And for the Vista parter, I'm happy with it so far. It's a little slower than XP and with the right drivers you can get pretty close to xp. You can make vista a little fast using readyboost (google it and it will be explained )
So far all games and programmes worked fine (except Splinter Cell DA) as long as you run them as admin.
Also, if you use 3d modelling software that use openGL, you will probably encounter some problems, since vista and openGL are not working together well jet.

 

Thanks so much for the replies guys! I will be getting one soon next week!

 

1) North American support is excellent, many here have used it, and their experience was very positive.

2) Tedj mentioned the hard drive is shipped in Fat32 because Asus gives the option to those who want Fat32 for their specific programs and needs. While changing to NTFS is quite easy. I do recommend NTFS over Fat32 for 90% of people. Click Here for Comparison of the two.

3) Doing ram upgrade will not Void the warranty. Some people keep the original sticks of ram or hard drive just incase they need to be sent to Asus for repair.

4) Vista vs XP in terms of performance I would still go with XP, but many here use Vista, this is more of a preference thing. Some to most games will run slower but it shouldn't be all that bad.

5) In terms of programs to install and uninstall, I do suggest doing a clean installation of Windows (XP or Vista), then from there install the appropriate drivers and utilities.

However if you plan on keeping as is, you will want to remove Norton and get AVG Free, also remove Asus Live Update since this program is buggy and useless. If you need updates, most of them are posted in the A8js lounge thread, or you can see them on the Asus Support download section.

Then there are other Asus programs whether you want or not, like Splendid and others, this will be your chocie to keep them.

Enjoy!

 

go ahead with this note! its amazing!!
but like everybody says, the screen is not so good! but i love so much my a8js!! =)

 

Yeah, I will remove Norton and the Asus Live Update Program. I presume, they are easily removed from the Add/Remove Programs section?