Online ordering for W3J - Simple "?", Simple Answer

Hello folks. I live in California and I want to order a w3j. Everthing looks great about it except, I want a 2 gig cpu(T2500) instead of the 1.83(T2400). Unfortunately I can't seem to find a reseller that offers the 2 gig. Am I overlooking a reseller or is the 2 gig cpu for the w3j just not availiable in the US? Thanks for the help.

Sheldon

 

Modding the cpu voids your asus warranty. The vendor then must do the warranty them selves. If you ask me the step up in cpu is really not worth the extra 300$ the vendor will charge you for taking on the warranty

 

The W3J is an ensemble. It cant be customized it comes with 1 gig of ram. Its its customized you lose the warranty.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145012
Just buy one of these chips and put it in yourself. if you need warranty work just take it out and send the lappy to asus. but its very easy to put in if you need further help just ask.

You would not notice a speed difference with that CPU. Ram is much more important as is if you wanted to add a 7200rpm HD

 

I found one reseller that offers some small amount of custimization, including a 2ghz processor:
http://www.allasus.com/CATALOG/prod...d=306&osCsid=0752d9ca80fea57a14f6f029195c3722
I have no idea about their reputation or anything like that though.

 

To clarify:

ASUS makes laptops in two forms:

built on asus or ensemble models.

Built on asus provides a set chasis and features, while you can customize the ram / cpu and other things such as bluetooth etc. Because you are not buying directly from asus, the vendor will provide the other parts, such as the ram, and thus will be the one to help you if you have a problem.

Ensemble models are made by ASUS direct, they provide the parts and package it completely. You recieve it right out the box untouched, the retailer just sells it to you. The spec's cannot be changed unless you do it yourself, and that voids the warrenty.

W3j is an ensemble.

If you want ensemble check out the a8jm. Its not as nice looking, but it is cheaper, same graphics / cpu platform, and has dvi port!

 

I'd leave the CPU as it is, since, well, hopefully speaking, in a few months time, when Merom comes out, you just pop it in....

It would be a waste of money if you upgrade now...

 

Yea... for now go with more RAM and a faster HD. Later buy a Merom CPU.

 

I agree ...

1. There is absolutely no reason to void your warranty just to get another 170MHz when you already have 1,830MHz...you couldn't tell the difference if you tried. Benchmark software is the only way you could "see" the difference.
2. Wait until the warranty is over and then upgrade to the 64-bit MEROM processor.

PLEASE don't listen to people who say you can do upgrades to Ensemble units yourself. It does void your warranty and ASUS IS LOOKING FOR EVIDENCE that you have opened and modified your unit. All it takes is an overtightened screw, a scratch, a bent pin...anything that is evidence of modification and your warranty is OVER. ASUS is aware that there has been a lot of talk in this and other forums about doing it anyway because if you put it back the way it came you can still send it in for warranty and they won't be able to tell. Now it is a game with them...and if you do any modifications you are totally at risk. It just isn't worth it.

 

Paladin44 thanks for the interesting reply, but what about wear and tear, we know for a fact that the hinges and LCD screws tend to get loose, and others things start to become worn out.

Would ASUS be able to tell the difference?

Well, once again thanks for the info,

MysticGolem

 

The point is that your warranty is a contract. When you violate the terms of the contract you have breached your responsibility under the contract and it is void.

Now, if you want to try to CHEAT the contract, that is up to you. But publicly encouraging people to break the contract, and then try to CHEAT it by sending it back in for warranty repair (you do so at your own risk) is just not right.

No wonder this society is breeding Kenneth Lays and Jeffrey Skillings. It all starts with little white lies, then breaking contracts and lieing about that...but of course it is all ok as long as you don't get caught eh?

What ever happened to integrity and character?

 

I understand your view. But the fact if its your machine. If you return it to normal the warranty should be intact since it is only covering parts you did not buy. They just dont want people to return a bunch of pcs to them with parts that arent asuses. I could buy an asus barbone put my own parts in they will only cover the barebone. but they dont void my warranty on it. So if you want to change ram of HD go ahead. Just be careful. If you have issues later on return it to normal and send to asus. You wont have any problems. This has nothing to do with integrity. as long as its not your work that broke the machine. If i put ram in a amonth later the display craps out. how am i lying about anything? now if you supercharge a car and blow the engine up. Then return the car to normal and bring it in for repair. Yes that would be wrong. but this is different. You cant break anything putting in an HD.

 

SRD, there are several problems with what you have said:

1. "...the warranty should be intact..." Your opinion about what "should" be has no bearing here...by contract, in writing, the fact is that if you modify an ASUS Ensemble laptop you have, by that very act, breached and therefore voided the warrranty.

2. Sure the fact is that it is your machine, and you can do whatever you want to with it. But what we are talking about here is your right to obtain warranty repairs, should they be necessary, after you have modified it. The warranty is a contract that ASUS provides to the buyers of ASUS Ensemble laptops, and a condition of the obligation that ASUS has to the buyer is that the buyer does not modify it in any way. If the buyer choses to modify their machine they have every right to do that, but once they do it ASUS no longer has any obligation to perform any warranty repairs regardless of whether the modification caused the failure, and regardles of whether the user removes their modification and replaces the original components. By removing the modification and replacing the original components, and then sending it to ASUS for warranty repair the user is lying to ASUS and is knowingly attempting to cheat ASUS by requesting warranty repair under a contract that they have already breached and is therefore void.

3. "They just dont want people to return a bunch of pcs to them with parts that arent asuses." This is simply not true, and you cannot produce anything from ASUS to substantiate your claim here. The truth is that ASUS does not want the Ensemble notebooks opened for any reason.

4. "I could buy an asus barbone put my own parts in..." If you are talking about an Ensemble barebones this too is simply not true. You cannot buy an ASUS Ensemble anywhere...period.

5. "If you have issues later on return it to normal and send to asus. You wont have any problems." Sorry, not true again...unless you lie and cheat to do it. The mere act of returning an Ensemble laptop and asking for warranty repair represents that you are entitled to that warranty repair, which means you have not breached your end of the warranty contract by modifying it.

6. "This has nothing to do with integrity. as long as its not your work that broke the machine." Yes, this is yet again totally wrong. It has everything to do with integrity because you must understand that according to your warranty contract modifying any component of the Ensemble laptop instantly breaches the contract and voids the warranty. When you return it for warranty repair, and you do not disclose that you have modified it, you are lying by omission. Omission or comission...it is still lying and anyone with integrity simply would not do it whether they could "get away with it" or not. That sir, is what integrity is all about.

7. What causes a failure that would otherwise been covered by warranty is not relevant to the fact that as soon as you open it up and make any modifications you have breached the warranty contract and legally, by definition, the warranty is void. Attempting to obtain warranty service after that is simply fraud. People with integrity do not commit fraud whether they think they can get away with it or not. Fraud is fraud.

Your car analogy is actually right on point. You see, you are trying to make your case based on causation of the damage. The issue here has nothing to do with causation. Your modification does not have to be the cause of the damage to void the warranty. If that were the case, and in your example you modified the memory and then the screen goes out, there would be no need to put it back to the original condition that you received it would there? The reason you want to put it back to its original condition is that you want to deceive ASUS into believing that you never modified it. That deceipt is commiting fraud which is a crime.

So, the bottom line is no matter how you try to "argue" the case, or what your "opinion" is about what the terms of the warranty "should" be, the fact is that the warranty contract says if you modify an Ensemble laptop you have breached your obiligations under the warranty contract and it is by default void. Any attempts to get warranty service after that requires the user to knowingly attempt to deceive ASUS, and that is fraud and that is a crime.

In the final analysis, ask yourself if you told ASUS the truth that you had modified the Ensemble laptop, would you expect ASUS to still do your warranty repair, or would they be totally within their rights to deny your warranty claim.

The answer is obvious isn't it?

So, to avoid that you are proposing that the user should NOT tell the truth, but rather simply put it back together the way it came in hopes that ASUS would not be able to tell that it had been modified.

Explain how that is not lying with a total lack of integrity.

It is an intentional misrepresentation of a material fact upon which you are hoping ASUS will rely and therefore at ASUS's expense complete your warranty repair.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is the pure definition of criminal FRAUD.

 

If you return it to normal and it is not your faulty handling that screwed the laptop up. Then im sorry asus is responsible for repairs. If you return it to original condition is isnt modified. its original. Not to mention all the dealers themselves pretty much say modify it yourself if you want and just return to normal if you need repair.
They dont even ask you if you modified it. and if you are not responsible for breaking it then you are not lying. Lying would be responding to a question with a false answer. if at no point did they ask me did i modify it. Then it is not lying. They ask you what is the problem. You tell them they try to troubleshoot. if that doesnt work. They say send it in. as long as its sent in original they dont care. If you want to get down to contracts yes you would be correct. but this is real life not paper.

 

SRD, re-read what I wrote.

You are wrong, and I have very carefully detailed why you are wrong.

Now, if you continue to encourage people in writing in a public forum to commit fraud you become an accomplice to that crime.

 

You are right in the contract sence. Its not a law you are talking about a companys warranty. Not a state or federal law. i just dont get so worked up for something i paid for. If i want to modify it i will. If its not my workmanship that broke it i will return it for repair. i not not suggesting anyone blame their mistakes and have asus pay. that i think is wrong. i just am saying if it broke on its own you damn better believe asus should fix it.

 

Ok, this will be my last reply to you SRD, and you can believe whatever you believe, but contracts are "real life" agreements that bind parties and spell out their obligations to each other.

When you intentionally misrepresent a material fact upon which your insurance company, warranty company, or any company with which you are in contract then relies, and they then spend money on your behalf that they would not have spent had they known the truth...you have committed criminal fraud. There are both State and Federal laws against the commission of fraud...the issue of whether the State law or the Federal law is applied is a matter of jurisdiction only.

You can rest assured that if ASUS knows the truth that a user has opened up their Ensemble laptop and modified it, they are under no further obligation to effect any warranty repairs regardless of what caused the failure that requires repair. If the user attempts to deceive ASUS by putting it back to its original configuration and does not tell ASUS the truth, they are attempting to commit fraud against ASUS. If ASUS then relies on this deception and does the repair, the user has then actually committed fraud against ASUS.

That's it...I am finished. Those with integrity will understand what I have said and will act accordingly.

 

Well, this topic has went way past where i wanted ii to go. Thanks for the answer. I have decided to purchase an w3j from newegg.com. I can't wait!

 

Ok i just noticed you were the owner of powernotebooks.com. not i understand why you feel the way you do. I understand agreements mean something the world would mean **** if they didnt.

I do not condone lying as in i broke my pc but im gonna get to get warranty on it. But if i take care of my laptop and add more memory and something else goes wrong at no fault of mine you better believe im going to return it for repair. I didnt break the laptop why should i feel bad for asus.

companys rarely have the best interest in the customer in mind. They care only for profit. They will void their warranty at any chance possible to get rid of any personaly responsibility to their product they have just to save a penny. where is their integrity.

what if someone didnt read the warranty. how is adding ram altering they craftmanship in hardware. A company would let a known product issue run rampent before they would ever do a recall, they will see what will cost them more a voluntary recall or lawsuits. Where are our rights as a consumer.

Now i install custom home theatres and home automation. So i understand about warrantys and i wouldnt want a client messing with my setup. But thats only because i know for a fact they wouldnt know what they were doing. HP ibm dell dont void their warrantys for adding ram or whatever. but anyhow nothing more needs to be said. Im glad you are in this forum you help out alot. and you have a good company. But think for the consumer side of things sometimes not just reseller.

 

Yeah it has gotten off topic. But you will love your laptop enjoy.

 

W3J T2500

http://www.powernotebooks.com/product.php?itemId=1371

 

Talking about integrity...

 

If you touch any notebook from any company, you're going to technically void your warranty. If the end-user wants to upgrade their ram or hard drive knowing that doing so isn't going to break a warranty sticker or be logged into the bios, the room is there to make those changes. However, speaking as the head of the company who needs to be responsible for the systems we build, we're certainly not going to allow someone to play around inside the system with the chance of them shorting something out or just breaking some, period.... Because if we did, that's $2,000 out of our pocket to replace whatever we weren't responsible for breaking and that is astronomically more than is made on the system for us to build it.

... So with that said, it's easy to understand why no one will let you in their system as long as their warranting it, but people have to take chances if they want the perfect computer in the perfect configuration for them..... anyone who says, "well it only comes with 1gb of ram..... so screw that, i'm going to buy a dell" ....... just for saying that, the person doesn't deserve an Asus.

Every single day we get people asking us why we don't customize these systems when others will...... and they think because someone else will, they're a better company........ well 95% of those people don't have a clue after being to their websites that they will no longer have their Asus global warranty....... so there is obviously still some deception going on in those ranks....... Speaking of, Asus isn't helping either....... they have these massive plans to revamp how things are sold and who sell them and what's what...... but a year after planning for it.... there's still nothing more than words on a piece of paper. What Asus doesn't understand is that they need some structure or the integrity of their products will continue to fall due to the dead beats that sell them for them.... or should I say... because any joe blow can sell them for Asus and Asus doesn't care because they see the distribution line as their end-user and that's where they're making their money. What they don't understand (but are coming around to), is the fact that if those dealers don't sell anything, they won't buy anything and the more those other dealers try to discount their product, the more they take away from the established dealers who got them where they are today....... cause and effect.... you'd think someone like Asus would know how that worked.

 

Cant speak for others but the only warranty sticker we put on our notebooks is the cpu heatsink. This effectively stops people from opening their barebones and from removing the cpu. Only with written concent can a customer void this sticker. As for memory, hdd, wifi and optical drives i dont care what customers do with them as long as there is no physical damage. There is nothing expressed in our warranty about this other then voiding by overclocking. In other words when you file rma we will always request a harddrive returned with a dead system. If we find traces of these utils then picking up the repair will be my choise. If we find modding utils like riva tuner or ati tool and it just so happens that your vga card is fried i will offer you to repair at cost or take the system back to asus and see what they can do for you. Other then being an overclocker or a pin modder you have no limitations on what you can do with your laptop aside from the single warranty void sticker on the cpu heatsink.

 

Eddie.... you know if the customer takes out their ram and shorts it out from static or something...... you're paying to replace that ram stick based on their improper actions, right?

I mean, warranties are always pretty broad and you can't say - if you touched this, voided warranty....... there are things that can void a warranty, like you said....... overclocking may not, if that wasn't the cause of the problem.... but if you want a burnt out gpu and then also find proof that overclocked drivers were being used....... you're not going to pay for that motherboard and with good reason. I think that's how most companies are going to work and in reality, that's what Asus does also..... but telling people making any changes to their systems MAY void the warranty stops those who really shouldn't be screwing around inside their systems - but think they know what they're doing - to keep from messing with them.

 

I tried that approach. The result is people complaining and asking too many questions. In the last year maybee we had a couple thousand dollars expense due to user neglegence (about 100$ per incidend) that we could not prove and about 5 cases where we could prove. The rest were under warranty. Its part of the biz. Our warranty states that we will offer our dealer warranty as long as a cpu is purchased from us. he rest is.....

 

This thread has turned from a simple question to a very interesting discussion. Great explanations of the warranty issue from both Justin, Donald, and Eddie.

 

Here is a quote from our built on warranty page. This is the only clause in there dealing with the issue
Overclocking & disassembly:
Voids your warranty. Your hard disk drive must be returned with any laptop repair. Your hard drive will be inspected for banned over clocking utilities. Undervolting is ok but may cause instability!. Customers are allowed to remove and service parts of the laptop. These parts include the hard drive, memory, optical drive, wireless card and with written consent the cpu. Any other alterations will void your warranty.

 

What are you referring to?

How does linking to that page involve integrity?

 

If anyone is interested in what position ASUS takes it is this:

"Any end-user that chooses to install, or replace a component that is pre-installed and validated by the manufacturer, ASUS - the entire warranty is automatically voided...hopefully once new generations start to have stickers that say warranty void when removed, things will be better...there have already been end-users 'burned' by this policy."

 

Since when is the w3j coming with T2500 and 1,024MB (1 SODIMM) as a standard configuration? Are you upgrading them yourself thus voiding the warranty and then advertise as covered by Asus?

 

If you will look at the Specifications page you will see that it is the new Model W3J-H026H. Since the previous model with the T2400 (1.83GHz) is sold out in the channel, and the new Intel pricing that became effective on May 28th puts the T2500 at the same price that the T2400 was before the price drop, the next version ASUS is bring in is the Model W3J-H026H with the T2500 (and also the 1,024MB will be in 1 piece instead of 2).

Now, so you are sorry for challenging our integrity when you simply didn't know as much as you thought you did

 

Wow, I guess that's good news for all potential w3j buyers, surprised though it has not gotten a lot of publicity yet...anyway, I don't think I am supposed to know as much as you do on a subject of detailed specs, ETAs, etc...I don't do that for living, if I would, it would be a different story, but as far as challenging the integrity goes, challenging it is just a way to ensure it is not compromised and it looks like this time it was not, which is good

 

So the T2500 (2.0GHz) with 1 stick of 1GB RAM will be the standard now? That's great news if it is, since I've been waiting out on ordering the W3J. Will every reseller offer this new configuration for the same price?

 

Of course you are not expected to know what we do, but look at your post: "Since when is...Are you upgrading them yourself thus voiding the warranty and then advertise as covered by Asus?" That is quite a slur my friend...

Better to just ask the question instead of insinuating something negative about our integrity

 

Yes, they all should be offering the same thing at the same price.

 

Thanks Donald for that great news!

 

That is what the next shipment will bring, but it's probably not going to make it here before the end of the Month. ETA is actually set for import with the W7 and the new refresh of the A6jc.

 

I agree with you SRD. Popping in a memory module, swapping out a hard drive, are considered standard end-user procedures that anyone can do. That's the way computing has evolved. Swapping out a screen, soddering a cpu, that would be harder. Why draw a line arbitrarily at swapping out a screen as being "too hard to reliably trust to the average end user?" I don't know. But in real life, almost anyway can pop in a memory chip just like almost anyone can add air to their tires. If Asus hasn't evolved to that point but the real world has, well to each his own. I definitely don't think that anyone can say you're morally wrong for upgrading your memory chip and then sending it back to ASUS if something goes wrong with your screen a year later. To a letter, anyone who touches their computer is violating ASUS' contract. But I don't think that that's ASUS' intention. They have to say touching your computer will violate the contract b/c it's the easiest way to protect them legally and financially. I hear what Paladin44 is saying but that type of unwavering stance doesn't always hold true. It may be technically fraud according to the law, but common sense says that most would not consider this fraud in the vernacular.

 

What's up,
Dang so the next wave of W3Js comes standard with T2500/1 GB stick and it's slated to release at the same time as WJ7!? ASUS is making my decision pretty tough! Thanks for the info though!
Jake

 

You can argue it any way you want, but what do you tell the person who follows your advice and then has their request for warranty repair refused by ASUS (an unpleasant experience that some people already have had)?