And the wisdom then of locking specific settings in the bios, such as the ram-timing, in order to - and I quote from Asus reps: "To prevent overclocking of the processor" - maps how, with this strategy?
Here's two things that Asus could do to make your business easier, and to make the end-product -- which already is sold as is to consumers -- a better one.
1. Let resellers and retailers create bios setups tailored to the hardware setup, rather than locking a bios setup to a specific hardware config in a specific revision.
You've seen this specifically with the ram and the way Asus locks, moronically, the ram timing partially. So as to sabotage functions that Intel even advertises for their Panther point boards. Asus then preventing the dynamic clocking of ram functions from being used, while also lowering the battery drain. Which your customers see. And which prevents you from selling extra ram-chips in various shapes to your customers' needs.
I still own a pair of low volt ram that is essentially useless to me, thanks to Asus bios-tweakers. While the people who buy high-end ram, from for example you, will not get their money's worth.
2. Avoid softlocking by nvram and efi bios chains.
Asus does this, of course like all other manufacturers, in the belief that when the product gets old, people should buy a new product rather than keep the old one. And that if they don't, they should be punished if they're trying to upgrade to a new software foundation. Because that's how business works, apparently. That if I buy a car - then one day I will have to buy a new one if I want to change the rims on it. That's completely and perfectly good business.
3. Use standard upgradeable slots.
I mean, seriously -- you guys are retailers. Do you have any dialogue at all with Asus over the bios tweaking or upgrades of either OS or hardware? Can you make changes to the bios settings yourself? Repackage bios setups, and hope Asus' official updates won't break your customized setup? Will the computer tilt if I open the service hatch and install ram with tighter timing? Would it technically be possible to upgrade your graphics chip? Would I be willing to pay a certain amount extra money each year for upgrades -- until I buy another laptop - confident I'd get a great product once again - in three years? Perhaps sooner than I otherwise would have bought a new laptop.
You know, these are real questions that concern thousands of people who buy these kits. And it should be a goldmine for you as a reseller to have those options.
No, their desktop boards are.. were.. well-known for being completely unlocked. For making the functions normally available to only developers upended by default, so you could fiddle around with them yourself. They capitalized on that while all their competitors followed the "guidelines", and locked everything in the bios to "safe" configs.
Lately, they've been going for a trail that very evidently targets "ease of use". By which they mean: "Ease of use for us, in that we have fewer hardware configurations, in order to make the support cycle easier and more like what Apple is allegedly doing, according to MacWorld". The aim with that being to make sure they can provide a more streamlined software package, and to be able to predict and handle the support issues more easily.
They've achieved none of that, and instead created unsolvable problems for end-users if they want to use the hardware they've bought.
And both of you know the specifics of that first hand.
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Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
