Paid $1629 For G50V-A2 On Ebay Using Live Search

Bought an Asus G50V-A2 from Red Barn Computers for $1829 shipped, minus $200 from Live Search. There are no A2s available right now, but Asus has authorized some resellers to upgrade A1s to A2s. They sent me the following email:
"Hi, the A2 has been back ordered by ASUS. They have given us and others permission to upgrade the A1 to the same specs as the A2, and they are providing the full warranty. We are also throwing in for free, Seagate's 200GB 7200RPM hard drive with Shockproof technology. I just wanted to make you aware of the situation, so there are no surprises. Your item will be shipped out before the end of the week."
Don't know if this Seagate is desirable or not. They usually have the longest warranties on stand alone drives.

 

thx for the info, i seriouslly want that new sony hd camcorder ,
just hesitate to press the button w/o seeing cashback icon.

so the cashback deduction can only be seen after u buy it now bought the item?

+REP for helping me out.

 

You're new around here, and since I'm not sure what your Asus experience in the past is I will offer the following caution:

That would be *very* strange for Asus to authorize a reseller to upgrade a unit, with Asus still providing all warranty coverage -- in fact, unprecedented as far as I'm aware over the past 3 years and they've never done it with any of the first-tier vendors, who have mentioned such a move around here, such as Xoticpc, Gentech, BTOtech, PowerNotebooks or (back in the day) PROPortable. Generally anytime a reseller touches and customizes a notebook they are then responsible to provide all warranty work as the Asus' global warranty is immediately null and void.

I would seriously try to confirm this independently with Asus North American tech support while you still have an option to cancel the sale. The offer of the Seagate drive may/not be an upgrade for you, but I'm thinking not so much.... let's review the main -A2 v -A1 spec differences: same cpu and ram and OS and screen res, 2x200 7200 rpm HDDs instead of 2x250, and BluRay vs SuperMulti DVD. So RedBarn's giving you only half the HDD upgrade, and going to somehow get a BluRay reader to stuff in there to match the -A2 specs for only an extra $40-50 above the -A1 price at other resellers, or $20 above their own???

This smells bad to me, no other way to put it. Tread carefully so as not to get burned with a unit that Asus won't touch if something goes wrong and you're stuck with RedBarn's warranty service.... Still, HDD upgrades never affect Asus' warranty regardless of whether a reseller or end-user does it, but I'm unsure whether an optical drive upgrade might. RedBarn has only 2 reviews on resellerratings.com, and one is far from flattering regarding an Asus unit.

 

Thanks for the tip. I will try to call Asus. Don't know if they will talk to me as I am not an owner yet.
Not sure I understand This part of your post:
"So they're giving you only half the HDD upgrade".
Now I am worried about this purchase.

 

I'm truly sorry to cause you that anxiety.....

stock -A1 has two 250gb 5400 hdd's.
stock -A2 has two 200gb 7200 hdd's.

RedBarn (according to your post, if I read it correctly) says they're putting in a single Seagate 200gb 7200 drive. And there's still the deal of their matching the -A2's Bluray reader. Else, all they're potentially doing (again, if I interpret their email correctly) is yanking out of an -A1 unit the original 2x250gb in hdd's, dropping in a single 7200 hdd, leaving everything else the same (no BD upgrade) since there are minimal differences between the two model variants anyway, and charging you $30 for the HDD swap while calling it now an "-A2"..... without the BluRay.

I would suggest you consider attempting to cancel your order with RedBarn while you investigate unless Asus gives you an immediate answer, as I would think RedBarn would have this "authorization" for some period of time while Asus North America waits for their -A2 shipment from Taiwan to arrive. It remains possible that RedBarn is telling the truth too, I guess.

 

"so the cashback deduction can only be seen after u buy it now bought the item?"

For everything you wanted to know about Live Search, check out this thread:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/hot-deals/838081/

 

I think Bobby is trying to say that he purchased an A2 for the price of an A2 but since the A2 is out of stock, Red Barn will just upgrade the A1 to the A2 specs PLUS a free 200gb 7200rpm HDD. The $1629 he paid is with the rebate promotion from Microsoft/Paypal, so essentially, he is paying $40-$50 above the A1 price, and Red Barn is still getting the full $1829 (minus ebay & paypal fees).

I personally think the warranty will still be valid since the CPU and GPU are not going to be replaced. Those are the only 2 hardware that can affect the warranty.

 

Quite true, I mistakenly skipped the LiveSearch rebate part which would bring the price back up to $1829 so part of my analysis is now suspect (my sincere apologies to Bobby for this); although I would stand by a recommendation that Bobby clarify the hard drive issue to determine whether he's getting three 7200 hdd's out of this.

I'm still wondering about the BluRay drive, however, and the "Asus authorization" is still more than unusual as I don't see BTOTech or GenTechPC doing similar.

 

One of the main reasons I chose this model is I want to run RAID. I will call them in the morning to verify, but I don't see how they could call it an A2 if it had only one 7200 RPM drive. The language is somewhat ambiguous, though. Also don't understand why they call it a "free" upgrade.

 

Remember, the standard G50V-A1 already comes from Asus with TWO 250gb hard drives (check the spec sheet).

 

Right. I edited my post after realizing my mistake. The upgrade is from 5400 RPM to 7200 RPM. Hopefully it's going to be 2 of them.

 

Better call them up and double check with that!

 

I've got a lot of calls to make!
My stress level is going up.
Made the post thinking it might help others get a good deal using Live Search. I will try to confirm everything and post back here.

 

And indeed that part was a good and altruistic idea! You just get the type A personalities around here to scrutinize the rest for the price of a single post .

 

Well, if it wasn't for the "type As", we wouldn't have all these detailed reviews, mods, fixes, and instructionals . Great site in large part due to them. I have been lurking for a couple weeks as I tried to decide which laptop to buy, and the posts here have helped me. I think I made a good choice, though I'm not really a gamer. Wanted a fast laptop with RAID for video editing while traveling. I will also play some "Need For Speed

 

How exactly is red barn going to give you a bd reader? The cost of the reader is 150$ alone. It does not make sense. Asus does not directly authorize any dealers to make upgrades not in writing and not officially. they know we do it and they put up with it. for your a1 to become an a2 you need 2x 200gb 7200rpm drive upgrades and 1x bd drive upgrade as stated above.

 

Well, I don't know how they do it, but I called to confirm that I was getting two 7200 RPM Seagates, blueray, and they told me that the warrenty is Asus 2 year global warranty. Don't know what to say, except I tend to believe them. Don't think they would lie outright. This is the email they sent me:

"Yes, this is correct. There is no functional change to you whatsoever.
There will by 2 x 200Gb 7200RPM Seagate drives, with the G-Shock
protection and the Blu-ray as well. The only difference is the box will
say A1. Cheers!".
This came from Jon @ Red Barn Computers.
I have their address and phone number, and they sell lot's of stuff on Ebay, and are in good standing with Paypal, who I called, so we'll just have to wait and see. They advertise themselves as the biggest Asus reseller on the east coast. Don't know if that's true, but it's what they say.

 

i am not doubting they can do that. the upgrade are very easy to put in. Its just that the g50v-a1 + a bd drive and 2 of those hard drives simply costs more then the g50v-a2 alone. I just do not see what incentive there is in doing this.