ASUS laptops - what happened?

Life Technology
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I bought a new ASUS TUF Gaming laptop off Amazon a little over a year ago. At the time it was a lower to middle of the range type rig. It has a pretty quick AMD Ryzen processor, a lower to mid range Nvidia graphics card, and an SSD. Decent enough spec on paper. It is one of those ASUS laptops labelled on the case as Made in China.

But in the time I’ve owned it, it has just aged disgracefully. When it first arrived my logitech headset mic didn’t work. I was actually able to patch the kernel to get the mic to work, which I need for my work. Since then, the network port has gone all dicky and if the cable isn’t dead square it doesn’t connect. After some time, the space key got all sticky, when I prised it off it snapped, underneath the metal hook which holds onto the actual bar was bent, when I tried to straighten it out it snapped. No more spacebar without a full keyboard replacement, which involves removing and replacing every component including the motherboard. The IPS display has developed these splotches that are quite visible on brighter backgrounds. They look like smudges, but of course you can’t remove them with a cloth. A web search yields it is some sort of internal issue with the internal panel separating. Apart from that I occasionally get random freeze ups which seem to be some sort of hardware driven thing. They are truthfully quite infrequent, but still annoying.

Anyway, this thing is still okay for the price, but not a patch on my first ASUS laptop I bought in the early noughties. That thing lasted forever. I remember when it eventually crashed, it was the tiniest cheapest thing to fix, the CMOS battery! Then it was as good as new again.

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I think you might have bought not a laptop but a yellow fruit, of the citric variety.

Jokes aside, then you’re lucky not buying an ACER.

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They usually have a two year warranty. Bring it to a service centre?

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I’ve actually got an Acer laptop here too, 17 inch display still as bright as the day I bought it. Keyboard still really nice to use, same problem with the network port, but an altogether better product in my opinion.

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I checked on Amazon, it said out of warranty GAGF.

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Check on the actual sticker how long the warranty is

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I view laptops as disposable items these days, unless you buy something enterprise grade like a Dell Latitude, and even those have issues. The TUF gaming line of laptops seems kind of cheap in particular. You might have better luck with the ROG or Zenbook line.

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And check if your credit card covers it for 2 years, some do. The Amazon Visa covers stuff an extra year.

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My last ASUS laptop lasted over 10 years, and it wasn’t broken when I replaced it. It was just dropped on the floor by… my cats and one of the cats’ parents one too many times and the microphone jack stopped working. When COVID forced people to work from home, I went and bought another ASUS just so I can join the online meetings.

The new one is working very nicely. Although, my company has since then stopped letting us work from home, and with the arrival of a new family member I no longer have the time to use it.

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Do you still have the old one?

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I still do. It has a CD player (yes, it’s that old), and I bust it out when I want to rip the music from one of those CDs that came with baby books.

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Don’t buy Asus anymore. They’re still operating in Russia.

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No they’re not.

MSI is.

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Yeah. They haven’t operated there for a long time. It was a relcutant exit but they exited.

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Could probably fix the issues inside like the microphone jack if needed.

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I should have asked on the forum back when it was first broken. I didn’t know I’d need the microphone jack back in 2017.

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Hit me up if it needs sprucin.

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A lot of stuff can be fixed by just attaching the same hardware externally. But, that kind of defeats the point of using a laptop. Just saying, you might still salvage the laptop as a workstation.

Frequent freezes are usually software related or they might be heat related, in a laptop. Does it get very hot? Maybe put it on one of those laptop cooling thingies.

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If you’re going for replacement, suggest look into a used HP 8570w (15 inch) or 8760w/8770w (17) - they are bulky but have actual components you can upgrade, the 8770w will take 32GB of RAM, and there’s Hackintosh guides for them if you’re so inclined.

I have the 17 inch, the negative points is it is very heavy as is the power adapter, and FreeBSD won’t boot on it. In hindsight, i’d get the 15 inch.