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General discussion

CNET's ASUS reviews ridiculously biased?

Sep 18, 2006 8:45PM PDT

(for those of you who don't know, Asus is a company best known for their motherboards. They also manufacture Apple and Sony computers)

Ok, so Asus isn't the best known laptop brand. But it produces among the highest quality laptops, including those of Apple and Sony. Their build quality only second best to thinkpad, their design parallel to that of sony, apple, and use only the top-of-the-line components.

CNET however, decided to almost completely ignore ASUS' line of notebooks, which was only disappointing a little, but then I saw the two that they chose to review, which could only lead me to conclude that CNET had their mind set on degrading the notebooks through a completely biased review.

The first one is the W2V.
They decided to review a notebook over a year old, and label it with 'previous-generation components, and merely average gaming performance'!
Well, guess what. It has previous-generation components, because it's a previous-generation notebook! yet, somehow they failed to mention that.
As for gaming... who even said it WAS a gaming notebook. I don't see them giving the macbook mediocre reviews because you can't play games on it.
And still yet, it's biased.. They only benchmarked the laptop on Doom3. It's a well known fact that Doom3 in particular is much more superior on a nVidia card as opposed to a ATI.
how odd is it that this notebook got a solid user rating of a 9.0 while cnet gave it a 6.7?
http://reviews.cnet.com/Asus_W2V/4505-3121_7-31615674.html

Second notebook is the W5F. Ok, so every manufacturer makes a not so great laptop once in a while. The W5F is possibly the worst(but not bad) notebook that asus produced.
Why did they choose this unpopular model out of all the choices they had? I don't know.
Still, this model isn't quite as bad as they reviewed it. Both user ratings gave it a 7/8. The third user never even used the laptop before.
notebookreview and trustedreviews both gave it decent-high ratings.

and the w2b.. why choose a year old model? They could've reviewed the very popular w3j notebook, or the v6j which both came out months before, or waited a week and reviewed the updated w2b with a 2.0 core duo with a AT x1600 256 graphics card?
(cnet, if you're reading this.. v1j comes out soon. w3j comes out with merom very soon. v6j is a old model, but is still very good. w7j, s6f, and the lamborghini are fairly new. a8j is popular. a8jm comes out soon with updated components... DO something)


so did cnet deliberately try to give ASUS notebooks a bad reputation? I don't know, but I really can't think of any excuses that would justify their reviews.

Discussion is locked

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One reason is lack of support in the US.
Sep 19, 2006 3:44AM PDT

ASUS seems to be a good player in some countries but here you don't want to know how hard it can be to get your laptop repaired.

Since there are no major price or feature items for Asus to stand out here, why bother with a maker with such a poor support system?

Bob

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Support is handled by resellers
Sep 19, 2006 11:46AM PDT

as far as I know, customer support is handled by the reseller, not asus. Asus doesn't directly distribute the laptops. The better known resellers like proportable and milestonepc are praised for having very good support.
I don't know how this would count against asus.

Proportable 6 month reseller ratings from resellerratings.com
9.56 Shipping and Packaging
9.69 Customer Service
10.00 Return or Replacement

I'm not sure if these fall under support or service, but i'm pretty sure these ratings are above average.

I've emailed some of the resellers with questions and I've always recieved prompt and helpful replies. notebookreview has a very friendly/active asus forum willing to answer any questions. I don't know what else you might want.
True, US distribution isn't very great. You can't test out the laptop at your nearest bestbuy, circuit city, compusa, etc.. but that really has nothing to do with the product itself.

I'm not very knowledgable on this topic, so correct me if i'm wrong.

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You just dis'd this make.
Sep 19, 2006 11:26PM PDT

If reseller support is all I can rely on then this brand is off my list. Have you experienced such support?

Asus, if they want to do better has to fix this issue. You did note a few resellers but how is J. Consumer to know this?

Not ready for primetime.

Bob