Rick's Rant

May 2010

ASUS is not too big to fail, and I'm helping out

By Rick Smith

rants@vcmail.net

Too big to fail.

I've been hearing that a lot lately. Not quite sure what it means, but I hope I never get too dependent on anything to think like that, even my PC. I must admit, my life would be completely different without my PC. I would be out of a job, and a career, for that matter. I would have hours and hours of available time open that I would be in front of the cathode ray tube. Yes, I still use one of those. Stop by my office if you don't believe me. I could go back to eating up the hours smoking marijuana and sitting around reading comic books. Nah, been there done that. Maybe I could just go to some public place and talk to other human beings. I haven't done that in awhile. I could take up reading books again. I used to do that. I'm sure I could use up some of that time getting to know the Yellow Pages again as I try to find stuff without Google, eBay and Craigslist. Or maybe I'll just spend more time with my wife and kids. The real truth of the matter is … I could still have a life without my PC. Kind of a funny thought for a computer club article. Whoaa, this is too depressing. You'd think I've been watching too much Glenn Beck on Fox News or something. Time to switch gears and get back to the "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore" attitude thath you all know and love.

Ten things I hate about LINUX. I just have to have a recap on last month's article. My thanks to Bill Wayson for sharing his thoughts about the Microsoft Windows operating system. Though my feelings were hurt when I asked what he thought of my rant and he replied that he didn't read it. That crashing sound you hear is my broken heart hitting the floor. It's so hard living life with glass feelings. Anyway, I told him that I liked the way he ended his article with what I can only describe as an altar call for the faithful. For those of you who do not attend Christian services I shall explain. Most Evangelical churches end each sermon with a call to accept Christ as your Lord and savior. In much the same way, Bill preached the benefits of Linux and at the end asked if anyone wanted to accept Linux as their operating system. All you had to do was come up front and someone would gladly help you. So watch out for those Linux SIGS as they are always on the lookout for new converts. At least they don't take an offering; everything is open source and free.

Some of the better comments to our article were these: Toby said "Both of you said the same thing." Larry Hudson said " Your info was five years out of date." My response to him was I never confuse the issue with facts! I just try to throw enough mud and hope some of it sticks!

Nonetheless, I sat through one of their meetings last week and I garnered enough material to slam them for the rest of the year. But to end things on a positive note, they really are a great bunch of guys who are very helpful to anyone with a need or question.

Back to my title, ASUS is rated the largest motherboard manufacturer in the world. For years I sold its products, and its boards have been rated highly by enthusiasts for years. It is always the first on the scene with new ideas and hardware changes. In fact, it frequently has support for hardware that's not readily available or implemented. The products are also stunningly beautiful. The designs are a joy to look at for a hardware enthusiast like me. With that said though … I will not sell another ASUS motherboard. I will help the company go out of business, or at least let another deserving company have the top notch. No PC company is "too big to fail" in my book. I will support vendors who support their users and dealers. I don't care how many stars a product gets or how highly touted it is in the techie articles and blogs. I give my love, support and money to those who take care of business. The only thing that seems to motivate a company in this business is losing market share. And I will help do my part by selling brands such as Intel over ASUS. Let me share with you a story of our client who bought an Extreme gaming system online.

The system was a gaming monster, Intel Extreme Edition QX9550 Quad Core processor and an ASUS gaming board with dual video cards and 8GB RAM. Three years ago it was near the top of the hill. It found its way into our shop in a nonoperational status. Turns out his custom CPU cooling fan was not working quite well enough and his CPU temp was somewhere from 80 to 100 degrees Celsius. That's hot. We could not get the unit to POST or startup with any combination of parts. Well, the first thing we did was send the mother board back to ASUS. The motherboard is the cause of situations like this about 90 percent of the time. After a three-week turnaround time we received it back and it still would not POST. The BIOS was three years out-of-date (because they don't allow their techs Internet access to download the latest updates to their own motherboards). We tried an old Celeron CPU and it worked. Wow, maybe the CPU was bad so we called Intel and they overnighted a brand new CPU and cooling fan. (What great service!) The new fan ran everything at a nice cool 34 degrees Celsius, but it still would not work. We called ASUS and sent the board back again to their service center in Kentucky. There weeks later we received the board, and this time it POSTed a couple of times, but we couldn't install Windows. We called back again — this was our eighth call — after we were hung up on after a 20- minute hold several times — only to call back and get hung up on again (not an 800 number, either). By this time we were on a first-name basis with the level II techs. After sending it back the second time and waiting a week for a response, I called the guy personally and worked my endearing charm to finally get a result. I basically threatened him with unending pain and suffering in hell if they did not take proper care of my client. At this time he finally relented when they were unable to get it to work with the exact same CPU type. Finally they admitted that the problem couldn't be fixed and then offered to send a brand new upgrade replacement motherboard. After over two months we finally got our client up and running with a new board, new CPU and new CPU cooling fan for no hardware charges. He paid absolutely nothing for his hardware replacement parts that were out of warranty from another PC vendor. We worked our magic, but he did compensate us for four hours labor. The moral of the story is why we now only sell Intel. If his motherboard would have been Intel we would have had it replaced overnight like we did the CPU and fan. That's why we sell Intel and do not sell ASUS.

I don't know about you, but I can't go without my PC for two days let alone two months. It's just too big and important to fail me.