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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Posts tagged ‘Asus’
01.01.2022
Here are January 2022âs imagesâaides-mĂ©moires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.
Notes
More on the Ford Falcon (XA) in Autocade. Reposted from Twitter.
TaupĆ Plimmerton summer sunset, photographed by me.
BBC parody news item, via Twitter.
More on the Wolseley on Autocade.
More on the Mitsubishi Colt Galant at Autocade.
Dodge 1500 advertisement via George Cochrane on Twitter.
Model Alexa Breit in a bikini, via Instagram.
More on the Renault 17 in Autocade.
More on the Renault 20 in Autocade.
More on the Renault Mégane IV in Autocade.
âSign not in use’ posted by John on Twitter.
Asus ROG Strix G17 G713QE-RTX3050Ti, at Asus’s Singapore website.
Pizza Express Woking parody still, via Twitter.
Tags: 1960s, 1965, 1970s, 1971, 1975, 1976, 2020, 2020s, 2022, advertisement, airline, Aotearoa, Argentina, Asus, Australia, Autocade, Autocar, BBC, BL, British Leyland, car, Chrysler, computing, Dodge, electric cars, England, film, Ford, Germany, humour, Instagram, James Bond, Japan, marketing, media, Mitsubishi, modelling, New Zealand, news, parody, photography, Plimmerton, Porirua, Renault, retro, Taiwan, Twitter, UK, USA, Wellington Posted in cars, gallery, humour, interests, internet, marketing, media, New Zealand, politics, UK, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
01.08.2021
Iâve occasionally had good luck with ultra-cheap Chinese mice. Years ago, I bought one, with very simple left and right buttons and a scroll wheel, and it proved to be one of the most comfortable I owned. The wheel didnât run smoothly at first but a quick trim of the plastic, and itâs been fine since.

This US$3·89 mouse (price at time of writing) was a similar case. I ordered it to see if it might be better than the NZ$75 Asus ROG Strix Evolve mouse, and that was bought to replace my favourite, the Microsoft Intellimouse 1·1. One of those was being used after my Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 diedâlike the Intellimouse, these had large bodies that people with bigger hands, like me, can use.
As those in a similar predicament know, mice have shrunk over the last decade, so finding a replacement takes months as you read the specs and, in some cases, visit the stores to see if they have anything.
A Tecknet mouse proved too low by a millimetre or two to be comfortable, but when I saw this no-name unit being sold by a place called 7 Elves Store (did they mean dwarves, as in Disney?) on Aliexpress, I decided to take a punt. (The specs suggest the brand name is Centechia, but itâs nowhere to be found on the device or in the heading and description.) And for US$3·89 plus (sorry) my share of carbon emissions from the air freight, it didnât cost me much to find out.
It arrived a few weeks ago in damaged condition. The buttons did not work at all, and once again I had to make some simple repairs to get it working. Itâs too light. The plastic is of a crappy grade. And the details on the base of the mouse suggest whomever wrote the text had not been in the occident much, if at all. I donât like the lights because I donât care if a mouse has pulsing RGB effects since (a) my hand is over it and (b) Iâm looking at the screen, not the mouse.
But hereâs the thing: it fits my hand. Itâs nowhere nearly as comfortable as those old Microsoft mice, but as a cheapie that I can take in my laptop bag, it does a better job than the Tecknet. Itâs not as comfortable as the Asus, but it beats every other mouse, that is, the ones I didnât buy, that Iâve seen in the shops. On the whole, I can use it more than the Tecknet, and it will do when Iâm travelling or out of the office, though I still havenât found the holy grail of a decent sized Microsoft mouse. (The revived Intellimouse, as I may have mentioned earlier, is asymmetric, and its shape doesnât work for me.) Iâm not sure why this is so hard for mice manufacturers: youâve all peaked a bit early, and none of the improvements youâve made have advanced the ideas of user comfort and ergonomics.
For those who care about this stuff, hereâs the Aliexpress link.
Tags: 2020s, 2021, Aliexpress, Asus, China, computing, design, Microsoft, mouse, office, Tecknet Posted in China, technology | No Comments »
17.05.2020

How I had such high hopes that the Microsoft Intellimouse Pro Special Edition bought at NoĂ«l Leeming would be a successor to my Intellimouse 1.1. The short version: it isnât.
It might be a successor to the Intellimouse Explorer 3 on which the shape is modelled, but for those of us who prefer symmetrical mice, because the higher right-hand side supports your hand better, it literally was a pain.
There are only some counterfeit ones going for a decent price on Ebay, and I really should have snapped up more of the second-hand ones when I had a chance. The mice now at Recycling for Charity are, like all those reasonably priced ones in shops today, tiny. I imagine mice from the early 2000s aren’t even getting recycled any more, since it’s 2020 and the “old” stuff is from last decadeâafter the manufacturers began to shrink them.
Asus did a good job with its ROG Strix Evolve which I bought three months ago, but I find that the absence of tapering at the front and the overall tightness of the buttons didnât serve me that well.
The Intellimouse 1.1 is back here as my reserve, and the Asus is on the mouse pad. It took all of a few seconds at my desk to know that Microsoftâs revived Intellimouse wasnât rightâand one wonders why they couldnât just keep making something that worked so well for so many of us.
I was lucky to get the similarly shaped Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 five years ago, a dead-stock mouse made in 2005 that had been sitting at Corporate Consumables. In between the properly sized Microsoft miceâthree in total, including my first in 2002âI had all manner of other types but nothing was as comfortable.
When you go to some websites selling mice, they tell you that you can hold their product like a âclawâ, as if that is a positive attribute. Once again we see the need for humans to adapt to technology, rather than the other way round. I can see why one might need to do this given how mice have shrunk. If your handâs like a claw, then you may be the modern equivalent of the Chinese women who had their feet bound in the 20th century. You may feel that is the fashion, but you need not live with it.
I did it. On Saturday night I reset my Meizu M6 Note again, the second time in eight days, taking it back to factory settings. Except this time I didnât load Whatsapp or Signal. Two days later, my phone remains OK.
I suggested to PB that it may have developed a readâwrite fault, as deleting photos from the internal memory takes minutes (if it ever completes), which the warranty should cover. It also would explain why the gallery, camera and the downloadsâ folder wouldnât load properly, since they each tried to access the internal storage. I also had difficulty restoring my SMSs with SMS Backup, with the operation crapping out before completingâthough strangely, today, the SMSs are back without any intervention from me.
But it also wouldnât surprise me one bit if Whatsapp wasnât compatible with Android 7 nowâInstagram never was, not fully. To save a load of time I wonât be putting messaging apps back on there. I lost a second evening to this and Iâm not keen on losing more.
There are two up sides: I donât need to get a new phone, and if I did, I finally found a vendor on Aliexpress whoâll sell a Chinese-spec Meizu. No more of these western editions: they are less reliable, with a less well stocked app store, and you canât update the OS. You have to root them to get rid of the Google spyware. I may stick with Meizu but I really wonât be buying domestically again.
Tags: 2020, Aliexpress, Aotearoa, Asus, cellphone, China, computing, counterfeit, Ebay, Google Android, Meizu, Microsoft, mouse, New Zealand, NoĂ«l Leeming, office, PB Technologies, recycling, software, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara, Whatsapp Posted in business, China, design, New Zealand, technology, Wellington | 2 Comments »
17.03.2020
When I was 13, my father became self-employed after being made redundant at his work. By choice, my mother did the same when I was in my early 20s. They both loved the lifestyle and I imagine it was inevitable I would do the same in my career, beginning at a time when I was still studying.
As some who self-isolate because of the coronavirus pandemic say that their mental health is affected, I thought Iâd share how Iâve been based at home for over three decades.
1. For those working, make sure itâs not just one project. Thereâs nothing more wearing that having just one thing to work on the entire day. I always have a few projects on the go, and make sure I switch between them. The second project should be a lighter one or be of less importance. Even if itâs not work, make sure itâs something that gives you a bit of variety.
2. Make sure you have a decent work set-up. I find it important to have a monitor where I can read things clearly. Also I set mine on a mode that restricts blue light. If youâre working at home, itâs not a bad idea to have comfortable settings on a screen. If your monitor doesnât have a native mode to restrict blue light, thereâs always F.lux, which is an excellent tool to make screens more comfortable.
If you’re used to standard keyboards and mice, that’s great, but for me, I have to ensure my keyboard is either at around 400 mm in width or less, and my mouse has to be larger than the standard size since I have big hands. Ergonomics are important.

3. Find that spot. Find a comfortable space to base yourself with plenty of natural light and ventilation. At-home pet cats and dogs do it, take their lead.
4. Stretch. Again, the cats and dogs do it. Get out of that chair every now and then and make sure you don’t get too stiff working from your desk. Exercise if you wish to.
5. If you relax to white noise or find it comforting, there are places that can help. One friend of mine loves his podcasts, and others might like music, but I enjoy having the sound of web video. And if itâs interesting, you can always stop to watch it. One site I recently recommended is Thought Maybe, which has plenty of useful documentaries, including Adam Curtisâs ones. These give an insight into how parts of the world work, and you might even get some theories on just what landed us in this situation in 2020.
When Aotearoa had two network TV channels, I dreamed of a time when I could have overseas stations accessible at my fingertips. That reality is now here with plenty of news channels online. If thatâs too much doom and gloom, Iâm sure there are others that you can tune into to have running in the background. Radio.net has a lot of genres of music.
6. Find that hobby. No point waiting till you retire. Was there something you always wanted to learn about but thought youâd never have time? I recommend Skillshare, which has lots of online courses on different subjects. You learn at your pace so you can delve into the course whenever you want, say once a day as a treat.
7. I do some social media but generally I limit myself. Because social media are antisocial, and theyâre designed to suck up your time to make their owners rich (they look at how much attention they capture and sell that to advertisers), thereâs no point doing something draining if youâve got some good stuff to do in (1). However, they might be cathartic if you want to have some human contact or express your feelings. Personally, I prefer to blog, which was my catharsis in the mid-2000s, and which I find just as good today. It’s a pity the old Vox isn’t around these days as there’s much to be said for a long-form blogging network.
Sarb Johal started the #StayatHomeEnts hashtag on Twitter where Tweeters have been putting up some advice on what we each do to keep entertained. I just had a scroll down and they’re really good!
8. Many of us have this technology to chat to others, letâs use it. Weâre luckier in 2020 that thereâs Facetime, Skype, Google Hangouts, etc. I had thought that if we didnât have social media, weâd be finding this an ideal opportunity to connect with others around the planet and learning about other cultures. I remember in the early days of the web how fascinating it was to chat to people in chatrooms from places I had never visited. I realize these days there are some weirdos out there, who have spoiled the experience for the great majority. But Iâm sure there are some safe places, and if theyâre not around, see what friends are in the same boat and form your own virtual networks. Importantly, donât restrict yourselves to your own country.
9. Donât veg: do something creative. For those of us with a creative bent, draw, write, photograph, play a musical instrumentâsomething to de-stress. I canât get through a day without doing one creative thing.
10. Anything in the house that you said youâd always do? Nowâs your chance to do it, and hopefully youâve got your tools and equipment at home already.
11. If you’re in a relationship, don’t get on top of each otherâhave your own spaces. Having said that, seeing my partner helps as I used to go into town a few times a week for meetings; because I see her each day, that need to meet up with colleagues to get out of your own headspace isn’t as strong.
12. Take plenty of breaks. Youâd probably have to anyway, in order to cook (since youâre not heading out to a cafĂ©) so structure in times to do this. It soon becomes second nature. Donât plough through till well after your lunchtime or dinnertime: get a healthy routine. Remember that self-isolation means you can still go for walks, just not into crowded places or with someone. When we self-isolated in January over an unrelated bug, my partner and I headed to a local park that wasnât busy during the day and we were the only ones there.
Normally I would have a small amount of meetings during the week but as I get older, they’re actually fewer in number, so I can cope with not having them.
Do you have any extra tips? Put them in the comments and letâs see if we can build on this together.
Tags: 2020, Adam Curtis, Aotearoa, Apple, Asus, blogosphere, computing, Cooler Master, Dell, documentary, Google, health, networking, New Zealand, pandemic, Sarb Johal, Skillshare, Skype, social media, technology, TV, Twitter, work Posted in culture, interests, internet, New Zealand, technology, TV | 1 Comment »
18.02.2020
My early 2000s Microsoft Intellimouse 1·1 is still the perfect shape for me. After getting the second-hand one into service last year, I thought that I needed a spare. Iâve several other mice, including no-brand ones, that are a decent size, but I got used to having the forward and back buttons on either side.
Microsoft makes a Classic Intellimouse these days, but itâs based on a later design, and it appears the side buttons are on the left only, which seems to be the convention in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Itâs also had some reviews criticizing the quality, so I knew I couldnât go with the latest.
I headed back to Recycling for Charity, where I sourced this Intellimouse, but judging by the stock, Iâm not alone in my preference. All that were left were smaller mice, making me wish that I bought multiple Intellimouses a few years ago and stocked up. This surely is a massive hint to mainstream mouse makers on a latent, forgotten market.
After sampling some during spare time at Noël Leeming in Porirua, which did fit my hand, I opted to look online. The Noël Leeming ones were mostly Logitech, and my experience is that their mice last about two years. I wanted quality.
After much searching, one mouse that matches the dimensions of the Intellimouse (125 mm Ă 65 mm Ă 40 mm) with one millimetre out on the height is the Asus Republic of Gamers (ROG) Strix Evolve, and our old friends at Just Laptops in Albany had them on special at under NZ$70 plus freight. Thatâs a lot more than the NZ$3 I paid for the used Intellimouse and the NZ$25 I paid for the Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 in 2015, but with Asus claiming that the switches were good for 50 million clicksâprobably 10 times more than regular miceâI decided that three times the price for ten times the longevity (at least in one respect) was acceptable. And it had two switches on each side, which I could program.
It arrived a (working) day later. A lot of the gaming features are lost on me: the option to have lighting effects, choosing your own colour or having it cycle, for instance. I donât necessarily need DPI switching. Itâs simply vital that I have something my right hand is comfortable with.

The mouse comes with a second set of covers, so you can raise it slightly to suit your hand. I tried all permutations: left high, right low, vice versa, both low, both high, before deciding on having both sides in the raised position. The rubber side panels help with grip, and they aid comfort.
The first negative is that the forward end isnât as wide as I was used to. The Microsoft mice are a reasonable width all the way down, and the Evolve is slightly narrower. That means my ring finger touches the mouse pad more on the side, as it did with an earlier Lenovo (plenty of those at Recycling for Charity, incidentally). I thought I wouldnât be able to get used to it, as I didnât with the Lenovo, and it does continue to be a slight problem. In other words, I havenât quite got the perfect mouse and itâs a lesson about buying online when your requirements are this strict (though again I wouldnât have considered this a major problem if manufacturers werenât skimping on materials and giving people repetitive strain injuries).
Asus hasnât deceived about the measurements: it is 125 mm wide at its greatest width, just as Microsoft has it on theirs.
I may put up with letting my ring finger drop and go along the mouse pad for the time being just for comfortâs sake and see if Iâm OK with washing the pad more regularly. Or adjust my hand positioning slightly. But I know I cannot use the modern mice.
One Tweeter noted that maybe the mouse manufacturers are finally appealing to women, and I had to agree it was nice for us men to experience just once what itâs like for them in a usually male-designed tech world.
The other features are excellent: the ability to program the switches, which I did very early; and I can turn the lighting off as I see no point to it if my hand is on the mouse obscuring most of it. Then again, Iâm not a gamer.
The mouse wheel and switches are far more solid than anything Iâve encountered, making the 50 million-click claim believable. I do occasionally hit the right button inadvertently, probably out of unfamiliarity, and I must hit the DPI switch from time to time, again accidentally.
Nevertheless, Iâm going to keep my eye out for second-hand Intellimouses. Mine has become the back-up again, and really I didnât think I was asking for much. Microsoft had a perfect design for which the tooling must be long amortized, so it makes you wonder why they donât just trot it out again and make a bundle more off us.
Tags: 2010s, 2020, Asus, computing, design, Microsoft, recycling, technology Posted in design, New Zealand, technology | 2 Comments »
06.04.2019

Asus
One beauty to having new tech, even if it stretched my budget, is how my use of the desktop and laptop computers is more efficient. I donât just mean the speed and stability (since the previous computers were both Windows 7 machines that had been upgraded to 10) but the way I use the programs on them.
Some things are constant: Iâll happily edit fonts or magazines on both since theyâre both equipped with the same software. Itâs now a breeze to copy everything from one machine on to a portable hard drive running USB 3 and putting it all on the other machine. While I can copy them on to a network, this hardware-based method is still faster.
But where things have really changed are with email. Iâve never seen the benefits of having email on the cloud, especially with how a company can unilaterally take everything away from you. Google is notorious for thisâlast week I saw many complaints about a service they have removedâso Iâve never seen the problem about having an email client, into which you download your messages.
Since the end of the last century, I archive old emails on to an optical disc, initially CD-ROMs, later DVD-ROMs. I keep roughly a year on a computer at any given time. It’s sufficient for over 99 per cent of cases.
When I first started travelling with a laptop in 2001, at a time when I would be the only passenger at the airport gate looking at a device (the reverse is now true: everyone but me is on one), I used to take my email with me. All the email folders from my desktop machine would be duplicated, and I would use Eudora on the laptop for the next weeks. I could queue up replies and connect via AT&T Global, dialling up using a local phone number. When I got back to Wellington, I would copy the email folders back on to the desktop. There would be some conflicts with filenames and embedded files, but overall this was how I lived, as a business person, for a long time.
A few years ago, with VNC software getting reasonably good and with wifi (or ethernet) fairly prevalent in the places I travelled to, I began skipping this step. I would simply use VNC to link back home and email would stay on the desktop. This would save considerable time copying the email folders each way. Oftentimes, with the fast internet at the office, it would actually be quicker doing things using a remote desktop.
But in 2019, it turns out that going back to my 2001 method is very reliable. USB 3 is that much faster so copying files is a breeze. On a recent trip I put everything on to my laptopânow big enough to carry it all, with a 1 Tbyte hard drive next to its 240 Gbyte SSDâand only used VNC to grab files I didnât have with me. Copying it all back upon my return took very little time. Because the copying is so comprehensive, I donât wind up with filename conflicts. I happily queue up emails till I’m around an internet signal or connection again, just as I did nearly two decades ago. It’s proved really productive and on Saturdays I have been known to pop in to Sierra CafĂ© in town and tap away some personal messages.
It would be highly unfortunate if the laptop was stolen, and I havenât got into the practice of backing everything up while travelling just yet. Obviously Iâll have to work this in as part of the routine on longer trips, and it could eat up more time than I think. At least with the VNC way, the desktop computer was set up to make back-ups, and I havenât done that with the laptop since itâs not always connected.
Tags: 2001, 2019, Asus, computing, email, Eudora, history, Microsoft Windows, travel Posted in business, internet, New Zealand, technology, Wellington | No Comments »
24.02.2019

I never planned to spend quite this much on computers in the first two months of the year.
The laptop was in dire need of an upgrade, so I had budgeted for it. After getting it, I was impressed, but thought that the desktop PC, which dates from 2012 and upgraded with a Crucial 525 Gbyte SSD just over two years ago, was holding its own. The processor might have been slow, but then, Iâm a middle-aged man with reflexes slower than that of a 20-year-old, so I hardly noticed. I thought, best-case scenario, Iâd look at an upgrade at the end of 2019.
Last Wednesday, the PC wouldnât start properly. I was incredibly lucky as I had backed up all pertinent directories the night before, and only lost a bunch of frequently used scans (which can be re-created) and some text files where I wrote down some drafts. In the grand scheme, this was the least amount of data I had ever lost, and Iâm very old-school: I still download emails with a client and burn mailbox archives on to DVD.
The original diagnosis was a faulty SSD, where the operating system lived. The computer kept booting on to the secondary hard drive, which I used prior to the SSD. The hard drive was cloned in 2016 and became a storage drive, but I never deleted the old OS from it. The plan: get a new SSD and clone it again.
I took the computer to Atech, where I was a regular visitor anyway. I had even discussed the possibility of buying a PC from them. The boss, Kidd Liang, began cloning the hard drive on to a fresh Samsung SSD, which he believed would be more reliable than the Crucial. But after attempting the process twice, he said there were too many bad sectors on the hard drive for the cloning to be successful. Based on the noise, he deduced something else would bite the dust: either the power supply or the graphicsâ card. Nevertheless, he plugged the SSD into the PCâand it was at this point the power supply failed.
Iâve seen multiple faults like this beforeâI had one machine in the 2000s die with a motherboard failure, then a CPU one, within 24 hours. Kidd said I was incredibly lucky as someone who had done a major back-up, because I then faced the very real prospect of needing a new desktop PC. I was able to continue working on Wednesday night thanks to my laptop, and when it was plugged in to my big monitor, I finally noticed the speed difference of a modern machine versus my old one. And I liked it.
Therefore, it was with some excitement I collected my desktop PC from Atech on Saturday morning. I didnât want to go overboard but at the same time needed to do some future-proofing. Kidd calls it the âvintage gaming seriesâ, as he reused my old Cooler Master case and DVD-ROM drive, along with the top fan, but everything else was replaced. It’s like one of those Singer Porsches: old on the outside, new on the inside. My existing Windows licence worked on the new machine. Inside was the Samsung along with a new 2 Tbyte hard drive; the 1 Tbyte I had was also installed, even if it has bad sectors. Itâll be the back-up of the back-up.
Going with a six-core Ryzen 5 2600 isnât as impressive as the laptopâs i7-8750H, but once the programs are running I donât notice much difference (middle age again). Thereâs an Aorus X470 motherboard, 16 Gbyte of RAM, and instead of going with Geforce, I decided to see how a Sapphire Nitro Plus Radeon RX 580 with 8 Gbyte on the video would be like.
While everything is more stable and faster, I donât get a sense of a major leap, probably because of the 2016 SSD upgrade. Nevertheless, itâs given me a fresh start for 2019, with some old software (e.g. Gammadyne Mailer) not having made it on to the new machine. More time-consuming was getting the fonts right: Windows 10 now selects a user directory for some of your fonts and these do not appear in the registry (the trick is to change the permissions of the fontsâ folder, and make sure the fonts are installed for all users). And, once again, the reliability index has gone from 10 to 1 because Windows seems to be allergic to either software or usage. Thereâs still the odd program that needs to be installed, but as the weekend draws to a close, weâre almost there. The coming weekâs going to be a busy one and itâs nice facing it with new tech.
I have to give Atech public praise, too. When I bought this computerâs predecessor at PB, you could still do a deal with the local manager, and you had the sense you werenât just a number. Drew and Mark really looked after me. PB has deservedly grown because of its keen pricing and marketing, but as it has done so, you now get the feeling that itâs no longer the friendly, small retailer that it once was, with all of the promo coordinated in Auckland. Kidd at Atech on Cuba Street brings me back to that one-on-one feel: you could talk to the boss and do a deal. Matt, who usually served me at Atech since the Wakefield Street days, did the same. You arenât just a number here, and it was a pleasure to be able to chat through my exact requirements and have a rig built to my specifications and (meagre, post-laptop-buying) budget.
Tags: 2019, AMD, Aotearoa, Asus, Atech, computing, customer service, New Zealand, technology, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in interests, marketing, New Zealand, technology, Wellington | 6 Comments »
02.02.2019

I’ve had a great week with my new laptop, though it exhibits some of the same traits I’ve frequently seen with Windows 10: settings’ windows vanishing when attempting to load. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this blog, demo PCs I’ve seen at the store have terrible reliability history scores, and mine is no exception. It ranked a 10 when it left Just Laptops in Auckland, but dropped to 1 when I began installing software on it. The lesson here is this: Windows 10 is allergic to software and usage. Never install a thing on it, and never touch it, and it might continue being a 10. It’s that simple.
Of course, there is the issue of updating it, and even a PC on absolutely stock settings has trouble with that âŠ
Tags: 2019, Aotearoa, Asus, bugs, computing, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, New Zealand, software, travel Posted in humour, New Zealand, technology | 1 Comment »
22.01.2019




Top: The new laptop, just unboxed. Centre: Publicity shots at strange angles. Above: The specs, as told by Windows.
When I think about it, Iâve gone through quite a lot of laptops over the years. The first this century (as there was an Apple II-compatible that I used for some months in the 1980s, though I think we called them portable computers back then) was a Dell, ordered online, costing over NZ$3,000 in 2001. That laptop, which is still alive (at least when plugged into the mains), ran Windows Me and I was surprised to see just how small a screen I was prepared to put up with. This was back in the day when I was the only person at the airport lounge with a device; now the opposite is true as I donât always wish to be glued to a screen.
There was a HPâCompaq in 2004 that was used by one of my team, and I later inherited it, running it into the ground with a motherboard failure by 2009. I took delivery of an Asus after that (that unitâs still with us, too, now running Ubuntu and plugged into the television), and was impressed by Windows Vista. In my opinion, it didnât deserve the bad rap that it got. A Lenovo G570 bought off a charity was next, a friend having installed a 250 Gbyte SSD within, so it wasnât as clunky as you might have expected.
The laptops I disliked were the Compaq and the Lenovo, since they werenât bought for me at the outset, and never really suited my requirements. Today I took delivery of an Asus FX504GD from Just Laptops, with a 240 Gbyte SSD within coupled to a 1 Tbyte conventional hard drive for data. Itâs running an Intel Core i7-8750H with six cores, 16 Gbyte of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX1050 with 4 Gbyte, and a full HD IPS display. It wasnât my first choice but Just Laptops discovered a fault while testing that laptop, and recommended this one. I could have had a refund if I chose. The service, I should note, was excellent, especially since I was buying the computer sight unseen, and Des at Just Laptops made sure I was posted about every single stage of the transaction, from the work he had to do and when the laptop got to the courier.
Of course the review is positive so far, since itâs only hours out of the box. I havenât trialled it without the laptop being plugged in to the mains, so I canât give a report on the supposedly poor battery life. But I have definitely noticed more positives than reviewers have let on, though admittedly the FX504s many of them tested werenât as highly specced. It seems there are some real budget models overseas.
For a start, the SSD gives decent speeds. Iâve had no issues with the viewing angles on the display; in fact, the type renders beautifully, and while itâs not a match for 4K, itâs still respectable in 2019. In fact, the GTX1050 does a very good job and ClearType works even better here than on my desktop machine (though this could well be down to the smaller 15·6-inch screen). I haven’t even changed the Microsoft default font, Segoe UI, because it actually looks pleasant here. The plastic chassis is fine, since Iâve put up with that on the majority of my laptops. One negative, and this is where I concur with reviewers, is the fan noise, which can be loud when the computer is under a heavier load. I donât play games but it handles the layout, font editing and photo-editing work that I do, and the fast processor makes life so much more tolerable when Iâm on the go away from the office. Iâve found that buying machines destined for gamers helps considerably with the type of work I do.
The lit keyboard is reasonably good to type on, though generally I dislike chiclet keys. (I had once hoped that the chiclet trend would vanish by the time I had to replace the first Asus; it still hasnât happened.) The lights turned out to be quite handy in less than ideal conditions in my lounge as opposed to my office. Even though I have long owned a gaming keyboard (a Cooler Master Quickfire TK) where I can turn on the lights, Iâve never seen the need to. I bought that because I make fewer errors with mechanical keyboards; and yes, typing on the FX504 isnât as much of a joy. Still, it isnât as bad as typing on many other laptops.
Finally, I get a decent numeric keypad on a laptop, and the key layout is superior to that on the Quickfire. My other gripe is that I canât tell when num lock is on.
The unit feels robust (hence Asusâs TUF moniker, apparently standing for The Ultimate Force, which sounds like a science film narrated by Prof Stephen Hawkingâpoints for those who know the origin of this joke). For someone like me who will use this laptop on the go, itâs good to know that it will stand up to a few knocks, even if I do look after it in a nice case. It doesnât have the red lines on the case (which might appeal to younger gamers, but not to a middle-aged man).
Annoyingly, though you canât have everything, there is no optical drive, something which had once been a non-negotiable. But when I saw the specs and the deal Des was willing to do, that seemed secondary. I could always pick up a separate DVD drive which my partner and I could share, since she found herself sans drive in 2017 when she bought her Asus. If I have to be honest with myself, I only needed that drive a couple of times a year.
Asus also put every port on the left apart from a Kensington lock on the right: not necessarily the decision I would have made if I were designing, since it would make sense to me to have some things plugged in to the right as well. Once I add, say, a Vodafone USB stick when Iâm somewhere without readily available internet, having all the USB ports on a single side could get old really quickly.
It didnât take long to install the software that I had licences for, and, importantly, the fonts now match my desktop computerâs. The exercise that did take long tonight was taking everything off the Lenovo, since it didnât come with installation discs (neither did this Asus, incidentally, which could be problematic five or six years down the line as I had to reinstall the OS on the previous one). I make so many changes to my computers that undoing them, and returning the font menu to stock, donât bring me much joy. Itâs the customizing thatâs fun, not taking off the alloys and leather seats.
Come February thereâll be two laptops for sale as the old Asus and Lenovo will head on to Trade Me. The latter is still acceptable as a workhorse thanks to its SSD, though you may need to be a masochist to buy the former. I feel Iâve future-proofed for a few years now, with a laptop that should suit my working needs.
Tags: 2019, Aotearoa, Asus, Auckland, Compaq, computing, design, HewlettâPackard, Lenovo, Microsoft Windows, New Zealand, TÄmaki Makaurau, technology Posted in China, design, New Zealand, technology | 5 Comments »
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