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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Posts tagged ‘Asus’
16.09.2022
I see it was only 19 months ago since I bought the Asus ROG Strix Evolve mouse. A mouse that cost several times what a regular one does, claiming the switches would last 50 million clicks. It has now developed a fault, and I wouldnāt even consider myself a heavy user. Iām certainly not a gamer.
Mice seem to last shorter and shorter periods. An old Intellimouse 1.1 lasted from 2002 to 2013. Its successor (after trying badly made Logitechs) Microsoft mouse lasted from 2015 to 2020. Here is the latest lasting 19 months.
Its problem is that a single click is being recorded as two clicks, with increasing frequency. Right now, a very cheap no-name unit bought in August 2021 is the daily driver with my desktop PC, and one of the earlier ones will now have to go with my laptop. Itās reasonably comfortable because the size is (almost) right (the biggest criterion for me), itās light, and it works. Those switches wonāt last 50 million clicks and the unit feels cheaply made, but right now I need something usable, and most mice are just too small. I even saw an article testing mice for ālarge handsā, and I can tell you in no uncertain terms that they are for medium hands at best.
A Delux M625 is on its way now from Aliexpress (here’s the seller’s link). Iāve never heard of the brand before, but one Tweeter who responded to me says he has tried one, and found it acceptable. What sold it? None of the features that I find useless (a rapid fire button for gaming, RGB lighting effects that you never see because your hand is on the mouse and your eyes are on the screen, high DPI up to 24,000) but three simple figures: width, length, height.

The Microsoft Intellimouse 1.1, which I have raved about for decades, measures 126 by 68Ā·1 by 39Ā·3 mm. A bit of height helps so I donāt mind if a mouse exceeds 40 mm.
The Delux vendor claims 130Ā·6 by 68Ā·9 by 42Ā·5 mm. That sounds very comfortable to me, as width is very important (something the Asus didnāt have, with my ring finger off the body of the mouse and on to the mouse pad). The no-name could be better, too. In a few weeks, I should know.
I had been so desperate after coming up empty with local sellers I even looked on Amazon. But I couldn’t be arsed converting Imperial measurements to metric, which the majority of the world uses. Jeff’s mob can carry on abusing workers and selling to their own country.
As to the Asus, caveat emptor: it hasnāt even lasted two years reliably.
Tags: 2020s, 2022, Aliexpress, Asus, China, computing, Delux, design, mouse, quality, quality control Posted in China, design, technology | 4 Comments »
01.08.2021
Iāve 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 didnāt run smoothly at first but a quick trim of the plastic, and itās been fine since.

This US$3Ā·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 1Ā·1. One of those was being used after my Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000 diedālike 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 itās nowhere to be found on the device or in the heading and description.) And for US$3Ā·89 plus (sorry) my share of carbon emissions from the air freight, it didnāt 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. Itās 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 donāt like the lights because I donāt care if a mouse has pulsing RGB effects since (a) my hand is over it and (b) Iām looking at the screen, not the mouse.
But hereās the thing: it fits my hand. Itās 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. Itās not as comfortable as the Asus, but it beats every other mouse, that is, the ones I didnāt buy, that Iāve seen in the shops. On the whole, I can use it more than the Tecknet, and it will do when Iām travelling or out of the office, though I still havenāt found the holy grail of a decent sized Microsoft mouse. (The revived Intellimouse, as I may have mentioned earlier, is asymmetric, and its shape doesnāt work for me.) Iām not sure why this is so hard for mice manufacturers: youāve all peaked a bit early, and none of the improvements youāve made have advanced the ideas of user comfort and ergonomics.
For those who care about this stuff, hereās 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 NoĆ«l Leeming would be a successor to my Intellimouse 1.1. The short version: it isnāt.
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 decadeāafter 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 didnāt 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 Microsoftās revived Intellimouse wasnāt rightāand one wonders why they couldnāt 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 miceāthree in total, including my first in 2002āI 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 āclawā, 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 handās 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 didnāt load Whatsapp or Signal. Two days later, my phone remains OK.
I suggested to PB that it may have developed a readāwrite 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 downloadsā folder wouldnāt 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 completingāthough strangely, today, the SMSs are back without any intervention from me.
But it also wouldnāt surprise me one bit if Whatsapp wasnāt compatible with Android 7 nowāInstagram never was, not fully. To save a load of time I wonāt be putting messaging apps back on there. I lost a second evening to this and Iām not keen on losing more.
There are two up sides: I donāt need to get a new phone, and if I did, I finally found a vendor on Aliexpress whoāll sell a Chinese-spec Meizu. No more of these western editions: they are less reliable, with a less well stocked app store, and you canāt update the OS. You have to root them to get rid of the Google spyware. I may stick with Meizu but I really wonāt be buying domestically again.
Tags: 2020, Aliexpress, Aotearoa, Asus, cellphone, China, computing, counterfeit, Ebay, Google Android, Meizu, Microsoft, mouse, New Zealand, NoĆ«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 Iād share how Iāve been based at home for over three decades.
1. For those working, make sure itās not just one project. Thereās 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 itās not work, make sure itās 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 youāre working at home, itās not a bad idea to have comfortable settings on a screen. If your monitor doesnāt have a native mode to restrict blue light, thereās 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 itās interesting, you can always stop to watch it. One site I recently recommended is Thought Maybe, which has plenty of useful documentaries, including Adam Curtisās 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 thatās too much doom and gloom, Iām 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 youād 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 theyāre designed to suck up your time to make their owners rich (they look at how much attention they capture and sell that to advertisers), thereās no point doing something draining if youāve 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, letās use it. Weāre luckier in 2020 that thereās Facetime, Skype, Google Hangouts, etc. I had thought that if we didnāt have social media, weād 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 Iām sure there are some safe places, and if theyāre not around, see what friends are in the same boat and form your own virtual networks. Importantly, donāt restrict yourselves to your own country.
9. Donāt veg: do something creative. For those of us with a creative bent, draw, write, photograph, play a musical instrumentāsomething to de-stress. I canāt get through a day without doing one creative thing.
10. Anything in the house that you said youād always do? Nowās your chance to do it, and hopefully youāve got your tools and equipment at home already.
11. If you’re in a relationship, don’t get on top of each otherāhave 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. Youād probably have to anyway, in order to cook (since youāre not heading out to a cafĆ©) so structure in times to do this. It soon becomes second nature. Donāt 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 wasnāt 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 letās 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 1Ā·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. Iāve 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 itās 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. Itās also had some reviews criticizing the quality, so I knew I couldnāt go with the latest.
I headed back to Recycling for Charity, where I sourced this Intellimouse, but judging by the stock, Iām 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 Noƫl Leeming in Porirua, which did fit my hand, I opted to look online. The Noƫl 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 Ć 65 mm Ć 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. Thatās 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 clicksāprobably 10 times more than regular miceāI 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 donāt necessarily need DPI switching. Itās 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 isnāt 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 wouldnāt be able to get used to it, as I didnāt with the Lenovo, and it does continue to be a slight problem. In other words, I havenāt quite got the perfect mouse and itās a lesson about buying online when your requirements are this strict (though again I wouldnāt have considered this a major problem if manufacturers werenāt skimping on materials and giving people repetitive strain injuries).
Asus hasnāt 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 comfortās sake and see if Iām 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 itās 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, Iām not a gamer.
The mouse wheel and switches are far more solid than anything Iāve 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, Iām going to keep my eye out for second-hand Intellimouses. Mine has become the back-up again, and really I didnāt 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 donāt 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 donāt 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: Iāll happily edit fonts or magazines on both since theyāre both equipped with the same software. Itās 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. Iāve 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 thisālast week I saw many complaints about a service they have removedāso Iāve 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 laptopānow big enough to carry it all, with a 1 Tbyte hard drive next to its 240 Gbyte SSDāand only used VNC to grab files I didnāt have with me. Copying it all back upon my return took very little time. Because the copying is so comprehensive, I donāt 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 CafĆ© in town and tap away some personal messages.
It would be highly unfortunate if the laptop was stolen, and I havenāt got into the practice of backing everything up while travelling just yet. Obviously Iāll 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 havenāt done that with the laptop since itās 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, Iām a middle-aged man with reflexes slower than that of a 20-year-old, so I hardly noticed. I thought, best-case scenario, Iād look at an upgrade at the end of 2019.
Last Wednesday, the PC wouldnāt 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 Iām 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 graphicsā card. Nevertheless, he plugged the SSD into the PCāand it was at this point the power supply failed.
Iāve seen multiple faults like this beforeāI 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 didnāt want to go overboard but at the same time needed to do some future-proofing. Kidd calls it the āvintage gaming seriesā, 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. Itāll be the back-up of the back-up.
Going with a six-core Ryzen 5 2600 isnāt as impressive as the laptopās i7-8750H, but once the programs are running I donāt notice much difference (middle age again). Thereās 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 donāt get a sense of a major leap, probably because of the 2016 SSD upgrade. Nevertheless, itās 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 fontsā 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. Thereās still the odd program that needs to be installed, but as the weekend draws to a close, weāre almost there. The coming weekās going to be a busy one and itās nice facing it with new tech.
I have to give Atech public praise, too. When I bought this computerās predecessor at PB, you could still do a deal with the local manager, and you had the sense you werenāt 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 itās 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 arenāt 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 ā¦
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, Iāve 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 donāt always wish to be glued to a screen.
There was a HPāCompaq 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 unitās still with us, too, now running Ubuntu and plugged into the television), and was impressed by Windows Vista. In my opinion, it didnāt 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 wasnāt as clunky as you might have expected.
The laptops I disliked were the Compaq and the Lenovo, since they werenāt 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. Itās 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 wasnāt 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 itās only hours out of the box. I havenāt trialled it without the laptop being plugged in to the mains, so I canāt 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 werenāt as highly specced. It seems there are some real budget models overseas.
For a start, the SSD gives decent speeds. Iāve had no issues with the viewing angles on the display; in fact, the type renders beautifully, and while itās not a match for 4K, itās 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 15Ā·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 Iāve 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 donāt 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 Iām on the go away from the office. Iāve 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 hasnāt 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, Iāve never seen the need to. I bought that because I make fewer errors with mechanical keyboards; and yes, typing on the FX504 isnāt as much of a joy. Still, it isnāt 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 canāt tell when num lock is on.
The unit feels robust (hence Asusās TUF moniker, apparently standing for The Ultimate Force, which sounds like a science film narrated by Prof Stephen Hawkingāpoints for those who know the origin of this joke). For someone like me who will use this laptop on the go, itās good to know that it will stand up to a few knocks, even if I do look after it in a nice case. It doesnāt have the red lines on the case (which might appeal to younger gamers, but not to a middle-aged man).
Annoyingly, though you canāt 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 Iām somewhere without readily available internet, having all the USB ports on a single side could get old really quickly.
It didnāt take long to install the software that I had licences for, and, importantly, the fonts now match my desktop computerās. The exercise that did take long tonight was taking everything off the Lenovo, since it didnāt 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, donāt bring me much joy. Itās the customizing thatās fun, not taking off the alloys and leather seats.
Come February thereāll 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 Iāve future-proofed for a few years now, with a laptop that should suit my working needs.
Tags: 2019, Aotearoa, Asus, Auckland, Compaq, computing, design, HewlettāPackard, Lenovo, Microsoft Windows, New Zealand, TÄmaki Makaurau, technology Posted in China, design, New Zealand, technology | 5 Comments »
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