Eee-ed up. Hooked up (has to be as battery power is a no go!)

I blog about my Eee PC all the time.  Most of my posts consist of me berating the bloody useless 900 model I have and it's...

• Poor battery life
• Poor battery life
• Poor battery life (sorry, I just can't stress it enough!)
• Unresponsiveness
• Unresponsiveness (sorry, I'm used to typing things more than worse as it lags all the time!)
• Complete and utterly frustrating keyboard

Just in case you've not seen my previous posts about my Eee, let me just go into a tad more detail... The battery takes a couple of hours to charge and only lasts one hour (if I'm lucky!).  Having just a few tabs open in Firefox causes the laptop to hang, this happens even on the most basic of web pages. Finally, the bloody keyboard - I don't have the usual 'small keyboard' issue (I can cope with that).  Nope, I have an issue of it not registering my key presses or it typing the wrong letter.

Anyway, looks like ASUS want to hear from some bloggers as they're running a competition where competing bloggers will be er, competing for an Eee PC 901.  What do they have to do to win?  They have to get the most hits.

Here's the deets... The Blog Herald: Asus competition to Brits: blog about our computers and Mobile Computer

Nokia's apparently eyeing up the netbook market, and why not?  They can make devices a hell of a lot better than the likes of ASUS (I know, I know, but I can't miss out an opportunity for a dig!) :D

Unwired View: Secrets @ MWC09. Nokia Sparrow, Android 3.0, Luxury Android from Motorola and more

ITProPortal: Nokia Will Make Laptops By 2011

El Reg: Nokia plotting Symbian laptops

My Eee PC 900 is quite frankly crapEee, crudEee, rubbishEee.  It's not fit for even the odd spot of web browsing.  It was always poor but it just seems to get worse and worse.  On top of that my home PC decided to give up the ghost.  So I have no real computer anymore and have basically commandeered my folk's Toshiba Satellite which is a mighty fine machine but not mine!  Even if it was, it's a bit too big (on the physical side) for what I need.

Anyway, I quite like the look of the Acer Aspire 2930.  Nice size, nice specs, nice reviews* and nice price.  Just a shame that even at that price I can't afford it at the moment.  But I need a PC, and it makes sense to get a laptop as it's more flexible.  What's a boy to do?  Well a good start would be to sell my Eee 900 but I'm a nice guy and wouldn't want to wish that on anyone!  Not that'd I get much for that dire piece of crap.  But still, even if someone gave me a tenner for it I'd feel guilty, it really is that bad!

Acer Aspire 2930

Now I'm trying to figure out how to get my hands on one legally (ish) considering my current financial difficulties... I can't busk as I have no vocal talent nor can I play any instrument (just ask anyone that's had to endure my SingStar or Guitar Hero performances, although I kick ass at Samba de Amigo!)  I have no offspring to sell in to slavery (there's not much call for chimney sweeps these days anyway) nor a kidney worth giving away.  Becoming a male escort probably isn't such a good idea either.  So, I'm all out of ideas!

Anyone?  Maybe someone at Acer's PR could at least loan me one for a couple of weeks so that I can see for myself whether it's worth selling my body and/or it's parts for.

*Okay, that's more of a preview than a review!  But Google is your friend!

In the next day or two I should have in my possession an XDA Zest care of the nice folk at O2.  As with anything I'm looking forward to getting my hands on, I've done a bit of research first and something rather funny has cropped up.

'What?' I hear the voices in my head say... Um, guess who makes the Zest for O2?  It's not HTC, like most (all?) of them are.  No, it's ASUS!  What have I recently been saying about ASUS...?  Oops!

I guess the way to look at it is that ASUS are simply the manufacturers and those that buy the phone don't have any dealings with their support people, they speak to O2's who I imagine are a lot more on the ball.  Hopefully the battery life of the phone (well "PDA", I guess) performs better than those ones that ASUS provide for the Eee PC 900! - Having a phone/PDA that only lasts an hour wouldn't be much use!

It works!  The replacement adapter works!  After six weeks and lots of time wasted, they finally replaced it (as I blogged about during the week) and my niece has been able to use her precious laptop once more.

I still recommend avoiding ASUS and the Eee range though.  There products are pretty shoddy (at least from my own experiences) and their customer services is well below par.

I never thought I'd see this day.  I seriously didn't!  In my possession now is a replacement AC adapter for my niece's Eee PC.  It's taken six weeks to get this far.  Please god let the this thing work, she's been pulling her hair out not being able to use her precious 701 for 2 months (yeah, bad uncle.. I spent a fortnight looking for Toys R Us receipt and failed miserably!)

ASUS finally delivers after 6 weeks of no way to power laptop

Why oh why ASUS couldn't have just sent the replacement out at the start, I don't know!  In contrast, Sling Media agreed to send my replacement Slingbox to me straight away without returning faulty one first.  The only condition was that I gave them my payment details so that they could charge me if I failed to return it.

Finally a result from ASUS

It's no secret my love affair with the Eee PC is now over.  ASUS put paid to that what with their shoddily designed hardware and their even shoddily designed returns procedure (and overall lack of customer service and support).

Anyhoo, looks like they're bringing out an Eee-branded keyboard with computer gubbins inside (a la Commodore 64).  It looks good and even has a little screen on it - but... I have no desire for it, in fact you couldn't pay me to use it.

Reg Hardware: Asus Eee keyboard opens CES

I'm being a tad unfair there, it's been just over a month - not five... yet.  But one needs to add on at least another week before anything gets done.

What's the problem and why is it taking so long?

About six weeks ago my niece informed me that her Eee PC no longer worked.  It had worked on battery power (but not for long) and then nada, nothing.  It was dead to the world.  I then spent any spare time in the next two weeks looking for the receipt.  I was buggered if I could find it and, um, buggered if I could not.

So, instead of heading to our local Toys R Us (which is where we purchased it from) I chose the manufacturers warranty route.  Bad mistake as it would turn out.

I was foolishly optimistic about ASUS's returns procedure.  I'd dealt with Sling Media just before then and they were amazing in that aspect.  They sent me out a replacement (and we're talking the product itself, not some AC adapter) within days.  Once I received it, and only then, did they want the faulty item back.  Not so with ASUS...

ASUS haven't managed to send me the labels for me to put on the packaging that I'll be sending back.  They've promised time and time again, they've claimed to time and time again. So, nearly four weeks later I haven't even been able to send the adapter back and without them receiving it I will not get a replacement.

Yesterday they told me they'd send the labels by email instead of courier/post.  Over 24 hours later and I still haven't received them.  Just off the phone and apparently the RMA department haven't checked their emails yet and so, I'm told by Dick, that's why I haven't received my email labels.  Um, great!  I tell Dick that I'm not happy with ASUS's returns procedure and wish to make a complaint.  Unfortunately he's not allowed to pass me on to anyone else or give out numbers or email addresses.  But I can email him and he promises to pass it along...

I give him the benefit of the doubt on that one but I'm gonna have to decline.  Believe me I want to complain and get this resolved but emails-by-proxy is obviously not going to achieve anything and, if anything will draw this whole stupid process out even further.

ASUS, you've lost any goodwill I had left for you.  My niece's goodwill has too, now vanished.  Anyone we meet that ever mentions your company, your Eee PC or any related products will be subject to our rather negative opinions and will be advised to stear well clear of your products.  Seeing as both myself and my niece have grown custom to having people ask us questions about our Eee PCs and many have then gone on to buy themselves one, I should imagine we'll soon tire of having to tell our tails of woe.

...oh, and top of it all, that 8 minute call I just had with them was on a premium rate 0870 number (cheeky bar stewards!)

My last moan and winge of the year. Yay!  Who gets my New Year's Dishonours?  Why, that'll be fine folk at ASUS, makers of the vastly over-rated Eee line of mini computers, desktops and now TVs...

This really winds me up big time.  My techno-wizardess of a niece hasn't been able to use her Eee PC for the last few weeks and she's really missing it (and what's on it, like school work, projects etc).  Can you blame her?  How would any of us like to have no access to any of our files for a month?  Exactly!

So, what's up with it?  The AC adapter (aka power brick) isn't working so she can't power it from the mains or charge the battery.  Not a huge problem, you'd think.  Straight swap out?  Maybe receive a replacement adapter in a couple of days and be expected to send the faulty one back after?  Yeah, that's what I thought.  I was wrong!  Try navigating to ASUS's UK service/repairs pages and you can see for yourself just how difficult this whole process starts off.

Oh, and it doesn't get any better once you've found it (congratulations by the way if you did as an ASUS employee told me it was hidden!)  Filling in the online RMA form is torture that Saddam (or Dubya for that matter) would've been proud of.  It kept telling me I had made errors even when I clearly hadn't.  Each time I got sent back a page I had to fill in half of it all over again.

Eventually I got an email from them that detailed the returns procedure, it was clearly automated as most of it had little relevance to me.  In it they mentioned how they would send me out a bag to send it back to them in via courier.  It's been a fortnight and still no sign.  Sure there was Christmas in the way but the postie managed to deliver plenty of other things at the last minute alright.

Of course in the UK we have an automatic 12 month guarantee on such products and that is with the shop where you purchased it from but you tend to need the receipt (legally it is not required but it makes things a lot easier).  Guess who misplaced the receipt?  Yep, me!  And now, what with ASUS messing around, the laptop is now outside of the 12 months.  D'oh!  Although now I believe it has been extended to two years under certain circumstances but than can require a lot of hassle with the shop involved.  And, in any case, I'm not sure whether Toys R Us could just replace just the adapter and she can't just swap her laptop with all her stuff on it for another!

Oh well, hopefully my niece will be able to use it sometime in 2009.  C'mon ASUStek, is it really that difficult?

Eee PC power brick: 2008-2008 R.I.P.

Another week and another Eee PC variant.  When will Asus stop churning 'em out?  Very little point getting one if you can't even watch half a movie on one before the battery conks out...

If only the Energizer and Duracell bunnies could put aside their differences and help an Eee run longer.

Here's news about the touchscreen anyway on ZDNet