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10/17/2004 Archived Entry: "Welcome to the backward technological age. ASUS can kiss my arse!"

For all the wonderful innovations that have come about in the last 40 years that pertain to computers, I am still disappointed by the lack of support for the technology.

I seem to be the one person in the universe who is able to come up with a unique situation that no one is able to duplicate when it comes to computer issues. I also seem to be able to create these situations when none of the corresponding businesses are open.

I find the lack of 24/7 phone support on motherboards and related devices completely intolerable. Especially just after I have bought the product and can't get an acceptable answer on trying to deal with one of my unique situations. Let me make few things clear here. I am trying not to close myself into a niche. I feel it is good for me to try new and different products. I, however, also need to learn to listen to my past experiences and my gut when it tells me something is wrong.

Let's do a real time situation. I recently purchased a Asus k8v motherboard. I have had Fic, Abit, Gigabyte, and countless other motherboards.
Lesson 1. The Bios used on the motherboard makes all the difference in the world. Award Bios are great, AMI bios suck.
Lesson 2. Motherboards with integrated with any or all of the following; sound, video, and Lan, are problems waiting to happen. Unfortunatly you generally cannot buy a board today without them having at least one of the preceding items.
Lesson 3. The documentation that comes with a motherboard must be complete. This means everything on the layout stickers that they want you to stick in your box, should also be in the handbook.

I violated all three lessons because I don't want to be stuck in a niche.

I should do what the voices in my head tell me to do.

Here is what is wrong with Asus K8v. It has an AMI bios. It has built in sound and LAN, plus built in RAID and Sata setups. I can hear the outside voices now, " I wanted (insert 'RAID' or 'Sata' here) on my motherboard. " Fine by a RAID or Sata card. I have IDE drives and don't run RAID. But that is ok, I will adjust things in the BIOS, or so I thought. I went into the BIOS and disabled OnChip SATA BOOTROM. I am not running it, thus I don't need it. Then I disabled the OnBoard Promise Controller because I don't need it. I am not overclocking anything so the only thing else I wanted to set was the boot order for devices. I wanted floppy, CD-ROM, harddive in that order. Simple enough. Nooooooo! You can't set that order in the BOOT section of the BIOS. Okay minor inconvenience I will live. I thought until I exited and saved changes and rebooted. After the reboot My BIOS came up and said my overclocking effort failed. What the fuck?! I am not overclocking. You now have two options go back and reconfigure the BIOS in your custom manner or load the default settings. Well I went back for custom because I thought maybe I hit the wrong button when setting the BIOS. I did this three times before I realized that turning off Sata and RAID cause the BIOS to crash. So now I have to load the default settings just to get it past the boot screen. I can hear it now, " do you have the latest version of the BIOS on your computer?" NO! of course I don't my motherboard isn't even on the net yet. STFU. If this is a bug that needs to be patched who the fuck is testing this stuff. Also is a patch really going to give me my desired boot order. AMI can kiss my ass. And so can ASUS for using them on this board. But wait there is more. The preceding deals with lessons 1 & 2.

When I was assembling the board. I wanted to hook up the power switch, H.D.D. led, reset switch, and other similar items to the motherboard. Well those connections are only on a sticker that comes with the motherboard. Those connections are not in the user guide book. So Asus don't tell anyone to RTFM because it doesn't apply. This deals with lesson 3.

Now while I was having this load of fun and several other items that included having to remove the battery to reset the BIOS because the User Guide doesn't show the jumper to reset CMOS. I decided I would try to call ASUS and see what I was doing wrong. I mean California is a long distance call from Florida, but decent help is worth it. Well forget that. ASUS isn't offering phone tech support on weekends. They offer it M-F 9-6 pacific time. Which means at 11am in Florida they might answer the phone. Now the website says they have started offering support at 5:30 am but that is not what the voice message says when you call. god forbid I should have to work M-F myself.

I can hear the dissenting voices out there now. There is e-mail, fax, and forum support. Well let me put it to you this way. The e-mail and fax might get you a response in 72 hours. And forums are only good if someone can actually help you and decides to respond. And in this high speed technology age I expect a faster response. My customers get it from me. I think the same level of service should be available to others. So a lack of 24/7 phone support is a real problem. And I purchased your product, you should be there to answer for it.

So I will try to call ASUS early Monday morning and hope they a) answer the phone, b) don't hold me up so long that I am not late for work. If not I will have try later in the week. Which basically means I would have gotten a faster response if I had done e-mail or fax support. I see a problem with this. Meanwhile I got frustrated and nowhere this weekend, how was yours? I am sure the ASUS support team enjoyed the weekend off.

Posted by Dan Ponte (amigan) @ 10/17/2004 06:14 PM EST