New Laptop Saga (With a Happy Ending)

[BONES]

It started on January 4, when I discovered that a third party seller on Amazon, from the UK, was selling the newer version of my laptop for about Au$1100 less than I could get one for locally. As it seemed like a pretty decent upgrade over my existing one, I put it in my cart and completed the order.

Five months later, they still hadn't been able to fulfill my order. Apparently Asus were having trouble getting all the components for them, as they were out of stock locally, too. Last month I found one on eBay, also in the UK, and made an offer equivalent to what I was going to pay on Amazon, which was accepted. Because eBay sucks, they conned the seller into sending it with their global shipping programme, which meant it took a month to get here. Worse still, it arrived with a cracked screen.

I was starting to think the universe didn't want me to have one of these machines but I went through the process of requesting a return through eBay, so I'd at least get my money back. After I sent them a couple of photos of the damage, I got an email back almost straight away assuring me that the return would be accepted/authorised but that I'd have to wait a few days while their process ground on.

Meanwhile, the seller was hassling me to post the laptop back to her but I was worried that without the return shipping label from eBay, I might end up being stuck with the Au$150-$200 that it would have cost to post it back, so I stalled.

Good thing I did because this morning I got official notification of the request was "closed in my favour", that a full refund would be issued to me within 48 hours and the seller would have her postage costs refunded, too. But I still wasn't sure what was going on with return postage, so i go tin touch with eBay, spoke to some call centre flunky in The Philippines, who checked the files and told me that everything was settled and I was not required to return the Au$3700 laptop I had in my possession. Needless to say I double-checked that she had understood me and I had understood here and she had, as had I.

All of which is to say that I just got a brand new Au$3700 laptop, with warranty, for the cost of a screen repair. It's only the outer glass, not the screen itself, so I expect it to cost less than $200. That's less than $200 for a brand new one of these -

[Serhii Kot]

In some other topic, you said, that you had 12 laptops in 15 years or something. Just do yourself a favour, get a Mac. End your suffering!

[Septimon]

Doesn‘t that feel like stealing? I mean this laptop belonged to a person.

[Blaster]

Yes, but he bought it. The person he bought it from got the money and her money back for postage, so she actually got more too. It's a win-win for both and a loss for ebay.

[vurt]

In some other topic, you said, that you had 12 laptops in 15 years or something. Just do yourself a favour, get a Mac. End your suffering!

he doesn't have to, he chooses to.
i ran the same dell laptop for over ten years. probably would have lasted longer if i hadn't spilled a bowl of vegetable soup over it.

[BONES]

I gave my Dell M3800 to my bandmate and his kids used it as their internet computer until they were in High School. It was still going strong after 9 years.

In some other topic, you said, that you had 12 laptops in 15 years or something. Just do yourself a favour, get a Mac. End your suffering!

Why, don't Macs get updated? Do they come with two touchscreens built in? nVidia graphics (a must for my 3D animation work)? OLED screens? Where can I get a brand new one for Au$1100 off retail?

I buy a new laptop every year because it's a lot cheaper than holding onto them until they are worthless. e.g. The laptop this new one will replace cost me Au$1400 in Feb last year. When I checked the other day, the cheapest used one I could find on eBay was priced at Au$1400 which means that I will probably sell it for what I paid for it 15 months ago. OTOH, if I held onto it for another year, it would probably be worth less than a grand and a year after I might be lucky to get $500 for it. So I can hold onto it until it's worthless or sell it for what I paid for it. Which sounds like a better idea to you?

Weirdly, from the start I was thinking that this new one would be one I would hold onto for a few years, as the 12th gen Core i7 will vastly exceed my current needs. Now that I have basically got it for free, I won't have to worry about how much I'm losing if I hold onto it, which makes it easier to keep it for a while.

Doesn‘t that feel like stealing? I mean this laptop belonged to a person.

A little bit but in reality she still has all the money I paid her for it and she probably hasn't had to pay any eBay fees, so we both end up ahead. I also have a sneaking suspicion she may have known how it would play out, which is why she was so keen to get me to post it back. Because she didn't hesitate to tell me to start the return process. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the screen was cracked when she sent it and it was all a bit of a scam from the get-go.

If she was on the level, then it's the carrier who broke it and if they decided it's easier for them not have me send it back, who am I to complain? So, in the end, it feels more like very generous compensation for their screw-up than actual stealing.

[Septimon]

Ah, sorry, i misunderstood, i thought, the seller only got her postage cost refunded from eBay and you got the money back from her via eBay. My bad

[BONES]

There is no way I'd have held onto it if she hadn't got to keep my money. That would absolutely be stealing.

[chagzuki]

Looks nice, that'll give you a solid 2 weeks of use before you upgrade again.

[BONES]

At least! I just got the quote for the repair, which has taken a bit of the shine off the whole thing. It turns out they have to replace the whole panel, not just the glass, which is going to cost me Au$813. Obviously, that's still an excellent deal but not quite the "steal" I was hoping for.

[chagzuki]

Maybe you've done it before and I missed it, but you should show a photo of how it looks with your sequencer setup, and how you use the extra display.

[BONES]

I posted a pic of the first gen version but I can't find it now. Once the new one is set up, I shall make a point of taking another and posting it. (I am not at all big on photos.)

[chagzuki]

I posted a pic of the first gen version but I can't find it now. Once the new one is set up, I shall make a point of taking another and posting it. (I am not at all big on photos.)

Would be good to see, and get a feel for the extra GRRRR factor it enables you to achieve. I'm pretty keen on a nice large trackpad, though I imagine a laptop could be designed such that the trackpad zone could be a display... but with your setup that's above the keyboard? I guess you're mousing with one hand and using the smaller display to manipulate plugin GUIs?

[BONES]

Asus actually make a laptop with a display in the trackpad and on the more expensive versions of mine, the trackpad also acts as a numeral pad, with backlighting. Personally, I still do everything with my mouse, I use the second display purely for the extra screen real estate. In Studio One it means I can have the piano roll and the mixer open at the same time, without crowding out the main arrangement window. It's the same with After Effects - I put the timeline in the lower display, which leaves more room for viewports and controls on the main screen. I haven't set up Blender or 3DS Max to work with both screens but I'd do something similar - have graph and/or node editors on the lower screen so I am not opening windows on top of, or instead of, the viewports.

I absolutely abhor trackpads and when you have two touchscreens at your fingertips, I don't see why Asus put one in at all. I don't know if it's Windows 11 or the hardware but the touch experience on my current Zenbook Duo is the best I have ever encountered. I'm tempted to say it's as good as an iPad but that's not a decent comparison because iPadOS is made for clumsy, fat fingers, where using this feels like all your fingertips have turned into stylii. It's also delivered on a matte screen so you don't notice fingermarks as much. Of course, like my Flow Z13, it comes with a stylus in the box, so you don't have use your fingers if you don't want to. But you definitely don't have to use a trackpad, ever, which works for me.

That said, I tell you what generally works well with any touchscreen laptop - using touch to get your cursor into the right part of the screen, then using the trackpad for the finer work. Because it's the annoyance of having to get your cursor from one corner of the screen to the other that I find annoying about trackpads.

[chagzuki]

The extra screen real estate would be very welcome. I've been wondering, when are PC laptops going to start to compete with MacBooks in running cooler? Either through architecture changes, or through processing power increasing to the point that the user is generally not having to push the machine (for audio purposes, that is)? I haven't been following developments in the PC world, so my last experience was with one bought in 2020.