Team-BHP - The Laptop Thread: Configs, deals & questions

I bought the Asus Vivobook from Amazon (Appario Retail). I've also successfully registered the product.

However, when I try to avail the offers on asuspromo.in for extended warranty (2 years @Rs.99 or 3 years at Rs.999), Asus is not honoring the request saying the Invoice does not mention the Serial number of the laptop (however the Packing Slip and Order Summary on the Amazon order page mention the Serial number). They're also insisting on the invoice having the dealer's seal (stamp)!

Anyone faced such an issue ? Please share how you resolved it.

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If you google for it - you can see some hacks other owners have tried such as
1. Reducing CPU boost
2. Setting a more agressive fan policy
3. looking at and disabling apps that hog cpu

But it seems to be a design issue

Tried no 2 and 3 already. Checked out what takes up power, and those are pretty much just the device drivers only, cause as I said I don't use the device to the fullest due to this issue. Seems to be device specific, because another identical device does not have any issues at all.

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For troubleshooting, boot with an alternative (and cleaner) OS via USB. You can use Ubuntu.

Get a 128 GB USB C pendrive , make it Ubuntu bootable and see if problem persists. This wont touch data on the laptop.

This step will rule out issues that are due to HP and other crapware

Have to do this one, if HP support says they're unable to solve issue (has already happened once to me with same device). I feel that Windows seems to be a lot buggy... I have Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity issues on and off, caused post Windows feature updates :Frustrati

On a side note, advice is pouring in from all corners, as to why buying HP is a bad decision in the first place :Shockked:

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Originally Posted by Amien (Post 4873330)

Lower power consumption. An SSD is going to be many times faster than the fastest HDD so that's the route to go if speed is required.

Isnt that more of a reason to use SSD since they have lower power requirements?
On Amazon, I see that 1 TB HDD and 250 GB SSD are priced the same. So price is not a reason for HDDs. And funnily, I dont see any of the OEM trying to break out of this. All of them have standard 1TB HDDs in the entry level laptops.

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Originally Posted by m8002? (Post 4873585)

True, but my point of comparison was power consumption between 5400 and 7200RPM mechanical drives. SSD's are of course, much more efficient.

Those were the more innocuous reasons. The other ones are things like segmentation, vendor contracts and stock-pileups. SSDs are still more expensive to purchase wholesale. You'll also be surprised at how many people don't really care about how fast storage is but just want more of it. 1TB SSDs are not going to be common any time soon, so we'll probably need to endure these drives for a while, atleast at the low-end of the market.

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Originally Posted by NPV (Post 4873367)

I bought an asus laptop from flipkart, and was able to use the invoice on the promo site, and got approval for extended warranty and 1tb hdd.

The flipkart invoice didn't have a dealer stamp.

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Originally Posted by NPV (Post 4873367)

That's odd. You should be able to contact Appario through amazon and request whatever they're asking for. Pretty sad to see brands hiring service providers that are stuck in the past.

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Originally Posted by NetfreakBombay (Post 4856581)

RAM : Upgrade to 8 GB
SSD : 256 / 512 GB SSD

This should resolve performance issues to a great extent.

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Originally Posted by motorpsycho (Post 4849398)

Could be because of low Ram, see if you can upgrade to Max ram possible.

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Originally Posted by Amien (Post 4850033)

You're right about the CPU being the bottleneck, but it shares that spot with the HDD. Will the upgrades be worth it? That depends on what your expectations/other options are. It will definitely make a difference.

The RAM being DDR4 means you might be able to carry it forward to a new computer(still a year or two before DDR5 becomes mainstream) along with that SSD and/or sell it to recover some of your investment. Will look up some recommendations after you've made a decision.

Thank you all for your suggestion guys. clap: Upgraded the RAM to 8GB (max possible) & got a SSD inplace of HDD. The laptop isn't the last word in performance but certainly usable now. Costed me little over 7k. IMO it is worth it.

My lenovo laptop went kaput couple of days back having used it for more than 8 years which I had from US.
For now I have spare office laptop for remote connect to Virtual Desktop and it works fine being a i3 and 4 gb ram.

We also have Lenovo Yoga 720 that a friend of mine got from US a year back and very happy with it currently used by my wife.

I am looking for a developer laptop now, would be using it for coding in Python and Java.

All my laptops have been from US and never faced any hardware issue, but given the urgency I need to buy one here.

Any recommendations? Budget wise I am fine with around 75-80k, looking for reliability and performance.

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Originally Posted by grazd (Post 4873944)

The flipkart invoice didn't have a dealer stamp.

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Originally Posted by Amien (Post 4874142)

That's odd. You should be able to contact Appario through amazon and request whatever they're asking for.

After uploading all relevant documentation to avail the Asus promotional offer on extended warranty, they replied saying it's on hold and mentioned the reasons as
1. "serial number + model number" not clear in the image I had attached. This was fixed easily by taking another picture of the laptop base where there was a white colored sticker with model number (above the serial number sticker)

2. Invoice missing serial number and dealer seal.

Prior to registering for the promo, I had registered the product on Asus site and the same invoice (without serial number) was accepted after validation and I received an email that product registration was successful. When I log in to the support site I can see the details of the model and 1 year warranty support activated.

I contacted Amazon and they said this has never been a problem in the past and the support staff asked me to contact Asus global support.

In the meantime I noticed that the packing slip and order summary in Amazon both had the serial number so I uploaded those documents as well only to receive another response from Asus promo support that they will need serial number and dealer seal in the invoice. Period.

Since I'm not active on social media platforms, I went back to the main Asus site and logged a "complaint" explaining my problem and attached all relevant documents/pictures. I received a response that I need to contact Asus promo support! This is what frustrated me the most since I'd clearly mentioned that Asus promo support were insisting on invoice having serial number and dealer seal! Now, there was a link in that email to say my problem was not resolved by the response, so clicked that and then another link in the email took me to Feedback to CEO which was for escalation.

I posted the details of my situation again and then followed it up by forwarding the emails from Asus promo support to the main support emails to put them together.

Voila, the next day I received a call that my promo request will be processed and I will receive a payment link in 2 days which I did receive yesterday and paid. All's well for now but it was painful.

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Originally Posted by firstdrive (Post 4875419)

I am looking for a developer laptop now, would be using it for coding in Python and Java.

Any recommendations? Budget wise I am fine with around 75-80k, looking for reliability and performance.

Have a look at this one :

https://www.dell.com/en-in/shop/lapt...cc-c587501win8

92k (offer of 8k cashback, brings price in neighborhood on 80k)
For 3k, you can buy 3 Year warranty. That should cover reliability.
i5-10300H CPU + Good cooling system. This should help with large Gradle builds
Negative : Only 8 GB RAM. Good thing is, second slot is empty and you can add more RAM.