Hey man. I got netbook fever and I got it bad. I need a hit, man. Come on… you can leave Windows off of it if that will make it cheaper. Just give me the cash and I’ll buy my own. I swear I’ll use the money on a netbook. Yeah I can get one of those cheap Asus EEE or one of its new competitors like the MSI Wind or the Acer One. I’d even be happy with the low cost Dell Mini 9 or the slightly more expensive HP Mini Mi. Those are all fine examples of the netbook craze.
But the one I really have my eye on is the Lenovo U110. That baby is freaking sweet. It has an 11″ screen with a resolution that is actually useful (1366×768) unlike all those others I listed. Something else it has that none of those other netbooks have is an actual DVD/CD burner built into that tiny chassis. No lugging around the extra weight (and expense) of a slim external USB drive since it’s built in and always there if you want it.
The bitch of it is the price. Oh that is where it hurts the most especially nowadays. Where as all those other netbooks listed cost anywhere from $200-$400 US dollars, the Lenovo U110 starts at $1,600 US dollars! What the fuck? That’s why I’m pissed about this thing. It’s perfect. OK not really – if it had a Blu-Ray drive then it would be perfect since that higher respolution can display 720p. But still, does this near perfection give them the right to charge $1,200 more than the highest priced alternative?
I guess the answer is: If people will buy it for that price then yes it is worth it. They are idiots, those people who are spending that much money on this little netbook. Idiots. How can they justify that unless of course they are stinking rich and don’t have to worry about cash. Then OK, I get that. I’m jealous and I hate those people but I get it.
So here’s the deal. I need EVERYONE to stop buying the Lenovo U110 (especially the red one). Drive market demand for these little netbooks down as far as it can go. Then we all win. We can all buy them at the same time for probably around $500. A much more reasonable amount for such a computer. But you have to do your part. Otherwise it’s a failure.
Let’s say you are a hardware manufacturer and you send out samples of the product you are selling for the journalists to review. Obviously you would want to send out the best product you have and make damn sure it’s flawless, stable and sellable. That’s a given. But there are some companies out there that send products out for review that are ‘better’ than the items that they will be selling to the public. These better items skew the review process and the buying decisions of the consumers. Now it seems that legendary motherboard manufacturer ASUS can now join the ranks of those companies that have lost their integrity.
In case you don’t keep up with the cutting edge of the computer industry, UMPCs are the hot thing on the market. UMPC stands for Ultra-Mobile Personal Computer and is basically a PC that is smaller than a standard notebook but just about as functional. ASUS rocked the UMPC market with its release of the EEE PC which reviewers gave favorable to excellent reviews and modders tore apart and enhanced with vigor.
One of the things that appealed to those considering the EEE PC from ASUS was the excellent battery life. When you’re trying to develop a winning UMPC you have to deal with that heavy battery that keeps the unit running. So what did ASUS do? It sent their new device to reviewers with a hefty and long lasting 5800mah battery. [mah is milli-amp hours in case you don't know] So reviewers commented on how great the battery life was.
Then the EEE launched and users started finding that their UMPC wasn’t staying powered as long as the reviews said. People started to notice that they had gotten a 4800mah battery instead of what was advertised. Ooops. So now ASUS has officially admitted that it provided better batteries in reviewer models than would be available to consumers. Of course they claim it was just a mistake and that the reviewers weren’t supposed to get those higher capacity batteries.
At this point, ASUS is fooling no one with their “mistake” story. No one mistakenly sends out ALL their review hardware with batteries that aren’t readily available. Not only is it unlikely, it’s completely unrealistic. When you are ramping up stock of a new product you know exactly where every single part ever made for these new devices is at any given moment. This was a deceitful act towards the consumers and we technical people hold grudges.
Sure you can say “Well at least they admitted it!” Yes they did but what choice did they have? They were caught in the act and nothing can change that. They are supposedly going to offer a replacement program for affected units (which is every single unit ever sold) but offer no timeline or venue to do so. At this point, I’d say they’re probably busy scrambling and trying to figure how to keep up the damage control.
This is not a new practice and is certainly not new to this or any other industry. It’s just that we rarely hear about these kinds of things because they do their best to not get caught. But pissing off someone by swapping the metal parts of a reviewed blender with cheap plastic parts in production is not the same as when it comes to computers. We have lots of choices out there. And as much as I like ASUS’ overpriced products, it will be a while till I buy them again. Like I said… we hold grudges.
February 17, 2009 11:31 am | 
