ajft

Checking on drivers from http://support.asus.com/

BIOS

203 453.17kB

Audio

V6.0.1.5334

LAN

V6.186.1103.2006

Modem

M:V1.8_D:V6.11.13.1

TouchPad

V9.1.5.0 11.32M

Wireless

V10.6.0.46 3.61M

Video

V8.33 CCC 113.8M

What on earth is there in a video driver that makes it 113M in size!

Installed drivers

Video

ATI Mobility Radeon X2300

  8.33-061220-040818
  2D — 7.01.01.569
  3D — 7.14.10.0464

After a serious hour or two's use of the newish (now two months old) laptop, I've decided that some of the bugs are too buggy and need sorting.

• ASUS auto-updater shows a blank window with blank pop-up items
• ASUS single-sign-on is appalling slow, and more of a hindrance than a help.
• Norton Security Centre just appears to suck in general

The last one is pretty much a given, I think that's the general feeling everywhere regarding that product, but I thought I'd let the three month free licence run its course and get some experience using the product — the three months can't end soon enough.

The first two seem bizarre, you would think that in a laptop where the vendor ships the vendor's programs on a machine where the vendor installs everything that it would work... stupid of me to expect them to ship software that actually did anything!

The ASUS support forums seem pretty hopeless, no presence from ASUS, just a bunch of postings from people with problems and no solutions. Not to mention a user interface which doesn't seem to distinguish between read and unread messages, and a really annoying tendency to open every single link in another window.

On my second attempt I managed to lodge a request about the laptop, no idea if they'll respond since I can't give them the serial number because I'm at work and the laptop isn't. The support request form doesn't seem to work in Firefox so I had to go find a Windows machine with IE and retype the damn thing. At least they give me a response code to follow up on:

Case Code :WTM200705311451226266

Our system has received your mail enquiry. ASUS Technical Support Engineers will be responsible in replying your mail within 48 hours on Mon~Fri (except public holiday). If you have not heard any response from ASUS TSE, please check for mail reply status from the link below. Thanks very much.

http://vip.asus.com/eservice/techmailstatus.aspx?ID=WTM200705311451226266