So I ordered the Asus G53SW-XN1 from Newegg on 9/27. It was right around $900 with a $100 mail in rebate. It shows up on 9/30. Immediately upon getting it I notice that there is graphical artifacting, even during post. After booting the screen looks extremely dithered with artifacting and discoloration.
So I call up Newegg the beginning of the next week and they issue me an RMA. I send it back a couple days later, I think it was 10/6. Toward the end of the next week I get an email from them stating that the laptop worked fine and they would be shipping it back to me. I'm a little worried, but willing to give it a try. I get it back in the middle of the next week and sure enough, everything seems fine.
So I clean up some of the crap off it and install a couple of my games. I am getting really close to the 30 day limit on the mail in rebate now so I send it in. I got it back mid-week then Friday night I played some World of Warcraft and all was good. Saturday I played some Starcraft2 and about 10 minutes into the first match the thing hard-locked. I held the power down for 4 seconds to power it down and then brought it back up. Everything seemed fine so I tried Starcraft2 again. About 5 minutes into the next game it hard locked again. I powered it down again by holding the power button, however, this time when I tried to bring it back up it was dead.
Upon powering it up fans would kick on, the lights of the power button and the three buttons in the upper left would come on, and the backlit keyboard would light up for about 5 seconds then turn back off. The hard drive light would come on for less than half a second, but that was it. So I called Newegg and of course they can't do anything further because I have sent in the mail-in rebate. So I call Asus and the guy has me do some simple troublshooting (hold power down for 45 seconds with power supply unplugged and battery removed) and said I would need to send it in. I think this was 10/31 by this time.
So I pack it up and send it in. It just got back yesterday. I have the repair summary here that says it was repaired. It says they replaced the hard disk drive and under other it says "reassembled lcd cable". Except now there is a new problem with the LCD. It has these ugly red streaks through it in a couple places. Here are a couple pics:
http://www.briantaylor.org/asus1.JPGhttp://www.briantaylor.org/asus2.JPGSo I am guessing I will have to call them back tomorrow and probably have to send it in again. I know there are a couple Asus employees on this board and I guess I am hoping one of them might catch this and be able to do something. I bought the laptop 6 weeks ago and have had it in my hands for maybe a week and it has seen maybe 10 hours of use max. To be honest, I have already bought another HP that I paid $1200 for, but it is working great. To that end, if there is anyone here interested in one of these things. I am willing to sell it and take a $100 loss on it just to get rid of it (I make the assumption that it will be fully functional someday). So I would take $700 (I have the $100 rebate coming) just to never see this god-awful thing again.
Anyway, thanks for listening, and hopefully Asus can do something about this.
Brian Taylor
