The folks at Asus once were a very good hardware manufacturer. Their motherboards enjoyed fame among overclockers, power users and OEM’s alike due to their excellent stability, durability and longevity. Unfortunately, this eventually changed with the delivery and success of the eeePC…one could say that the success went to the head of each and every Asus employee/contractor except for Lars Schweden (who recently left to LG).
The company no longer provides press samples in a manageable fashion, and silently reduced the battery capacity of its eeePC devices without informing customers about it. Now, however, neglicgence/hybris have reached a completely new level!
Purchasers of ASUS laptops have found various “goodies” on the recovery CD’s that shipped with their laptops. We aren’t talking about gimmicks here, but rather about:
* A directory called “Crack” that appears to contain serial numbers for other software packages
* A directory containing a large number of confidential Microsoft documents for PC manufacturers, including associated keys and program files
* Various internal Asus documents and source code for Asus software
….
One of the confidential Asus documents includes a PowerPoint presentation that details “major problems” identified by the company, including application compatibility issues.
It IMHO is very difficult to explain how something as stupid as this can happen. Not only does a huge company use cracks (I hope that somebody publishes a list of the affected applications so that their owners can sue), but they actually are too lazy to check the recovery CD’s before shipping them out to customers.
For me, all of this speaks a clear language: keep your fingers off whatever box the folks at ASUS’s may spit out. Even though their stuff may be dirt cheap, it is likely to bite you in the long run…
via PCpro
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