ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (12 Hours of Battery Life)

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5 Reviews

1. this is a good computer for the money. it has a good keyboard, good batery life and a lot faster then a netbook. i had 3 or 4 different netbooks and was getting sick of them. the first version of the computer i had the hardrive went out on me but amazon relpaced . i was defanatly happy about that. my only complains with computer is asus could have put a better quality harddrive like a wd or toshiba or something like that. i would say this computer is good for people that need a somewhat powerful computer and need it portable. i defanatly would not play the latest games on here but it could play some older games. overall a good computer.

2. I bought this for a cheap notebook to carry on the big red for the soil sampling program. I figured it wouldn’t be much of a computer but would work for what I needed. I found out I like it better the the other laptops. It has quickly become the favorite notebook even with its small screen. It has yet to dissappoint me, I can’t say that about our dell or gateway’s. The only thing that I can’t get is 12 hours out of the battery (more like but I really didn’t believe it when it said 12 anyway.

3. The first one didn’t work, unless one happens to speak Spanish. No matter what language one set it for it still “spoke” only Spanish.
   Due to Amazon’s great return policy, however, we got another one, at no extra cost, and it works very well.
   One negative is that many windows do not fully fill the not-all-that-big monitor, no matter what we do, which, in effect, makes the screen smaller.
   It is thin and light, which makes it easy to carry around, unless one also wants to carry the heavy cord with its transformer. Still thin, but not so light.
   One more flaw–it comes with a printed card to send in for extra warranty coverage, but the address on the card is wrong and I can find no way, from Asus’ limited web site, to find the right address.

4. There are a lot of things that aren’t too bad about this computer. After all, it is a cheap computer made out of cheap parts, but put together in a reasonable intelligent way.

   However, I have three major complaints.

   1. My touchpad is so bad, the laptop is almost unusable. Perhaps it is because we live in a high humidity area, but it is extremely touchy and has to be treated with kid gloves. I try to avoid using any sites where an inadvertent click could cost be money. It is really that bad.

   2. I have a hardware problem that is causing the webcam to get very, very hot and now the computer won’t boot. I thought, no problem, I will just ship it back to Asus and get it fixed. Be aware. Getting through Asus customer support is like closing a Facebook account. It is a system that is designed to fail. I still haven’t even figured out how to send the unit to them after hours of head scratching.

   3. The webcam is (intentionally) installed upside down. That causes me problems running Skype with Linux.

5. I purchased this laptop after returning a similar Toshiba which failed after less than 1 month. I researched this topic considerably and found the Asus to have precisely the features and functions that my wife needed for her small business. I also selected this product based on the customer service rankings of Asus being the only one which beats out Apple. We got the laptop in and everything was great, until we tried to make it work with our existing laser printer, contrary to what Microsoft advertised in their documentation on Windows 7 64 bit edition. I contacted Microsoft who told me that they in fact do support our printer and that I did not have a full load of Windows 7 64bit edition on the laptop and that I needed to contact Asus as they sold me the Windows license. I called Asus and after a long amount of time arguing with them the points that the Microsoft rep made, they finally accepted responsibility. I was put in touch promptly with a “senior engineer” named “Margaret” (heavy Chinese accent) who provided me with a reference number to the case. Over the coming few days we went back and forth trying several different things. Margaret finally told me on day 3 that she would have to research this some more and she would then call me the next day. She did not call me the next day. 1 week later I called asking for status. The tech support person that I spoke with then put me in touch with another “senior engineer” who reviewed the documentation of the situation from the various calls that I had made. He also told me that he would do his best to help me and he would call me back in the next day or so. I’m now 2 weeks later and have not heard anything from them, so today I called them back and requested a supervisor. I was put on hold while they looked for the same engineer to help me. 5 times I requested a supervisor. Finally they put me on hold because the supervisor was on another call. Then they came back on the line to tell me that the supervisor is not at her desk. Then they’re looking for another supervisor to help. Then they hung up on me. I called back asking for someone in management. I was eventually, after being put on hold MANY times for a total of 55 minutes more, put in touch with customer complaints, who admitted that they’re having problems currently and working to resolve their call center “issues”. Finally they got me with product management engineering who is now trying to help me through my problem.

   Bottom line, I have no clue how in the world they won top place in customer satisfaction (above Apple, and double that of Dell, HP, etc) as I have never seen a more disjointed customer service organization in my 15 years in IT.