The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

We've had all three 2012-gen Nexus devices in the household, the 4 is a recent acquisition so time will tell on that, the 10 still works perfectly 10 months in, the 7 lasted about 6 months, which is roughly about the mean lifetime of all the other Asus products I've owned over the years. I was rather hoping it being a google device would improve the reliability but obviously not.

 

Fair enough; still, quite anecdotal evidence on both our parts!

I've had my Nexus 4 since January-ish and it has been great. One of my main concerns was the durability of the glass but I've managed to drop it on relatively hard surfaces a few times without breaking/scratching (here's me tempting fate). I also recently removed my screen protector from the front (I'd forgotten how nice it is to use without one on) and my dbrand skin from the back, and now I just use a leather slip case out and about.

 

I tend to use smartphones 'bare' as at the 4"+ screen size, they're just too bulky with a protective case on as well. Fortunately, neither of the two previous smartphones I've had (both 4" and above) suffered anything other than a crack in the side casing. Hopefully I'll manage to be as careful with this one too

The Nexus 7 issue may be anecdotal, but it's the tip of a considerable iceberg - personally I'm up to around a dozen Asus products that have all met the same demise (100% failure rate within 18 months), and including those of my friends, it's got to be 50+ at this point. Admittedly, not everyone I know has suffered a 100% failure rate in that space of time, but Asus come bottom of genuine (tens of thousands sample size) hardware reliability surveys year after year for a reason. Take a look at one of Asus' product ranges, particularly motherboards. You'll notice that even in a given product series, they're laid out totally different, wherever they could find room to put stuff. Whereas other brands logically build on their designs as they go higher up the model chain, Asus products just seem to distribute components randomly, hinting at them really not actually knowing what they're doing at the design stage. It's rare for Asus products to be DOA, but that's all the more annoying that they fail once you're wedded to them for your daily processes, and have to try and work out a contingency plan when they fail. Even just holding a Nexus 7 compared to a 4 or a 10, you can tell the difference in build quality. It's a tragedy as the Nexus 10 is the only real proper competitor to the ipad due to the specification. Once the new version takes over built by Asus, there will be the ipad, and 'the cheap ipad knock off'. Samsung's manufacturing is still questionable in some industries (I'm very glad their hard disk division bit the dust, for example) but in the mobile device market, as long as you don't let them put their awful software on it, they make fairly classy products.

Seriously though, TouchWiz is just bad. I can't stand using a Galaxy phone, I think I'd sooner have an iphone, they're only similarly overpriced. Actually, no I wouldn't, because that entails itunes..

 

Well it's natural to "baby" a new gadget but usually unnecessary. This is my case (I like that you can see the notification LED when it's inside).

http://i47.tinypic.com/j5ca9z.jpg
http://i50.tinypic.com/zjb393.jpg

I can't argue with your points; mine was essentially just that Google went for value with the N7 and unfortunately build quality tends to be the first thing to slip when you do that. I wouldn't buy an ASUS mobo though, no.

Yep, I find most of their software gimmicky, e.g. on the S3.

 

Yeah I got a cheap faux-leather flip case for my Nexus 10, which I thought was great until I took it out to clean the screen earlier and it seems not to have resisted several scratches to the back - I don't think the material is thick enough :/

Motherboards was just used as an example as it's the most obvious hallmark of poor design in their products, but clearly it's an issue across the whole of their product range, tablets included.

 

These are quite good quality, if you're interested in one anyway. Real (not top quality but smells like it should) leather, and the lining is microfibre.

http://www.bugatti-mobilecases.de/index.php?page=kategorien_detail&gTyp=1&pStyle=211&pKat=771

 

You should try Green or Purple Lighting Sammoris, have a thing for the green myself.

 

what can i say, but i have seen the oposite of sam with asus.

but my sample is limited to msyself and a few mates.


recently, i acquired an HTC one, which was an odd change form the nexus deviced i had been using from the Nexus S. I honestly thought my nexus 4 couldnt be usurped. I enjoed the HTC one for a month, and gave it back, as it was just temporary. going back to my nexus 4 has been hell.

The screen is pitiful in comparison, the speakers are aweful, and just in general it seems to be a rubbish phone when compared. Never every thought i would say that, but i think i have been converted to HTC :S

now for my hope to see a nexus HTC device this side of the pond.

 

Heads up, moved into a new room! My sister finally moved out of the nicest bedroom in the house so I got a new living space Nice to be out of the stale air and relative humidity/dirtiness of the half finished basement. Much nicer and better finished room with more living/storage space as well. Also gotta say it's nice to feel like I'm finally getting my money's worth. My sister was paying no rent and was living in two huge rooms while I paid electricity, cable/internet and natural gas, but got shoved into the tiny dungeon. Long story behind that but suffice to say it's time for a little fair treatment

My temps reacted quite favorably to the move. Much more agreeable and stable/reliable. Also a lot less dust build-up as I now have some real airflow through the room. On a side note, I have to mention my firearms are much happier and need less oiling to avoid the silent specter of rust. My only regret is that I lost the nice little computer cubby which allowed wall-mounting of the 5.1 setup. My rear speakers sit on the desk for now...

Still need to post some pics of my latest upgrades/mods. Will be coming shortly. Been pretty busy lately making my entire life's worth more portable and moving upstairs.

 

Well, the HTC One Google Play Edition would be that, but as you say, US only. It's also double the price of the Nexus 4.

I take your point about the display at least from a resolution standpoint, but I've seen an HTC One in action and really, at 300dpi I see no reason to go any further. The 4's display is perfectly crisp and vibrant enough - compared to the 800x480 display I'm used to, it's a marked improvement, also helped by how much cleaner and modern stock Jelly Bean is (as opposed to an older version of HTC Sense on IceCreamSandwich).

My last two phones were HTC, and especially in the case of the last one (Sensation XL), software has plagued me - the ICS update to the XL halved the battery life and stopped the battery meter from working, so you had no idea what state the battery was in and had to keep a portable charger on you at all times. I'd have reformatted, but the notes app I used daily turned out to have no means to copy data off (not even copying files from the SD card as they weren't visible, only the JPG previews!) so it was too much of a pain to reformat - I stuck it out until end of contract then changed to SIM only (Am very glad you could still get 18 month contracts back then). The Nexus 4 being so much cheaper, and not really lacking any specifications apart from microSD made me pick it out, and it's great. I combined it with trying out a one month rolling contract with three, and to be honest, so far I'm distinctly unimpressed. When data works it's an order of magnitude faster than on O2, but it only works slightly more often. The 2 minute resync time on their network is a real pain as it makes it impossible to use data (or make calls) when travelling through pockets of signal coverage less than 2 minutes wide. The call coverage is also still to this day far poorer than on O2. I think I may end up attaching a battery pack to my three WiFi dongle and changing to a different provider for voice. Trouble is, they're all terrible

 

Interesting advise, makes sense, now let me throw this at you, if you needed a laptop right now with a grand in your pocket, which brand would you go for?

 

Depends what I needed the laptop for - there'd have to be a specific reason to spend as much as 1000USD let alone 1000GBP.

 

OK I should have been more specific, not for any power use like gaming, but enough power messing around with video's and pic's, a good laptop for everyday regular use with a little muscle if needed, nothing fancy but reliable, you mentioned back in the day it was Asus, who is it now?

 

Personally I would be giving Samsung a strong look. Handled tons of their products and they seem to be pretty reliable. Samsung has always had decent hardware. Otherwise I'd look at Toshiba, or possibly even Dell

 

My main issue with Dell is that the keyboards they use are very poor nowadays on laptops. There's no real 'magic bullet' best solid brand any more these days - Thinkpads were good in the past, not sure about now. Toshiba Satellites were pretty good from a hardware standpoint, but tend to have quite unreliable software.

 

Lenovo Thinkpads are still absolutely rock solid. Have serviced dozens and dozens from work and they are built like a rock. They do come at a premium though.

 

Thanks Estuansis for your opinion, Sammy I'm still waiting for your's I know you have one, I always get asked by friends on this subject, I always said Asus, you felt different, I have learned so much from guys like yourself Russ Steve etc. you fellows never steered guys like me wrong, so yes I value your opinion, and no I don't care if it starts an opinion war, if it does great that's how we learn things, so yes I'm still waiting.

 

Well, I don't have a singular answer, otherwise I would gladly have given it to you. I have used a fair few laptops belonging to clients, friends etc. but never actually owned one for personal use, so as far as 'what it's like to live with' I'm not too qualified to say. As I say, I'd avoid the obvious cheap nasties like Acer, Asus should go without saying by now, and in all honesty I'm not too wowed by the quality of Vaio laptops either. I know people that have had good experience with Toshiba Satellite laptops - we've had a Dell Vostro in the family and it really isn't that well made. It all works after 5 years, but if it weren't for how slow it was out of the box I'd assume it faulty for how slow it is now It was very cheap though, and it was given Vista :/

Best laptop we've had is a Compaq nx6110 which is almost 8 years old, has lived in a workshop environment caked in filth for 5 of those years, and apart from having memory added to it to improve performance, hasn't had anything done to it at all. Seriously solid equipment those were, but unfortunately I think the days of HP producing stuff like that are over.

 

OK Finally, it was like pulling teeth there for a while getting your answer LOL, don't take it to heart I'm pulling your leg, ok now I have something to go by, I was not exaggerating when I said many people ask me about this, I'm not an expert like most of you but most people that ask me know nothing about computers I always try to answer the best I can and most of my knowledge came from here.

It's funny you mentioned Toshiba, Boris has a nice looking 17incher for sale, has almost everything except no hdmi inputs, it's about a year and a half old I don't remember the model number but it looked good and ran good, he want's 200 bucks, I'm gonna take another look at it when I do I'll post more info. Thanks sammy.

 

If it's in good condition then that sounds like a good deal. In my experience video inputs are relatively rare on notebooks.