Solved! Should we buy Intel brands from HP, Toshiba, Dell, or Asus/BestBuy: ASUS Q551L

fastset

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Dec 23, 2017
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I purchased a Toshiba laptop and it started crashing the first two weeks (blue screen), I was new to win 7 and ignored it, since it was rare.

8 months later the whole mother board went dead; and I shelved it; forgetting about my warranty; since I was otherwise employed.

A year later, I ran a voltmeter to the board: The only thing getting power was a processor pin. It had a strange white powder residue, like when a battery decays. I tried everything; but instead gutted the power connection to fix my son's Toshiba power port, added the ram to his Toshiba, and the hard drive to this computer (ASUS, a used Best Buy Q551LN I later dropped (messing the hard drive)). The Q551 replaced the shelved Toshiba.

At the time, BestBuy replaced the Q551LN-BBI706, with Q551LN-BSI708, and later Q551LN-BBI7T09 (it had an external/tiny sub-woofer but cost 1,000 more). My BSI708 earned the 5th gen processor upgrade. Unfortunately, the processor is a dual-core, not quad core like I thought. Asus claimed no Win 7 support, but it turns out: They sold a similar model to businesses world-wide as a windows 7 laptop.

So, after careful testing I got my old Win 7 working from the Toshiba HDD except USB and CD only from the Command Prompt. I was able to restore my files from the ASUS but it took 5 tries for bit-locker to stick and multiple windows running Xcopy in date ignore mode to get the files to survive the hard drive freezes. The Asus problem is the USB hub. I needed the ASUS drivers and by the time I fixed that with Win 7 drivers, I messed up the keyboard region settings (loading the Asus keyboard drivers (for the volume buttons, etc) and lost my Media Center (I loaded the business release of a Japanese keyboard map since it was not an easy process to tell what win7 driver was what). Note: Win 7 or 8/8.1 migration to Win 10; You need media center first, or you will never see it again. I did everything to reset regions, pass the regions tp windows, and trick the Media Center install, but no success. They either killed the server, or I can't trick win 7 back. People recommended clean installs, but I did not keep the Toshiba backup I made, and I would need to load the USB drivers again lots of cd swapping.

It turns out that my used Asus does support a lighted keyboard, but Asus did not put it in for BestBuy. Also, it ran really slow due to Asus diagnostic tools.

Now that I have just windows, my computer is much faster. The Dell I bought had many Dell tools as well. I took those off and sped it up.

So this Asus and my Dell are on the fringe.

I bought the Asus when a new feature came out. Better graphics and sub-woofer. The dell had an 8th gen intel processor, but the 9th gen was announced/showcased before the 8th gen even went on sale/delivery for my Dell Laptop. The 8th Gen comes with the same dedicated graphics card equivalent as my 5th Gen. But the 8th Gen throttles down the processor from boot until the power settings take over and I set it to high performance.

The issue is USB 3 and Nvidia not recommending external graphics. However, other users verified it can do it, but lacks the company ok due to lags and performance issues.

This takes me back to HP days when they gave me a computer with everything but the SPDIF. These vendors always leave something out, and make it cheaper.

However, a few weeks go by and the software upgrades/tech burden outweigh not having them. If they took a leap of faith and put it in they would save some customer service salaries about slow computers.
 
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Did you have a question? Or are you just listing everything that's gone wrong with your PCs? I've owned a few Dells in my day. One was shipped with an odd issue that support didn't know how to fix. They literally sent me a list of possible issues that had nearly 30 things I could try. Looking over the list I found the one that was most likely to fix the issue and I was right. I think it was #22. OEMs can have issues, but in my experience more often than not they work just fine.

4745454b

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Did you have a question? Or are you just listing everything that's gone wrong with your PCs? I've owned a few Dells in my day. One was shipped with an odd issue that support didn't know how to fix. They literally sent me a list of possible issues that had nearly 30 things I could try. Looking over the list I found the one that was most likely to fix the issue and I was right. I think it was #22. OEMs can have issues, but in my experience more often than not they work just fine.
 
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