My Asus A8He refurb story

After owning my Asus A8He laptop for the past 2.5 years, I've decided to refurbish the worn out components of my notebook. The first thing which I've replaced was the keyboard, which IMO was of inferior quality, compared to other models from Asus and Acer.

Over a year ago I started noticing wear on the surface of the key caps. They were once matte dark gray, but have turned to a slippery (and yucky!) glossy black. I also noticed that some other Asus users also had their keyboards worn out in the same manner. (I wish I had thought of the see-thru membrane keyboard protector long ago, but they were not readily available when I bought my laptop).

By contrast, my nephew has an older Acer Travelmate - he plays games on it but his keyboard still looks new..go figure.

Anyway, the silver paint on the LCD top cover has thinned out due to daily wear and tear and my lower case has collected grime. I went to the Asus Malaysia service center and was quoted approx USD47 for a replacement keyboard, with a 3-month warranty.

I asked the service center guy if I could get a different keyboard type for my A8He and he said no, other models wouldn't fit. That's funny, because I've seen other markets with different keyboard layouts and key caps before.

OK, so I asked if I could change the LCD top and main cases to be replaced and was quoted USD78 and USD47 respectively. I remember seeing some models that had the black finish and requested for the black version. The counter staff shook his head and said they couldn't do that - if my laptop came in silver, Asus would only replace the case with the same color code.

That didn't make sense to me because the price of the parts (whether silver or black were the same), only the choice of color differed. Not just that - there's a one week waiting period till I could collect my laptop for a case replacement.

After some deliberation, I thought I'd just replace the keyboard because the technical staff could do the job there and then. When I got home, only then I realized that the left side of the keyboard had a very noticeable flex!

Pressing the left CapsLock key would cause the surrounding keys to move (the right side was OK though). Now I have to drive all the way to the service center to address this issue, located in downtown Kuala Lumpur were the traffic is hell.

Talk about poor Asus "Royal VIP" after sales service - it seems like they're more interested in selling new units than servicing old notebooks.