The real question is when to buy, I'm talking about gaming laptops here.
For Razer blades, it appears that once the new model comes out the old one is suddenly on fire sale, so to speak. The 2014 Razer blade is now (as of Mar 17 2015) selling for $1789 on amazon, a $600 price drop! Note to self, buy Razer blade next year around this time :)
As for clevo, their resale value doesn't seem to be that high compared to macbooks or even blades, ebay seems to list them at a much lower price although granted that they are of the older models.
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Sunday, March 15, 2015
unethical brand(s), yes I'm talking about you msi (Might Suffer Indefinitely)
I believe it's unethical for a company to have profit as its only intent. It's ok if you want to make products that benefit other people while profiting from them but making profit as the only goal is I feel unethical. True, a company has to make money but it should not be its sole purpose. As someone said it very aptly "we breathe to live not live to breathe, in the same way, companies make profit to stay in business but they don't stay in business just to make money".
For one, you're taking someone else's hard earned money so the least you can do is respect it, imagine someone who's been saving his whole life to purchase his dream laptop and was given a run around by the incompetent customer support department when his laptop breaks.
I believe, at least in the laptop business, it is due to the nature of the business not to retain customers but gain new ones that they spend most of their money in marketing and leave little to nothing for customer support. I mean, who buys a couple of laptops every year (although I might do that), most people buy one in a few years.
The proceeding argument was not just an accusation, it is a result of a mini and kinda informal 'investigation'. If you check newegg's customer reviews you'll see that some companies do respond to negative comments and seem to offer some assistance. What I would like to know was whether those were genuine attempt to right their wrongs or merely damage control, it turned out to be more of the latter.
Now since I didn't buy my msi laptop from newegg, I can't leave a comment on their website so instead I sent an email directly to the address provided by replies to those negative feedbacks. Below I provide the email exchanges between me and msi (nothing has been altered except that names have been removed to protect identities of the parties involved)
My original email (Jan 8)
I recently purchased a GS60 4K-80 through GentechPC with an additional 128 GB SSD. The machine arrived on Dec 24 2014. After a while it shutdown by itself, even though the battery said it was still at 40% capacity and I couldn't turn it back on, only after plugging in the charger it would turn back on.
Later that night it happened again, I ran the battery calibration tool the next day, and the same thing happened, at around 40% capacity it shut down by itself. I then ran HWMonitor by CPUID and the wear level was at 16%, which is very high for a new battery.
I then contacted gentechpc on Dec 26 2014, and called them again on Dec 29, I was told later that they would ask msi to ship me a new battery, but on Wed Dec 31, I waas told that msi would want me to send in the laptop, I replied that I would still prefer that they ship me a new battery, I understand that the battery is internal and I don't mind changing it myself. On monday Jan 5 I was told again by gentech that msi would want me to ship the laptop back, I replied that it would take around 2 weeks for the shipping alone and would prefer just a new battery.
I then called msi customer support directly and was told that I should ship the laptop but have to pay the shipping fee, I completely disagree, I have a DOA system and should not be liable for shipping it back, but the rep was adamant. Later that day I got an email from msi for a cross RMA for the battery but I was still required to pay for shipping tha bad battery back to msi.
My sister then called the customer support again but this time managed to talk to a supervisor that granted a free shipping for the laptop. The next day my sister reached out to another msi rep to see if they can just ship the battery for free, she was told that it's possible but I need to ship my battery back first and then msi would whip me a new one, but, it came with a caveat that I might void the warranty if I did any mistake installing the new battery. I asked a few questions yesterday through email about this last option and still waiting a reply.
This whole process took almost 2 weeks.
All in all, my options are not good, if I ship the laptop for RMA I would not be able to use it for a long period of time, cross RMA requires me to pay for shipping, and the last option might void my warranty.
For a $2000+ laptop I feel that I went through too much trouble, especially with a DOA system. Hopefully whoever reading this review at msi would do something pleasant to resolve this issue, this is quite a horrible customer service for the price I paid. I attached the screenshot of my laptop showing a high wear level battery.
Thank you
End of communication, no response from msi thus far.
The funny thing is that the first time I contacted them back in December the only problem was indeed the battery, the new units have more (minor) defects and yet the msi rep used this as an excuse as to why they wanted me to ship the laptop back (and pay for shipping) originally.
You can also see that there are questions that they did not answer at all. It is therefore clear that the reason they respond on newegg feedback forum was just damage control, they didn't make any extra effort to help their customers.
My main point is that they should not ship defective products, especially ones that are premiumly priced, it is unfair to ask the customer to do anything about this (including waiting for an extended period of time for the RMA) since the fault is entirely theirs. Well, it's msi (might suffer indefinitely) after all ...
For one, you're taking someone else's hard earned money so the least you can do is respect it, imagine someone who's been saving his whole life to purchase his dream laptop and was given a run around by the incompetent customer support department when his laptop breaks.
I believe, at least in the laptop business, it is due to the nature of the business not to retain customers but gain new ones that they spend most of their money in marketing and leave little to nothing for customer support. I mean, who buys a couple of laptops every year (although I might do that), most people buy one in a few years.
The proceeding argument was not just an accusation, it is a result of a mini and kinda informal 'investigation'. If you check newegg's customer reviews you'll see that some companies do respond to negative comments and seem to offer some assistance. What I would like to know was whether those were genuine attempt to right their wrongs or merely damage control, it turned out to be more of the latter.
Now since I didn't buy my msi laptop from newegg, I can't leave a comment on their website so instead I sent an email directly to the address provided by replies to those negative feedbacks. Below I provide the email exchanges between me and msi (nothing has been altered except that names have been removed to protect identities of the parties involved)
My original email (Jan 8)
I recently purchased a GS60 4K-80 through GentechPC with an additional 128 GB SSD. The machine arrived on Dec 24 2014. After a while it shutdown by itself, even though the battery said it was still at 40% capacity and I couldn't turn it back on, only after plugging in the charger it would turn back on.
Later that night it happened again, I ran the battery calibration tool the next day, and the same thing happened, at around 40% capacity it shut down by itself. I then ran HWMonitor by CPUID and the wear level was at 16%, which is very high for a new battery.
I then contacted gentechpc on Dec 26 2014, and called them again on Dec 29, I was told later that they would ask msi to ship me a new battery, but on Wed Dec 31, I waas told that msi would want me to send in the laptop, I replied that I would still prefer that they ship me a new battery, I understand that the battery is internal and I don't mind changing it myself. On monday Jan 5 I was told again by gentech that msi would want me to ship the laptop back, I replied that it would take around 2 weeks for the shipping alone and would prefer just a new battery.
I then called msi customer support directly and was told that I should ship the laptop but have to pay the shipping fee, I completely disagree, I have a DOA system and should not be liable for shipping it back, but the rep was adamant. Later that day I got an email from msi for a cross RMA for the battery but I was still required to pay for shipping tha bad battery back to msi.
My sister then called the customer support again but this time managed to talk to a supervisor that granted a free shipping for the laptop. The next day my sister reached out to another msi rep to see if they can just ship the battery for free, she was told that it's possible but I need to ship my battery back first and then msi would whip me a new one, but, it came with a caveat that I might void the warranty if I did any mistake installing the new battery. I asked a few questions yesterday through email about this last option and still waiting a reply.
This whole process took almost 2 weeks.
All in all, my options are not good, if I ship the laptop for RMA I would not be able to use it for a long period of time, cross RMA requires me to pay for shipping, and the last option might void my warranty.
For a $2000+ laptop I feel that I went through too much trouble, especially with a DOA system. Hopefully whoever reading this review at msi would do something pleasant to resolve this issue, this is quite a horrible customer service for the price I paid. I attached the screenshot of my laptop showing a high wear level battery.
Thank you
MSI's response (Jan 13)
Dear User,
Sorry for the troubles. Our general warranty policy for notebook is customer would be responsible for 1 way shipping to us. As you stated as a courtesy we provided you shipping label which we paid for shipping fee to us. Regarding your issue since the unit have built in battery and under warranty we will need system to send in for services. Please use the shipping label offered to you and ship the system to us. We will try our best to have unit turn around in a timely matter for you. thank you for your understanding.
My response (Mar 10, after the Gentech RMA)
Thanks for the reply. While I understand your general warranty procedure, asking a customer to pay to ship a DOA (Defective On Arrival) laptop is just plain wrong. It means that the customer is responsible for the defective product he/she receives. A defective unit should not have been shipped out in the first place.
As for the battery problem, several users have reported the same issue, please check NBR forum, a lot of them reported high wear level out of the box, I've raised this issue with Geno, MSI rep on NBR and also Henry, the technical supervisor in California. Well, Henry did not reply my email and call, while Geno only directed me to Henry. All this shows that MSI does not stand behind their product to which I am extremely disappointed.
MSI's response (Mar 10)
I did see we provided you with shipping label which you can use to ship the unit to us at no cost. Thank you
My response (Mar 10)
I guess you missed the whole point, first, you didn't provide me with free shipping, I had to talk to a supervisor and he finally gave me an exception. Second, how about the defective battery issue?
MSI's response (Mar 10)
If your capable of removing and replacing the battery. We can issue you an RMA for just the battery base on availability.
At this moment the only issue you have is with the battery correct?
My response (Mar 10)
Yes, the wear level is ridiculously high for a brand new battery.
MSI's response (Mar 10)
Did you get the RMA number and instructions? If so you can ship just the battery. Thank you
My response (Mar 10)
Actually the battery is not the only issue, the CPU fan makes annoying high pitched noises at 2900 RPM, the GPU fan rattles at high RPM and the keyboard bulges around the enter key (I believe that's where the RAM heatsink is located), so all in all the build quality is very disappointing as well.
But even if I just ship the battery I still need to pay for shipping, right?
MSI's response (Mar 10)
So base on your issue reported this is why we requested that you ship the full system to us. MSi stand by our product and would like to resolve your issue under warranty services. Thank you
My response (Mar 10)
If msi really stand behind their product then I'd like some proof, because so far it doesn't seem like so,
1. What's the deal with the widespread high wear level of the battery? is it a BIOS problem not reading the battery sensor correctly or are the batteries themselves defective or some other defects? please give me a reply since both Henry and Geno sidestepped this issue.
2. Shipping should be free both ways since the laptop is obviously defective out of the box and I should get priority service for the RMA, remember that RMA means I have no access to my laptop for an extended period of time and let me reiterate that defective products should not be shipped out to customers in the first place.
If you can satisfactorily reply both questions then I'll agree that msi stand behind their products
The funny thing is that the first time I contacted them back in December the only problem was indeed the battery, the new units have more (minor) defects and yet the msi rep used this as an excuse as to why they wanted me to ship the laptop back (and pay for shipping) originally.
You can also see that there are questions that they did not answer at all. It is therefore clear that the reason they respond on newegg feedback forum was just damage control, they didn't make any extra effort to help their customers.
My main point is that they should not ship defective products, especially ones that are premiumly priced, it is unfair to ask the customer to do anything about this (including waiting for an extended period of time for the RMA) since the fault is entirely theirs. Well, it's msi (might suffer indefinitely) after all ...
Reviewing the Reviewer(s)
Now I'm not talking about unethical reviewers who mask their ads as their own opinions "el natural". What I'm talking about here is those reviewers on youtube who are not owners of the products they
review. They are merely reviewing a unit sent by the manufacturer for an exposure for those products. I mentioned XoticPC in an earlier post, something you have to know is that those laptops they review are the review units although not all of the things I list below apply to them.
I have a few complaints about them:
1. They should clearly express that they do NOT own those products but instead just doing an exposure for some other companies. This is important because it concerns their credibility. 'You put your money where your mouth is' literally, a review unit doesn't cost them anything. Thus they won't be able to give an opinion from the point of view of someone who has shelled out some actual dough for the product.
2. Since most of them have to return those review units, they won't be able to give you a review after some prolonged use, you'll just find some vanilla benchmark tests. You'll not find those peculiar bugs/wears that will only appear after some extended (ab)use. For those you'll have to go to forums, especially owners' lounge, one very interesting grievance I found was about the keyboard and palm rest of Aorus X3+, it looked a few years old instead of a few weeks old from just natural skin oil from your fingers. Something you'll definitely not get from those vanilla review units. Although you have to be careful even on forums because there's no way for you to verify their claims either.
3. Review units are sometimes not the same as the actual products. Now, a very amusing case is the Aorus X7 pro, the review unit is actually worse than the actual product, for this I have to give
GigaByte some credits since they actually listened to feedbacks garnered during their review period. But, usually it's the other way around, the actual product is not as good as the review unit, case in hand, my GS60 ........ Another famous case is the Kingston SSD now
Well, that's all I have, I know it's more of a rant, but a good rant that might help some people :)
Since I was kinda 'duped' by those review(s)
review. They are merely reviewing a unit sent by the manufacturer for an exposure for those products. I mentioned XoticPC in an earlier post, something you have to know is that those laptops they review are the review units although not all of the things I list below apply to them.
I have a few complaints about them:
1. They should clearly express that they do NOT own those products but instead just doing an exposure for some other companies. This is important because it concerns their credibility. 'You put your money where your mouth is' literally, a review unit doesn't cost them anything. Thus they won't be able to give an opinion from the point of view of someone who has shelled out some actual dough for the product.
2. Since most of them have to return those review units, they won't be able to give you a review after some prolonged use, you'll just find some vanilla benchmark tests. You'll not find those peculiar bugs/wears that will only appear after some extended (ab)use. For those you'll have to go to forums, especially owners' lounge, one very interesting grievance I found was about the keyboard and palm rest of Aorus X3+, it looked a few years old instead of a few weeks old from just natural skin oil from your fingers. Something you'll definitely not get from those vanilla review units. Although you have to be careful even on forums because there's no way for you to verify their claims either.
3. Review units are sometimes not the same as the actual products. Now, a very amusing case is the Aorus X7 pro, the review unit is actually worse than the actual product, for this I have to give
GigaByte some credits since they actually listened to feedbacks garnered during their review period. But, usually it's the other way around, the actual product is not as good as the review unit, case in hand, my GS60 ........ Another famous case is the Kingston SSD now
Well, that's all I have, I know it's more of a rant, but a good rant that might help some people :)
Since I was kinda 'duped' by those review(s)
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Dilbert me real, mountain top office politics
This will be a continuous post detailing my experience at work here near mile high city (or just a high city now that marijuana is legal).
It's quite a shock transitioning out of grad school into the corporate world. I missed all the intellectual discussions I had with my professor where we could disagree and yet remain friends, so far not a single intellectual discussion. And my bosses are not really willing to listen to my opinions, why should they?
Also, at work, people seem to do a lot more powerplay/powertripping, whatever you want to call it. No more do I have the chance to discuss as to why we should do things a certain way, it's all up to whoever is on top, "Thus saith the boss", we never question why we do the things we do the way we do it anymore. The money is good, but I don't think I'm happy ...
Then again, in school, your goal is to understand things, at work, "SHOW ME THE MONEY" is the only mantra. Due to this philosophy, I am assigned whatever work needs to be done and in turn I don't accumulate and hone specific skills, well how can you if you work on thirty different things in three months (okay maybe not that many, the numbers are there for illustration purposes).
I guess I can now see the extent of human selfishness, everyone is just trying to cover their own behind and if you're just a new peon you'll need to suffer a little bit more. People do stuffs just to show that they're doing something rather than to produce something meaningful and I'm dragged into it because whoever is on top wants to do exactly that. It's emotionally draining, I long to see kindness again, where people are not out just to make their own gain but spare some thoughts for others as well.
We'll see ...
I think the only thing I can do is to change my expectations and perspective on work since obviously I can't change others. I shouldn't expect myself to enjoy it or be able to voice my opinions, their goal is not to make me happy or accommodate me or even use my talents or bring the best out of me, their goal is to get the product shipped and nothing else. The only thing I can get out of this is money and connections, so let's find ways to make more money ...........
It's quite a shock transitioning out of grad school into the corporate world. I missed all the intellectual discussions I had with my professor where we could disagree and yet remain friends, so far not a single intellectual discussion. And my bosses are not really willing to listen to my opinions, why should they?
Also, at work, people seem to do a lot more powerplay/powertripping, whatever you want to call it. No more do I have the chance to discuss as to why we should do things a certain way, it's all up to whoever is on top, "Thus saith the boss", we never question why we do the things we do the way we do it anymore. The money is good, but I don't think I'm happy ...
Then again, in school, your goal is to understand things, at work, "SHOW ME THE MONEY" is the only mantra. Due to this philosophy, I am assigned whatever work needs to be done and in turn I don't accumulate and hone specific skills, well how can you if you work on thirty different things in three months (okay maybe not that many, the numbers are there for illustration purposes).
I guess I can now see the extent of human selfishness, everyone is just trying to cover their own behind and if you're just a new peon you'll need to suffer a little bit more. People do stuffs just to show that they're doing something rather than to produce something meaningful and I'm dragged into it because whoever is on top wants to do exactly that. It's emotionally draining, I long to see kindness again, where people are not out just to make their own gain but spare some thoughts for others as well.
We'll see ...
I think the only thing I can do is to change my expectations and perspective on work since obviously I can't change others. I shouldn't expect myself to enjoy it or be able to voice my opinions, their goal is not to make me happy or accommodate me or even use my talents or bring the best out of me, their goal is to get the product shipped and nothing else. The only thing I can get out of this is money and connections, so let's find ways to make more money ...........
Quantum Mechanics as a gauge theory
In the usual definition, gauge theory is something that has redundancy built in. Various solutions are just different manifestations of different gauge choices. Well of course physical observables must be gauge invariant.
I wonder if QM itself is a gauge theory since it uses rays in Hilbert space. Each ray contains states that only differ by a (constant?) phase and all these states describe the same physical system. Thus the phase is a gauge choice.
If you look at the continuity equation for probability, you'll see that any (constant) phase cancels out, thus this is the EOM for physical degrees of freedom while the schrodinger equation is the equation for the gauge dependent entity (by explicitly specifying a gauge, or a phase in this case).
As in E&M it is usually easier to calculate using a particular gauge, and I think that's the reason why it's easier to solve Schrodinger equation rather than the continuity equation.
Promoting the phases to depend on spacetime will create multitudes of problems that might be the topic of future posts.
Well, that's all the 2 cents I have for now
I wonder if QM itself is a gauge theory since it uses rays in Hilbert space. Each ray contains states that only differ by a (constant?) phase and all these states describe the same physical system. Thus the phase is a gauge choice.
If you look at the continuity equation for probability, you'll see that any (constant) phase cancels out, thus this is the EOM for physical degrees of freedom while the schrodinger equation is the equation for the gauge dependent entity (by explicitly specifying a gauge, or a phase in this case).
As in E&M it is usually easier to calculate using a particular gauge, and I think that's the reason why it's easier to solve Schrodinger equation rather than the continuity equation.
Promoting the phases to depend on spacetime will create multitudes of problems that might be the topic of future posts.
Well, that's all the 2 cents I have for now
Three laptops and a half, hail newegg!
So, since I now am a proud member of the middle class, for the first time in my life I've decided to buy a laptop. I've had laptops before (a tecra and an acer netbook), but both were gracious gifts from my sister.
At first I just wanted to buy a basic laptop, nothing too fancy, so I decided to look around during black friday sales. I found one that costs ~ $900, it was an HP. A few days later I found on newegg a much better deal. It was lenovo z710, it has hybrid HDD, Full HD display, bluray player and a dedicated graphics card GT 840 (not GTX!), things that were not included in the HP laptop.
I quickly cancelled my order from HP and purchase the z710 from newegg. When I called HP, they immediately offered a $100 discount, they also mentioned that HP has a 21 day return period with free shipping. Those perks however did not sway my decision to cancel the order. I have to say that HP treated me very well as I got the refund very quickly as well.
Newegg processed my order quickly but when the laptop arrived I was sorely disappointed. The screen used was a budget TN panel made by Chi Mei. The contrast was poor and the viewing angles were even worse. Because of the very poor viewing angles, the brightness of the lower half of the screen is significantly different from the top half. Thus when watching a movie or just typing an email you have to constantly readjust the screen depending on which area of the screen you're currently looking at. See pics below
Needless to say I sent the laptop back and kudos to newegg they handled my RMA without a hassle and sent the refund in less than a week.
Now, since I've always been a laptop enthusiast, I then decided to do away with budget laptops and go for the premiumly priced ones. After looking around on youtube and some hours googling I've decided to buy the GS60 4K from Gentech. Ironically it brought about more disappointments, if you're interested to know what happened, read my other posts about both the laptop and the reseller.
At first I just wanted to buy a basic laptop, nothing too fancy, so I decided to look around during black friday sales. I found one that costs ~ $900, it was an HP. A few days later I found on newegg a much better deal. It was lenovo z710, it has hybrid HDD, Full HD display, bluray player and a dedicated graphics card GT 840 (not GTX!), things that were not included in the HP laptop.
I quickly cancelled my order from HP and purchase the z710 from newegg. When I called HP, they immediately offered a $100 discount, they also mentioned that HP has a 21 day return period with free shipping. Those perks however did not sway my decision to cancel the order. I have to say that HP treated me very well as I got the refund very quickly as well.
Newegg processed my order quickly but when the laptop arrived I was sorely disappointed. The screen used was a budget TN panel made by Chi Mei. The contrast was poor and the viewing angles were even worse. Because of the very poor viewing angles, the brightness of the lower half of the screen is significantly different from the top half. Thus when watching a movie or just typing an email you have to constantly readjust the screen depending on which area of the screen you're currently looking at. See pics below
The screen shown below should have one uniform color
Here you can see that the black strip at the bottom is much brighter than the one at the top. This is the main problem with TN panels, especially the cheap ones.
Needless to say I sent the laptop back and kudos to newegg they handled my RMA without a hassle and sent the refund in less than a week.
Now, since I've always been a laptop enthusiast, I then decided to do away with budget laptops and go for the premiumly priced ones. After looking around on youtube and some hours googling I've decided to buy the GS60 4K from Gentech. Ironically it brought about more disappointments, if you're interested to know what happened, read my other posts about both the laptop and the reseller.
msi GS60 4k laptop review
Lots of people have done reviews and unboxing of the GS60 on youtube and elsewhere, here I want to give my perspective on things that are not usually covered.
First, the 4k UHD screen is a let down. I was hoping that it was at least comparable to Apple's retina display and at best equivalent to Super AMOLED. Nope, it wasn't even close to the retina display. The brightness/contrast for one is worse than that of retina's or super AMOLED's and because of its poor contrast, the colors portrayed by the screen change notably depending on the ambient light. But my biggest gripe is with the viewing angles. See pics below
The effects from the various angles shown above are not camera effects, they do look like that. Although I must say that based on the reviews on notebookcheck.net, even the 4k IGZO Sharp screen can't compete with the retina display, you can clearly see that Sharp IGZO exhibits the same off angle brightness weirdness just like mine (this is a unique value of notebookcheck.net's reviews, it has the pictures of the screen from various angles, although sometimes the shots are not great)
You might say that this rogue brightness is no big deal, but sometimes you need to see something up close (since 15 inch is not very big) and when you do suddenly the corners light up so to speak and it's annoying the hell out of me. This effect is more pronounced in darker rooms.
If you watch Xotic PC's review of GS60 4K 80 on youtube, you'd think that it has superb viewing angles. The laptop was put on a turntable and you'll see the screen from different horizontal and vertical angles. But that's where the problem lies. The brightness is stable as long as you see it from purely horizontal/vertical angles. If you see it from a mixed angle, say top right/left, the brightness changes dramatically. The screen suddenly becomes very milky, although the colors don't wash out. Even if you look at it from a short distance, say less than 3 inches, you'll see that the corners become very bright. This is something that doesn't happen with the macbook's retina display. Furthermore, the lightbleed is quite severe.
Some comments about XoticPC, you need to take their reviews with a grain of salt. Why? because they're selling the units they're reviewing. If you see enough of their youtube videos you'll see that they almost never say anything negative about the products under review, my favorite examples are: 1) the 27 second boot time of msi GT80 (a $3300 laptop with SSD) while my $900 lenovo boots in under 15 seconds with hybrid HDD, 2) the screen of lenovo Y50, it has very bad viewing angles, you can see that the colors wash out but the comment was along the line "it's no so bad". It's not just Xotic, it's true with anyone who has conflict of interest.
Second, I feel cheated by msi. In Xotic's review on youtube, the SSD used is Toshiba, when I received my laptop, they've switched to the inferior Kingston whose write speed is significantly lower than that of Toshiba's. As of RAID configuration, it doesn't help one bit with random accesses. Thus RAID 0 is not worth the risk in my opinion, since if one drive fails all data will be lost.
Third, the fans are loud, if you're new to gaming laptops you'll have a rude awakening. Also, there's a bug in the keyboard firmware. If you change the settings, like changing the backlight color or layers of the keyboard, the backlight sometimes stays on even after the laptop has completely shutdown. Speaking of the keyboard, the enter key area gets warmer than the rest of the keyboard since it is directly on top of the RAM heatsink.
Also, the 4K screen is based on the controversial pentile technology, look it up if you want to know more and I think the worse thing is that the battery is faulty. The wear level is around 15%, I've raised this up on NBR forum and turned out that other people experience the same thing, however, msi did not acknowledge or reply my inquiries either through NBR or email/phone call to their technical supervisor in California.
Other than that and some defects that only pertain to my unit, the laptop actually works fine. It plays game and other applications smoothly, except for 'injustice gods among us' which produces an insane amount of screen tearing. Also, it is interesting that IE runs more efficiently than FireFox or Chrome, especially when running adobe flash. IE has the least CPU utilization, almost half than other browsers.
First, the 4k UHD screen is a let down. I was hoping that it was at least comparable to Apple's retina display and at best equivalent to Super AMOLED. Nope, it wasn't even close to the retina display. The brightness/contrast for one is worse than that of retina's or super AMOLED's and because of its poor contrast, the colors portrayed by the screen change notably depending on the ambient light. But my biggest gripe is with the viewing angles. See pics below
The view straight on, looks good :)
The view from top left, weeeiiiirrrddd ..... brightness overwhelms ........
Looking upclose, corners be bright ..........
The effects from the various angles shown above are not camera effects, they do look like that. Although I must say that based on the reviews on notebookcheck.net, even the 4k IGZO Sharp screen can't compete with the retina display, you can clearly see that Sharp IGZO exhibits the same off angle brightness weirdness just like mine (this is a unique value of notebookcheck.net's reviews, it has the pictures of the screen from various angles, although sometimes the shots are not great)
You might say that this rogue brightness is no big deal, but sometimes you need to see something up close (since 15 inch is not very big) and when you do suddenly the corners light up so to speak and it's annoying the hell out of me. This effect is more pronounced in darker rooms.
If you watch Xotic PC's review of GS60 4K 80 on youtube, you'd think that it has superb viewing angles. The laptop was put on a turntable and you'll see the screen from different horizontal and vertical angles. But that's where the problem lies. The brightness is stable as long as you see it from purely horizontal/vertical angles. If you see it from a mixed angle, say top right/left, the brightness changes dramatically. The screen suddenly becomes very milky, although the colors don't wash out. Even if you look at it from a short distance, say less than 3 inches, you'll see that the corners become very bright. This is something that doesn't happen with the macbook's retina display. Furthermore, the lightbleed is quite severe.
Some comments about XoticPC, you need to take their reviews with a grain of salt. Why? because they're selling the units they're reviewing. If you see enough of their youtube videos you'll see that they almost never say anything negative about the products under review, my favorite examples are: 1) the 27 second boot time of msi GT80 (a $3300 laptop with SSD) while my $900 lenovo boots in under 15 seconds with hybrid HDD, 2) the screen of lenovo Y50, it has very bad viewing angles, you can see that the colors wash out but the comment was along the line "it's no so bad". It's not just Xotic, it's true with anyone who has conflict of interest.
Second, I feel cheated by msi. In Xotic's review on youtube, the SSD used is Toshiba, when I received my laptop, they've switched to the inferior Kingston whose write speed is significantly lower than that of Toshiba's. As of RAID configuration, it doesn't help one bit with random accesses. Thus RAID 0 is not worth the risk in my opinion, since if one drive fails all data will be lost.
Third, the fans are loud, if you're new to gaming laptops you'll have a rude awakening. Also, there's a bug in the keyboard firmware. If you change the settings, like changing the backlight color or layers of the keyboard, the backlight sometimes stays on even after the laptop has completely shutdown. Speaking of the keyboard, the enter key area gets warmer than the rest of the keyboard since it is directly on top of the RAM heatsink.
Also, the 4K screen is based on the controversial pentile technology, look it up if you want to know more and I think the worse thing is that the battery is faulty. The wear level is around 15%, I've raised this up on NBR forum and turned out that other people experience the same thing, however, msi did not acknowledge or reply my inquiries either through NBR or email/phone call to their technical supervisor in California.
Other than that and some defects that only pertain to my unit, the laptop actually works fine. It plays game and other applications smoothly, except for 'injustice gods among us' which produces an insane amount of screen tearing. Also, it is interesting that IE runs more efficiently than FireFox or Chrome, especially when running adobe flash. IE has the least CPU utilization, almost half than other browsers.
Friday, March 13, 2015
My unpleasant laptop buying experience with Gentech PC and MSI
Update: A few weeks ago Ken reached out to me to make things right, and so he did, he gave me free upgrades that I can't mention since he asked me not to mention them, but I appreciate his willingness to make things right, just want to give credits to him. My laptop was also sent to MSI to have the screen, fan and keyboard replaced due to the problems I mentioned below.
So here's my experience with GentechPC (and MSI customer service). All in all I have to say that it's not satisfactory. Be ready for a long story, you've been warned :P
I will start with the negative(s) so as not to end with an entirely bitter note :)
First, some background on why I leaned towards gentech over other resellers. If you check resellerratings.com you'll see a very good score, 10 out of 10. Looking back there are a couple odd things, first, the latest review was written in July 2014 and it was about a computer bought way back in 2011. Two, the score is too good to be true compared to Xotic's resellerratings page, which shows a more balanced feedbacks as there are quite a few negative reviews. The only negative review of gentech I could find was written in poor English on NBR (NoteBookReview forum) and there are holes in both the guy's story and gentech's replies. However, I can now relate to that guy much better (although I still don't entirely agree with him).
So based on those reviews and someone on notebookreview.com saying it's a toss up between gentech and mythlogic (more about this below) I chose to buy a $2127.99 GS60 4K from Gentech and also because Xotic told me that they'd take roughly 10 business days to ship it and one other reason, I wanted to have a customization done on the laptop and no normal reseller (best buy, newegg) can do this.
Let's start with the smallest minus point, since I ordered a thermal repasting and an extra SSD, they had to open the back panel of the laptop. However, it wasn't put back properly, the left back portion wasn't snapped in tight, it's a minor thing, I just had to push it in.
Now to the BIG letdown, my unit came defective. One hour into playing with it (I was just watching twitch), it shutdown automatically and won't boot up when I pressed the power button, later that night it happened again when I was just listening to spotify. It was really disappointing since on their website gentech claims to perform a 72 hour test for units they ship. On top of that they didn't set the boot order correctly after installing the second SSD for RAID, during boot the BIOS will try to do a network boot first, resulting in an error message and then boots from the SSD RAID, it's a small thing but still a disappointing negligence on their part.
Next, a negative about their service, lack of communication, especially during the RMA process. I didn't receive any confirmation that they received my laptop (compared to newegg that sent me an email the day my item was received by them). The next day I called and was told to call back in 2-3 days. So after 3 days I sent an email and was told to call them. The next day I called and Ken (I believe he's the owner of gentech) told me that he couldn't replicate the problem, to be honest, I suddenly felt sick.
I was so glad that I took a video of my laptop shutting down by itself while running prime95 (I ran prime95 to consume the battery quickly as I wasn't sure when it was going to shutdown). After sending the video to him, I called again the next day and good news, he was able to replicate the problem.
The second and very disappointing negative, lack of initiative. I received my laptop on Dec 24, 2014, a Wednesday. I emailed them about the problem on Friday Dec 26. I called them on Monday Dec 29 and Ken told me to do an EC reset, I did, and it didn't help. So on Tuesday I called again. Ken said that he'd try to get msi to send me a new battery, I was OK with that but not thrilled since GS60 is an ultra thin laptop with an internal battery, opening the back panel is quite an adventure. Ken assured me that it would be simple enough to open the back panel. I obliged. On Wed I was told that msi would want me to RMA my laptop. I replied that I'd prefer that they send me a new battery as I don't want to be without my laptop for more than 2 weeks (shipping alone takes 3 business days each way). So Ken told me he'd talk to msi again. The following Monday Ken told me that msi still wanted me to send in my laptop, again I gave the same reply.
In the meantime I decided to call msi directly, turned out that they're not of much help either. After contacting msi multiple times I finally got a hold of a very helpful supervisor. He suggested that since it's a brand new laptop, the most sensible thing to do is to ask gentech to replace it with a new unit and he convinced me on the risks of replacing the battery by myself. The biggest risk is if it turns out to NOT be a battery problem and he told me that opening the back panel is tricky for a novice. So I decided to ask gentech for a new unit. And interestingly gentech was finally able to get msi to do a cross RMA to send me a new battery. However, I was convinced to get a new replacement instead. When I told Ken about my change of mind he persuaded me not to ask for a new unit reminding me that it'd take significantly longer compared to just getting a new battery (since my unit has a customization, an extra SSD).
However I insisted to get a new unit without the extra SSD, i.e., a stock configuration and he agreed (he also agreed to refund me the difference). He quickly sent me a shipping label, I have to give credits to him for this particular fast response.
This is what I meant by lack of initiative. I felt that gentech only acted as a passive middle man between msi and me. They didn't make enough effort to resolve the issue on their own rather, they just threw it back to msi. As someone on NBR noted, the value of a reseller is when something bad happens and whether they stand behind their services. They should have offered me a replacement/refund since it's a very expensive laptop that came DOA. On the contrary, I was persuaded not to ask for a new unit and had to go back and forth many times.
Back to the RMA. You'd think that since he could replicate the problem I'm home and hose, well, not really. He gave me some sort of nonsensical explanation as to why my laptop shutdown by itself. He said that I should've run the CPU at full load (as that is what prime95 does) as the battery wouldn't be able to handle it. It is quite ridiculous, the CPU is designed to run at full load, I even mentioned that in my video the GPU wasn't even running, so the battery should be able to handle the CPU running at full load since the design caters for both CPU and GPU.
I later asked him to run the same test on another GS60 laptop and see if the battery indeed can't handle the CPU at full load. Actually out of the 5 times it shut down by itself only once it ran at full load (when I recorded it, the two other times I was just running the battery callibration app). The next day Ken told me that he tried it on another GS60 and it also shut down automatically. Frankly I don't believe that he tried it on another GS60, the reason is that the replacement unit (on which I'm typing this review) is just OK and he didn't send me any evidence that he did. Then again, it was just my suspicion.
Since he could replicate the problem I asked as to what the conclusion would be, will he give me a refund or a new unit (our original agreement) or something else, his response was to call him again the next day, at this point I lost almost all confidence in gentech.
The next day he sent me an email that after replacing the battery the problem seemed to go away (this is the first time he took an initiative to contact me), I then called him and ask to when he would ship me the new unit. His reply was baffling, "oh, you still want a new unit?". I reiterated to him that the only reason I sent the laptop in was because he agreed to send me a new unit. He took quite a long pause and said "OK". So after asking him to email me a confirmation about this original agreement we had he dropped me an email saying that the new unit will be shipped in 2-3 days after testing is done.
This is in stark contrast to one of the reseller ratings feedback that mentioned how Ken took the initiative to sent the reviewer a better part after a part died within two days of receiving the laptop.
Obviously, in my eyes, their service did not warrant a 10/10 ratings, considering how often I had to call them and the unnecessary back and forth that took place.
That almost concludes the negative part, one more thing is that Ken told me over the phone that he'd refund me the difference when the new unit is shipped, but it didn't happen, the refund came late.
After receiving the UPS tracking number for the replacment, I asked them when the refund would be sent out, and the reply I got was that they would send me the refund without mentioning when. A week later I reminded them again and I finally got my refund. The whole RMA process (not including the refund) took longer than expected, 3 weeks in total (Jan 12 - Feb 2 2015).
Now to the not so negative part. Since the cyber december promotion includes a set of headphones and a mouse I would expect the box the laptop came in to be quite big. However, gentech managed to crammed both headphones and mouse inside the powerbrick box. Also, when shipping my laptop for the RMA, Ken asked me to not send in the manual and powerbrick (to reduce shipping weight). So, apparently they'll try to cut cost as much as possible. I don't really mind cramming things into the power brick box, but unboxing new items is part of the experience you want to have when purchasing something new, especially something that costs more than $2000.
We can now switch to the positive. One of the positive things about gentech is that everytime you call them, someone will pick up, you will NOT be put on hold. I know, I called them a lot.
Second, they shipped my laptop fast. I ordered it on Monday Dec 15 2014, with an extra SSD and thermal repasting and they shipped it on Friday Dec 19. Although I don't think they repasted my laptop. The temperatures are no different from the review videos with stock thermal paste.
Third, I didn't receive my game code and they emailed me the game code quickly.
Now to the mythlogic comparison, I don't think Gentech is as responsive as myth. I emailed myth and got a reply within 5 minutes. Another time I emailed them about SLI GPU with 4K display and was told that there was no such configuration so I said I'd wait, within an hour I got an email that it might not be wise to wait since such configuration might not exist ever. They did follow up actively, kudos to them.
I also tried mythlogic's online help, and within minutes "one smart nerd" attended me, as a comparison, I waited for 30 mins for Xotic's online help.
As for the replacement unit itself, it works but it brings more disappointments. First, it didn't come in the msi card board box, I was quite shocked when I first received it considering I sent the old one in its original packaging. Second, the keyboard bulges around the enter key which is directly on top of the RAM heatsink. Third, the CPU fan makes high pitched noises at 2900 RPM while the GPU fan rattles a bit at high RPM.
[Update] I don't think it's the CPU fan, I now believe it's a CPU whine caused by the idle state, when the fan is at 2900 RPM the CPU is at idle.
So, in conclusion, it wasn't worth ordering from gentech. One of the reasons I ordered from them was because I wanted some customizations, otherwise I'd just get it from newegg, and at the end I got a stock configuration after all. But the main thing is that if something goes awry you're pretty much on your own.
You might also ask, why do they have lots of positive reviews? My take is that most of the time you don't have a problem and you're on your way enjoying your sparkling new laptop, but, I can't reiterate this enough, the real value of a reseller is how they handle unforeseen circumstances, especially for premiumly priced laptops. Their handling of my case left me with a bad overall experience of the laptop, even though in itself the laptop is OK, but the experience left me wanting.
As for MSI, I'll post that on another blog, see ya ...
So here's my experience with GentechPC (and MSI customer service). All in all I have to say that it's not satisfactory. Be ready for a long story, you've been warned :P
I will start with the negative(s) so as not to end with an entirely bitter note :)
First, some background on why I leaned towards gentech over other resellers. If you check resellerratings.com you'll see a very good score, 10 out of 10. Looking back there are a couple odd things, first, the latest review was written in July 2014 and it was about a computer bought way back in 2011. Two, the score is too good to be true compared to Xotic's resellerratings page, which shows a more balanced feedbacks as there are quite a few negative reviews. The only negative review of gentech I could find was written in poor English on NBR (NoteBookReview forum) and there are holes in both the guy's story and gentech's replies. However, I can now relate to that guy much better (although I still don't entirely agree with him).
So based on those reviews and someone on notebookreview.com saying it's a toss up between gentech and mythlogic (more about this below) I chose to buy a $2127.99 GS60 4K from Gentech and also because Xotic told me that they'd take roughly 10 business days to ship it and one other reason, I wanted to have a customization done on the laptop and no normal reseller (best buy, newegg) can do this.
Let's start with the smallest minus point, since I ordered a thermal repasting and an extra SSD, they had to open the back panel of the laptop. However, it wasn't put back properly, the left back portion wasn't snapped in tight, it's a minor thing, I just had to push it in.
Now to the BIG letdown, my unit came defective. One hour into playing with it (I was just watching twitch), it shutdown automatically and won't boot up when I pressed the power button, later that night it happened again when I was just listening to spotify. It was really disappointing since on their website gentech claims to perform a 72 hour test for units they ship. On top of that they didn't set the boot order correctly after installing the second SSD for RAID, during boot the BIOS will try to do a network boot first, resulting in an error message and then boots from the SSD RAID, it's a small thing but still a disappointing negligence on their part.
Next, a negative about their service, lack of communication, especially during the RMA process. I didn't receive any confirmation that they received my laptop (compared to newegg that sent me an email the day my item was received by them). The next day I called and was told to call back in 2-3 days. So after 3 days I sent an email and was told to call them. The next day I called and Ken (I believe he's the owner of gentech) told me that he couldn't replicate the problem, to be honest, I suddenly felt sick.
I was so glad that I took a video of my laptop shutting down by itself while running prime95 (I ran prime95 to consume the battery quickly as I wasn't sure when it was going to shutdown). After sending the video to him, I called again the next day and good news, he was able to replicate the problem.
The second and very disappointing negative, lack of initiative. I received my laptop on Dec 24, 2014, a Wednesday. I emailed them about the problem on Friday Dec 26. I called them on Monday Dec 29 and Ken told me to do an EC reset, I did, and it didn't help. So on Tuesday I called again. Ken said that he'd try to get msi to send me a new battery, I was OK with that but not thrilled since GS60 is an ultra thin laptop with an internal battery, opening the back panel is quite an adventure. Ken assured me that it would be simple enough to open the back panel. I obliged. On Wed I was told that msi would want me to RMA my laptop. I replied that I'd prefer that they send me a new battery as I don't want to be without my laptop for more than 2 weeks (shipping alone takes 3 business days each way). So Ken told me he'd talk to msi again. The following Monday Ken told me that msi still wanted me to send in my laptop, again I gave the same reply.
In the meantime I decided to call msi directly, turned out that they're not of much help either. After contacting msi multiple times I finally got a hold of a very helpful supervisor. He suggested that since it's a brand new laptop, the most sensible thing to do is to ask gentech to replace it with a new unit and he convinced me on the risks of replacing the battery by myself. The biggest risk is if it turns out to NOT be a battery problem and he told me that opening the back panel is tricky for a novice. So I decided to ask gentech for a new unit. And interestingly gentech was finally able to get msi to do a cross RMA to send me a new battery. However, I was convinced to get a new replacement instead. When I told Ken about my change of mind he persuaded me not to ask for a new unit reminding me that it'd take significantly longer compared to just getting a new battery (since my unit has a customization, an extra SSD).
However I insisted to get a new unit without the extra SSD, i.e., a stock configuration and he agreed (he also agreed to refund me the difference). He quickly sent me a shipping label, I have to give credits to him for this particular fast response.
This is what I meant by lack of initiative. I felt that gentech only acted as a passive middle man between msi and me. They didn't make enough effort to resolve the issue on their own rather, they just threw it back to msi. As someone on NBR noted, the value of a reseller is when something bad happens and whether they stand behind their services. They should have offered me a replacement/refund since it's a very expensive laptop that came DOA. On the contrary, I was persuaded not to ask for a new unit and had to go back and forth many times.
Back to the RMA. You'd think that since he could replicate the problem I'm home and hose, well, not really. He gave me some sort of nonsensical explanation as to why my laptop shutdown by itself. He said that I should've run the CPU at full load (as that is what prime95 does) as the battery wouldn't be able to handle it. It is quite ridiculous, the CPU is designed to run at full load, I even mentioned that in my video the GPU wasn't even running, so the battery should be able to handle the CPU running at full load since the design caters for both CPU and GPU.
I later asked him to run the same test on another GS60 laptop and see if the battery indeed can't handle the CPU at full load. Actually out of the 5 times it shut down by itself only once it ran at full load (when I recorded it, the two other times I was just running the battery callibration app). The next day Ken told me that he tried it on another GS60 and it also shut down automatically. Frankly I don't believe that he tried it on another GS60, the reason is that the replacement unit (on which I'm typing this review) is just OK and he didn't send me any evidence that he did. Then again, it was just my suspicion.
Since he could replicate the problem I asked as to what the conclusion would be, will he give me a refund or a new unit (our original agreement) or something else, his response was to call him again the next day, at this point I lost almost all confidence in gentech.
The next day he sent me an email that after replacing the battery the problem seemed to go away (this is the first time he took an initiative to contact me), I then called him and ask to when he would ship me the new unit. His reply was baffling, "oh, you still want a new unit?". I reiterated to him that the only reason I sent the laptop in was because he agreed to send me a new unit. He took quite a long pause and said "OK". So after asking him to email me a confirmation about this original agreement we had he dropped me an email saying that the new unit will be shipped in 2-3 days after testing is done.
This is in stark contrast to one of the reseller ratings feedback that mentioned how Ken took the initiative to sent the reviewer a better part after a part died within two days of receiving the laptop.
Obviously, in my eyes, their service did not warrant a 10/10 ratings, considering how often I had to call them and the unnecessary back and forth that took place.
That almost concludes the negative part, one more thing is that Ken told me over the phone that he'd refund me the difference when the new unit is shipped, but it didn't happen, the refund came late.
After receiving the UPS tracking number for the replacment, I asked them when the refund would be sent out, and the reply I got was that they would send me the refund without mentioning when. A week later I reminded them again and I finally got my refund. The whole RMA process (not including the refund) took longer than expected, 3 weeks in total (Jan 12 - Feb 2 2015).
Now to the not so negative part. Since the cyber december promotion includes a set of headphones and a mouse I would expect the box the laptop came in to be quite big. However, gentech managed to crammed both headphones and mouse inside the powerbrick box. Also, when shipping my laptop for the RMA, Ken asked me to not send in the manual and powerbrick (to reduce shipping weight). So, apparently they'll try to cut cost as much as possible. I don't really mind cramming things into the power brick box, but unboxing new items is part of the experience you want to have when purchasing something new, especially something that costs more than $2000.
We can now switch to the positive. One of the positive things about gentech is that everytime you call them, someone will pick up, you will NOT be put on hold. I know, I called them a lot.
Second, they shipped my laptop fast. I ordered it on Monday Dec 15 2014, with an extra SSD and thermal repasting and they shipped it on Friday Dec 19. Although I don't think they repasted my laptop. The temperatures are no different from the review videos with stock thermal paste.
Third, I didn't receive my game code and they emailed me the game code quickly.
Now to the mythlogic comparison, I don't think Gentech is as responsive as myth. I emailed myth and got a reply within 5 minutes. Another time I emailed them about SLI GPU with 4K display and was told that there was no such configuration so I said I'd wait, within an hour I got an email that it might not be wise to wait since such configuration might not exist ever. They did follow up actively, kudos to them.
I also tried mythlogic's online help, and within minutes "one smart nerd" attended me, as a comparison, I waited for 30 mins for Xotic's online help.
As for the replacement unit itself, it works but it brings more disappointments. First, it didn't come in the msi card board box, I was quite shocked when I first received it considering I sent the old one in its original packaging. Second, the keyboard bulges around the enter key which is directly on top of the RAM heatsink. Third, the CPU fan makes high pitched noises at 2900 RPM while the GPU fan rattles a bit at high RPM.
[Update] I don't think it's the CPU fan, I now believe it's a CPU whine caused by the idle state, when the fan is at 2900 RPM the CPU is at idle.
So, in conclusion, it wasn't worth ordering from gentech. One of the reasons I ordered from them was because I wanted some customizations, otherwise I'd just get it from newegg, and at the end I got a stock configuration after all. But the main thing is that if something goes awry you're pretty much on your own.
You might also ask, why do they have lots of positive reviews? My take is that most of the time you don't have a problem and you're on your way enjoying your sparkling new laptop, but, I can't reiterate this enough, the real value of a reseller is how they handle unforeseen circumstances, especially for premiumly priced laptops. Their handling of my case left me with a bad overall experience of the laptop, even though in itself the laptop is OK, but the experience left me wanting.
As for MSI, I'll post that on another blog, see ya ...
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