ASUS non-existent products

- I have a desire to buy a car, but I do not have the opportunity. I have the opportunity to buy a goat, but I have no desire.

Today I want to share some painful stories: a story I’ve been ill with for the last year trying to buy a laptop made by the wonderful company ASUS.

About a year ago, I read a Boomburum ' preview on Habré and a new at that time B-series of ASUS laptops. It was on New Year's Eve, and I thought: "How cool would it be to arrange such a gift for yourself, if not by the New Year, then at least for the anniversary!" I was born on January 22, because a three-week supply of time for the sequence “find where it is for sale, take if available or order, pay and receive” at that time seemed to me quite sufficient, considering that in early January, the search for Yandex started something sensible issue requests like "ASUS B43J to buy." Here in this place begins a whistle dance with a tambourine, that is, the period of my unfulfilled naive hopes.

From the entire series I liked the version of the 14-inch B43J model with a discrete video adapter and on an Intel Core i5 processor. Very pleased that the typewriter is pre-installed 64-bit Windows 7 Professional. For complete happiness, I would like 4 GB of RAM. That's it in this configuration, I was hoping to get myself a "workhorse."
')
I live in a deep Siberian village with a population of half a million, which is sometimes proudly called a city, the city of Novosibirsk. Who does not know is in Siberia, beyond the Urals, almost 3000 km from the capital. But even here we have the beginnings of civilization - unlimited internet, IKEA and even the official BMW dealer. 2GIS grew out of our village, there are a couple of sights, but it's not about them. Trading anything in Novosibirsk is absolutely wild, namely: you can buy in two ways - take what you see from the seller or ask the seller if he can accept an order for a thing, if he can - wait and he will bring weeks in 2-3 . But it happens that it can not, and then you can only try to sort out other sellers, but usually the refusal of one is equivalent to the inability to buy this thing in general. “Ha!” - say you, - “So you can order it from an online store or simply from a seller in another city or country, and it will arrive by mail (alternative delivery service)!”. Here I will make a reservation - I don’t really like this option, firstly because of questions with a guarantee, secondly, I don’t want to get a brick or a bag of grain. But as it turned out - not a barrier.

To my birthday, all the sellers available to me vaguely shook their heads and just threw up their hands - “Don't ... We don’t know such a model, the suppliers don’t, we won’t be able to bring it.” Meanwhile, Yandex.Market was already timidly showing prices for several Moscow sellers for one single configuration.

Looking ahead, I want to tell you how much I was surprised that it is theoretically impossible to find out the possible configurations of a specific model! For most manufacturers, each model still has N possible configurations, each of which has its own unique alphanumeric identifier. This is logical and very convenient, and even more so if it is publicly available information, I chose, for example on the official website, the configuration and look for where it is and how much it costs, and you are clearly looking for exactly what you have chosen. But not at ASUS! I suspect that their models also have a list of configurations, but even their technical support does not know about it. This is either some kind of trade secret or just a blatant mess. Well, or the second - the reason for the first. On the sites (by the way, ASUS has several sites and everything is updated disgustingly) we can find a section on the model, we can even see a general description of the possible configurations, but the configurations themselves cannot be found anywhere . And the funny thing is that models eventually appear on the market, which, with their filling, do not even fit into this scant group of available information (for example, we see the version with a processor that is not included in the list of installed ones, for example, but laptops with those listed - on sale just do not see).

In March, it became possible to buy the object of desire in the option "to order". But I was soon overjoyed - the only configuration with a “crooked” set of 2 + 1 GB memory dies. But seriously: I don’t understand - why build 3 gigabyte configurations and then put on them a 64-bit operating system, of which all 4 can fit? Anyway. The point is that I did not want such a configuration. “Wait!” Said the salesman, and his colleagues in the workshop echoed him.

Began to wait. After a month or two, now I don’t remember exactly, in a similar purchase option, it was possible to buy a configuration with four gigabytes of RAM, but ... with Windows 7 Home Premium. Again, I was amazed - why does the home version of the operating system need a model for the business sector? Again: "Wait."

As it turned out, the situation is typical not only for Novosibirsk, but in general for Russia, at least if you trust Yandex.Market and the web search in general.

At this point, I thought that it was probably worth taking a look at the manufacturer to see the list of possible configurations, and maybe get some advice on where and how to buy the product you like. For both questions, the manufacturer only shrugged. I didn’t receive a reply to my e-mail at all, and by telephone every time no one could answer me intelligibly.

Then new models of laptops from other manufacturers appeared on the market, already with updated Intel i3 / 5/7 processors, and I shifted the focus from ASUS to the other side. I spat on ASUS and almost forgot, but ( by tradition? ) On New Year's Eve, I came across a regular review of ASUS 'beautiful business portability, now with updated model suffixes and, accordingly, stuffing. I don’t already know what, but the design of these devices has sunk into my heart, and I was tempted to buy one of them. This time - B43S. Well, or B33E, if everything is really bad with the first one (at the moment on the manufacturer’s websites there’s such a mess that it’s not immediately clear if he even releases these models). And always with Core i5, Windows 7 Professional and 4 GB RAM.

And again, forehead into the wall. B43S for sellers in nature at the moment does not exist, although its reviews that I came across, dated at least three months earlier. But when it goes on sale ... Something tells me that options will be available either with the wrong processors or with the wrong operating system. Or some other similar configurations, probably especially for Russia, because the mind, as the classic said, cannot be understood, and therefore we need to deliver only very special configurations.

B33E is already available, but only with i3, i5 seems to exist in nature (represented by Yandex.Market), but very sluggish and mysterious. In addition, Intel HD Graphics 3000 does not inspire me so much that I strongly doubt the ability to force myself to vote for it with a ruble.

I am sure that I am not the only one who does not understand why everything is happening so stupidly. And, I think, many people, driven by such desires to buy ASUS products, end up compromising and buying something, but not quite what we would like. I had previously decided to write and publish this text, perhaps even this would allow reaching a strange producer.

I called non-existent ASUS products because at the moment of relevance they do not exist in accessibility, at least in the logical and most desirable configurations.

PS: The phrase from the title of the first review I mentioned here after this whole story has acquired completely different, very unexpected shades at the time of its reading.