I got a laptop for my wife back when we were in college. It developed a problem with the monitor where the screen would look all corrupt after using it for a little bit. My wife, while reciting the prayer of percussive maintenance, would whack it and the problem would go away for a while. So I figured the connection had come loose. No biggie, just reseat it or replace it. The warranty had expired, so I cracked it open to see what was wrong. I reseated the cables in it and it worked... for a bit. Then the problem came back. Eventually we got fed up and bought another one, same model, figuring it was a fluke... It developed the same issue. Come to find out, Asus cheaped out in the ribbon cable for the monitor and installed ones that were too short for the laptop. Looking online, there were a bunch of people complaining about the same thing.

Around the same time as I had gotten her the new laptop, I'd also bought an Asus ZenPad for her to read on. We'll, that suddenly developed a screen issue too! Almost exactly the same as the laptops! My wife, ever eager to apply kinetic reinforcement, found that twisting the tablet a little bit also fixed the issue. I went online and, sure enough, Asus used cheap cables again! They would last just long enough for the warranty to expire before they'd detach.

I swore to myself I'll never buy another Asus product as long as I live. If I ever have kids, I'll disown them if they do too... Fuck these scammers.

[+] NocturnalMorning -25 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I highly doubt they used those cables maliciously knowing they'd go out right when the warranty expired. It was probably a cost thing, and they later realized (too late to fix it) during production sometime that the cables were a warranty issue.

Engineers don't do thing maliciously with their designs. They pick things based on cost, and probably even raised the cable length as a risk/concern during the design and testing phase, and were overruled by the bean counters.

It's happened to me before.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Even in your defense, you point out that someone at the company made the explict choice to sell devices with defective cabling. At no point did he blame the engineers who designed it for that choice.

That's a shit company that doesnt deserve anyone's support, regardless if it was "engineers" or "bean counters" that opted to continue to sell what they knew was a defective product.

The fact that it happened over and over with multiple devices means it's a culture issue with the company, not a one off mistake.

[+] NocturnalMorning -8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm just suggesting a probable scenario. I would be really surprised if this was malicious.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Intentionally selling a defective product without informing you customers beforehand is malicious, no matter the justification.

[–] NocturnalMorning -1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm fine not having this conversation anymore. I just gave a perspective from an engineer. No need to continue shitting on me. I'm not even defending the practice.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I haven't shit on you at all. Re- read my comments and point out one negative thing I'e said about you or engineers.

Ive only talked about buisness ethics, and the pervasive negatives that come from misleading customers. If you feel that's a dig on you, some self reflection might be warranted.