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MSI has a bad reputation?


zapslider

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From several sources having problems with the MSI brands, and communication with support in general. I really cannot see that MSI would "stink" in any way?

Im refering to this site mostly: MSISTINKS.COM

This guy has had the most worst experiance by all means from a company this big. However he got a great compensation in the end.

So guys!

Are you happy with your MSI systems?

I bought a gt70 0ne lately and the only thing really bothers me, is the fans which are loud as hell when speeding up!

So anyway, please share your thoughts/stories of MSI :)

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I think with any brand there are going to be people that have a worst experience than usual and they tend to be the loudest. Most people who are satisfied with their purchase rarely go out of their way to let it be known so they're the silent majority. If you search for Alienware or Dell hate pages, you'll find plenty of those too but that doesn't mean Alienware is a bad brand or has problems.

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I think with any brand there are going to be people that have a worst experience than usual and they tend to be the loudest. Most people who are satisfied with their purchase rarely go out of their way to let it be known so they're the silent majority. If you search for Alienware or Dell hate pages, you'll find plenty of those too but that doesn't mean Alienware is a bad brand or has problems.

Yes you got a good point, since there will allways be individuals having some sort of dissatisfaction with a brand.

Im just hoping that I made the right choice to stick with MSI :)

Got the feeling after some google research, that MSI in general had a slight bad reputation by its name...

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I had an Alienware 17Mx R1 before buying my MSI GT70 ONE, and to be honest I was a bit worried about the cooling system. After using it for several months, I have to say that overall I am more than pleased with my laptop (and MSI). My only complaint would be the noise level when iddle/surfing which is definately louder than my previous laptop but it really is a minor detail furthermore this "issue" has been addressed on the new GT70, so props to MSI :).

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I had an Alienware 17Mx R1 before buying my MSI GT70 ONE, and to be honest I was a bit worried about the cooling system. After using it for several months, I have to say that overall I am more than pleased with my laptop (and MSI). My only complaint would be the noise level when iddle/surfing which is definately louder than my previous laptop but it really is a minor detail furthermore this "issue" has been addressed on the new GT70, so props to MSI :).

I was over at a friends house this other day, and he got this complete silent desktop pc, making me wanna get rid of my noisy MSI ASAP! However I found out that you can get very bearable levels, only by adjusting the energy schedule really.

After all this 1 week after my purchase, im getting a new perspective of laptops in general, thinking I might never go back to desktops really! The benefit of carrying your machine around at light weight is great aswell as the performance, which today is very equal to high end desktop pc's.

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Meh it's tough to compare desktops to laptops. Both have their advantages/disadvantages. You just have to pick which one suits you best. I'm not sure about the GT70, but for my 16F2 I am able to edit the EC and change my fan speeds and temperature ranges, so when I'm not gaming the notebook is whisper quiet.

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Agree that you cant compare desktops to laptops. Regarding the fans, I tried to get control over the fans but to no avail on my GT70 (at the same time since it does not bother me that much I didnt try too hard...).

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I would have to agree that MSI has worse after sales support on two grounds:

1) They do not pro actively publish upgraded drivers and firmware on their web sites

2) When contacted for support they seem slow to provide support and usually end up doing something that doesn't help

In my experience I'd put them behind: Dell, HP, Sony, Toshiba & Acer

My recent experience comes from an MSI GT680 gaming laptop that cost over $2200 Australian.

I was having issues with the Blu Ray combo not liking some blank DVD media and either taking a long time to recognise it or thinking it was an audio CD.

I could see from the Internet that there was an update to fix this in the TSST drive I have.

The problem was that TSST does not provide firmware directly to end users and MSI did not have the update on their web site.

I opened several support cases with MSI.

In the end they just sent me the same firmware I had.

They simply did not seem to even try to contact TSST.

I'm guessing that they probably didn't want to pay for the update.

My only option now is to try and find someone with the right model Sony Vaio who would be happy for me to put my Blu Ray combo in their laptop to flash it.

I'll never buy another MSI device.

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I would have to agree that MSI has worse after sales support on two grounds:

1) They do not pro actively publish upgraded drivers and firmware on their web sites

2) When contacted for support they seem slow to provide support and usually end up doing something that doesn't help

In my experience I'd put them behind: Dell, HP, Sony, Toshiba & Acer

My recent experience comes from an MSI GT680 gaming laptop that cost over $2200 Australian.

I was having issues with the Blu Ray combo not liking some blank DVD media and either taking a long time to recognise it or thinking it was an audio CD.

I could see from the Internet that there was an update to fix this in the TSST drive I have.

The problem was that TSST does not provide firmware directly to end users and MSI did not have the update on their web site.

I opened several support cases with MSI.

In the end they just sent me the same firmware I had.

They simply did not seem to even try to contact TSST.

I'm guessing that they probably didn't want to pay for the update.

My only option now is to try and find someone with the right model Sony Vaio who would be happy for me to put my Blu Ray combo in their laptop to flash it.

I'll never buy another MSI device.

1. Very few companies publish drivers as soon as updates are available. This is why I go to the part manufacturers website and downloading the latest drivers is always recommended. MSI has had BIOS updates for the 16F2 every 2 months; I know this only because I had to go through the pain of unlocking everyone of those revisions.

2. I will agree that MSI is a slow company. But, there are many positives you haven't taken note of. With the Sandy Bridge recall/fiasco, they offered a free one year warranty, including accidental damage extension (If you registered the notebook within 60 days) on all retail branded G-Series notebooks (Whitebooks not included). This was a bold move as many manufacturers, including the likes of: Sony, Dell, Toshiba and Acer did nothing. IIRC, HP extended the warranty for one year as well, but not accidental.

Also, many users that had 570M/580M GTXs in their notebooks and opted to overvolt them for better overclocks ended up burning their GPUs. MSI only asked for the GPU back and sent a brand new GPU just for the cost of shipping. I don't know of a single company that will gladly take a burnt GPU (That's worth $400-$500 at the time) and replace it for no fee.

I'm not saying MSI is above the rest of the crew but they do take care of their customers much better than the big box brands. HP support is pathetic. I returned my laptop within 30 days because it was unusable with their drivers. The only good thing they have going is a 30-day no questions asked full refund. MSI also builds some long lasting machines with proven cooling and includes stuff like: 4 RAM slots, XM-CPU support, MXM slot (That supports upgrades), 2 HDD bays (or 1 bay and 2 mSATAs) + ODD, 1080p STANDARD screens, etc. The best part is your paying much less than what Clevo/Alienware charge you. If anything MSI was the one to raise the bar for specs per price, while I'd say Alienware has done the same for warranty support.

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I agree with Msi having poor customer support, takes about two weeks to get an answer from them.

But the price + upgradability(is this a real word?) makes up for what they lack in other things for me, plus I think the build quality is pretty good.

One brand I'll never buy anything from again is Asus, I have two expensive laptops from them and both broke down after about 6 months,

and they didn't even want to pay for service on one of them which I since then havn't used. Worst build quality ever on their gear.

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1. Very few companies publish drivers as soon as updates are available. This is why I go to the part manufacturers website and downloading the latest drivers is always recommended. MSI has had BIOS updates for the 16F2 every 2 months; I know this only because I had to go through the pain of unlocking everyone of those revisions.

2. I will agree that MSI is a slow company. But, there are many positives you haven't taken note of. With the Sandy Bridge recall/fiasco, they offered a free one year warranty, including accidental damage extension (If you registered the notebook within 60 days) on all retail branded G-Series notebooks (Whitebooks not included). This was a bold move as many manufacturers, including the likes of: Sony, Dell, Toshiba and Acer did nothing. IIRC, HP extended the warranty for one year as well, but not accidental.

Also, many users that had 570M/580M GTXs in their notebooks and opted to overvolt them for better overclocks ended up burning their GPUs. MSI only asked for the GPU back and sent a brand new GPU just for the cost of shipping. I don't know of a single company that will gladly take a burnt GPU (That's worth $400-$500 at the time) and replace it for no fee.

I'm not saying MSI is above the rest of the crew but they do take care of their customers much better than the big box brands. HP support is pathetic. I returned my laptop within 30 days because it was unusable with their drivers. The only good thing they have going is a 30-day no questions asked full refund. MSI also builds some long lasting machines with proven cooling and includes stuff like: 4 RAM slots, XM-CPU support, MXM slot (That supports upgrades), 2 HDD bays (or 1 bay and 2 mSATAs) + ODD, 1080p STANDARD screens, etc. The best part is your paying much less than what Clevo/Alienware charge you. If anything MSI was the one to raise the bar for specs per price, while I'd say Alienware has done the same for warranty support.

You're right about the driver updates but fortunately we can get drivers elsewhere.

It's the firmware that annoyed me.

Only MSI can supply the TSST firmware and they didn't.

Other companies did. This is what puts me off MSI.

I agree they do make some attractive products with good specs... This is why I have an MSI gaming laptop. It ticked all the boxes.

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I'm happy with MSI. Had 2 laptops, and MB for my PC from them. Never had any problems. When someone says its slow firmware and driver releasing - thats true, but I can only ASUS is more or less fast. Other companies are slow as well. Even more slow.

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  • 1 month later...

Have just been through about 6 months of grief with my relatively new GT70, windows 8 was blue screening with all sorts of fault codes from day 1, however since the auto recovery process for windows 8 is pretty decent I was just putting up with it thinking it was the OS. Then the HDD died, it then took two weeks to replace it then finally last week after many many rounds of wiping, removing hardware etc, it turned out to be a faulty memory module causing the BSOD's.

Let me just say their support is pretty average - no frills and you don't always get consistent instructions - you have to do most of the leg work and heaven help you if you're not tech savvy. But the laptop was pretty cheap and it's performance is brilliant, so now that the hardware issues are sorted I'm pretty happy with it, I doubt it's common to have this many problems with their stuff, it was probably just back luck and got landed with a faulty part - they can't rightly quality check every aspect of every system.

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Keep in mind that companies often take another companies existing reference design and rebrand them as their own (pre-Dell Alienware). In these cases any design flaws aren't typically the fault of the advertising company.

In my case I've actually had better luck with MSI than ASUS. Different people will have different experiences with a product and it's support based on their level of knowledge and their social demeanor when interacting with support.

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I'm happy with my GT60 0ne, silent, not very big, and affordable for a laptop with an i7 and a 680m (I take it during the summer sale, 1700$ instead of 2250 with asus), I'm a bit disappointed with performance, my desktop with i5 + 560 ti is better for gaming.

My friend bought recently a gx60 (1150 with Hitman Abslution), he is experiencing some issues with the HDD (always at 99% of usage), but for the price he is happy with it, the screen and the sound are awesome for this price.

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I agree with Msi having poor customer support, takes about two weeks to get an answer from them.

But the price + upgradability(is this a real word?) makes up for what they lack in other things for me, plus I think the build quality is pretty good.

One brand I'll never buy anything from again is Asus, I have two expensive laptops from them and both broke down after about 6 months,

and they didn't even want to pay for service on one of them which I since then havn't used. Worst build quality ever on their gear.

I agree with Suoah.

The support from MSI is slow compared to other brands like HP and Dell.

But they have a real good price quality

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I bought my first MSI laptop this January from Xotic PC, it is a GT-70 276US and I can say that overall I have been very pleased with it. As for the customer service I did have to RMA my Msata controller along with the two Mstata's, now I had to do this a week after I had purchased it and I was super pissed because I basically just spent over $3000 on a brand new laptop and they sent me a broken one. Anyways I got in contact with the MSI customer service through Xotic PC, which I don't really know if that makes a difference, but anyways the guy was super knowledgeable and we were able to diagnose the problem and I installed windows on the 750 GB harddrive and it worked, so instead of sending my whole laptop in I was just able to send in the MSata controller with the drives. The only thing that pissed me off was that I had to pay to the ship the item to the RMA site, which just irked me. But anyways after like 3 weeks, which seemed to take forever, they sent me the new drives and controller, and even upgraded the drives to a better brand, which i think they have switched all their MSata's to now. Anyways overall I have been very pleased with my MSI laptop!!!

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I think MSI needs to work on their quality control. I have a GT60-2OD and while the quality is fine. I have had the loud idle issue that is plaguing the GT70 and GT60. NSTech fan I have is stupidly loud at idle and in fact I'm on my second one that I brought of ebay and its loud too.

MSI support were not too helpful. They would not sent me a new fan. Dispute my proof of the noise via videos on youtube. Instead I have to send my notebook to them and pay the postage of course which is more than the cost of a new fan!

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I'm still on the fence but so far my experience has been poor. While I get where they are going with the switchable graphics design, the fact that it breaks opengl so bad is quite heartbreaking. I am really looking forward to trying out the custom bios as I feel it will resolve a lot of the issues I am experiencing with the GX60. The entire purpose of this laptop was to be a "Rifttop" for my Oculus Rift since it doesn't need too much HP to work properly, but this whole switchable graphics thing just completely screws it up for this.

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