u/RedcrownVet

The enormous 200 watt ASUS charger for the PX13 appears to be useless overkill.

I bought the PX13 months ago as a traveling Photoshop machine, replacing an old Dell XPS. Sadly, the 1st trip got canceled, but now I'm prepping for a Euro trip in 3 weeks. I had read that the PX13 would have significantly better performance on the heavyweight Photoshop AI functions (like Denoise) when plugged in vs. battery. And that the enormous official ASUS 200 watt charger would give far better performance than any 3rd party USB changer (relative to the onboard GPU).

So, prepping for the upcoming trip I did some testing. Mostly running Denoise AI in Camera Raw on a batch of 10 raw images. There definitely was an advantage running plugged in over battery, but only about 11%. But there was no advantage running the official ASUS charger vs. a USB charger. I used an old 108 watt no-name charger and a new 140 watt Anker charger. They both tied with the ASUS 200 watt charger.

So, that huge ASUS brick stays home. It's a little over twice as big and twice as heavy than the Anker 140. Plus, I discovered it has some kind of "safety" trick that prevents it from running on an extension cord OR a USA to Euro plug converter. In most Airbnb sites I've stayed in Europe I have had to use an extension cord to get from a wall plug to a suitable desk without rearranging the furniture.

reddit.com
u/RedcrownVet — 14 days ago

ASUS Firmware Update adds Bloatware.

I run a very tight ship on Windows. All auto updates are locked down. I never do Feature updates, and do selected security and driver updates only using the 3rd party WAU (Windows Auto Update) utility. That utility just offered a "ASUS Firmware Update" and I foolishly let it run. That SOB put back all the ASUS bloatware. I rebooted with 11 new ASUS services in Task Manager, none of which are needed or of any good use. Buyer beware, don't let any ASUS updates run, no matter how innocent they appear.

reddit.com
u/RedcrownVet — 1 month ago