Well, this was kind of an unexpected, but really interesting purchase. I had initially wanted to purchase a laptop, and although a gaming laptop was something I wanted to have very soon, I didn’t think I’d have it early into my time in Taiwan. And not to mention, the purchase experience is also an interesting one. Bringing this back to my background, I also game on my free time (both on Playstation and on PC), so I definitely felt a need for a powerful laptop than the surface I had brought and was using is somewhat inadequate, for most things as well. Another reason I will need this laptop is for the transferring data from my Nikon Z5, as well as maybe photo editing. Even transferring photos from the Z5 to the Surface Pro 3 (this particular one from around 2014) was a bit of a pain, as well as something that was not a pleasant experience with the lack of processing power. I didn’t ship my desktop over as it’s something I did not want to deal with, the hassle of all the packing and the shipping customs. I also have other plans with this laptop when I get back. We shall see how that goes. Anyway, back to the buying experience…
First of all, as with anything in Asia, as I understand it from my experience being in Indonesia visiting family, it’s really not a thing to do online shopping, as it is in the US. So there are a lot of malls, and this one specific location I went to is a specifically a location where it’s basically a tech heaven. Almost every laptop, every desktop part, every headset, mice, keyboard, etc. you can see it’s in there. And I happened to get in there and explored a gaming laptop section. I was helped by a salesperson, many of which stay around the front of the store to immediately help anyone find what they are looking for. After that they look for what specs you want, any specific models you were looking for, and what is the budget you are looking into. And it’s not like there is a set price in this specific place, and luckily when I asked, I got a small discount. But the help gotten was so helpful, and the initial price I got was about the same as it was in the US, but ofc less when you take into account that discount and the help they gave me to switch to the English software, I thought it was worth it. And so I got it. A gaming laptop. After agreeing to the price, it was then another interesting experience. This is where they took me to an upper floor, where it was kinda sketchy, but a legit sketchy. It wasn’t messy in a way that made it seem like it was all just work related, and it so happened to be that this are is mostly a tech service area.
This upper floor area is where they help you setup the laptop and apply any additional items you may have purchased from them (in this case I purchased a screen protector and a keyboard cover. They also helped me switch the main software language from Chinese to English and from there it was verifying the warranty and all that of the laptop, and they did tell me to keep the box for at least 2 weeks so that I may exchange if anything were to go immediately wrong with the laptop. And so that was it, and I was headed home with a brand new laptop and a large box (it was a really large box for a laptop). And so, I have now acquired an ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 gaming laptop. For those who want the specs, this is a 2020 model as far as I know, with a Ryzen 9 5900HS, RTX 3060 GPU, 16GB of ram. Mainly for gaming, and for productivity work I shall be doing, such as photo editing. This will be the main machine to serve my tech needs and shall be the main playback device for music as well when I am on the laptop.
Surprisingly, after doing some performance benchmarks while I’m at home, this thing is so powerful, and actually out performs my desktop in pretty much almost everything, so this is a solid desktop replacement for awhile. And so, that just means with the funding I might have, I might have plans to maybe upgrade the desktop in the near future. We shall see. But this shall be the tech corner-piece. And although this is published in late September, this was purchased for use in early May. So I have been using this for awhile. Either way, I have been busy with getting used to life and all that here, and so that is why I have been on a slight hiatus with this project, and which is why in this period where I have enough mindset and effort to put this post out, I am doing so now. A number of things have changed and a number of items have been acquired now, so this is me, starting to update everyone on the changes that have been happening. This is the first of a few changes that have gone on around here, so look forward to a few interesting acquisitions within the next few posts.
HIFI Sound Enthusiast 