[lug] Laptop recommendations

[rise]

On Mon, 13 May 2002, John Karns wrote:

> choices of video card AFAIK: NVidia or ATI.  3 yr warranty is available.
>
> Can't really say anything about the warranty service, as I haven't had a
> need.  I *have* had to open it up twice (4 screws on the bottom to remove
> the kybd) to secure the video card connection after transporting it.
> Although it has been on the road quite a bit.  The machine makes a good
> desktop replacement, IMO.

Warning - Dell's field service guys are still good (contractors), but the
rest of their service has gone to hell and the build quality is much lower
than a year ago.  I know a few people who've had good experiences, but
recently it's running about 3-to-1 horror stories to smooth sailing.
This may have something to do with Michael Dell's Wall Street pleasing
announcements that they were willing to do anything to cut costs,
including sacrificing customer satisfaction.  I've got Next Business Day
and it usually takes multiple calls and several days to get parts sent.
At this point I'm averaging over a week for service calls including
multiple instances of tickets never actually being opened, wrong parts
being sent, defective hinges being classed as "cosmetic defect", attempts
to replace the nice big screen with a 1024x768 as "equivalent", etc.  I'm
avoiding Dell for laptops for a few years since these things tend to run
in cycles and we're clearly headed down.  If you do go with them buy the
extended warranty - mine has probably paid for itself thrice over by now
(but then I got a lemon, YMMV).


Dell is also a bit schizoid about Linux, when I call in about a hardware
issues I often get at least one attempt to pass it off as "unsupported on
Linux", which really doesn't fly when you're talking about a failed
latch...

 --
Jonathan Conway						      rise at knavery.net
history is paling & my surge protection failed, & so I FRIED
						- Concrete Blonde, "Fried"