Laptop choices

[Stijn Hoop]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2005 at 10:28:23AM +0000, Nick Barnes wrote:
> At 2005-11-29 10:19:17+0000, "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" writes:
> > On Thursday, 24 November 2005 at 11:17:41 -0500,
> >     freebsd-lists at dclg.ca wrote:
> > >
> > > On the [Dell] warrenty... I'm hard on equipment and I depend on my
> > > equipment.  I've been impressed that if I put my foot down and "say"
> > > that I believe something needs replacing, then without much fuss,
> > > they do it.  The next day onsite service is cool.
> > 
> > You obviously have better experience than I do.  My Inspiron 6000 was
> > apparently used: it arrived without the usual plastic coating on the
> > lid, with scratches which couldn't have come from transport instead.
> > Also the ejector for the PC Card fell apart shortly after I got it.
> > It took them over 3 weeks to get a replacement lid to me, by which
> > time I had left for Europe.  By the time I get home I will have had
> > the machine for 6 weeks, too long to return it, and only then will I
> > be able to fight the Dell service department about the ejector.  Only
> > some time after then will they be able to replace the lid.
> 
> Yeah.
> 
> The "next day on-site service" for my wife's Dell took *two weeks* to
> arrive (and replace the motherboard, which we had diagnosed as the
> source of the fault after about 10 minutes).  Never again.  iBook on
> order.

We have lots of Dell Laptops on-site as we get a university discount.

I have seen both sides of Dell's support; sometimes we were serviced
*very* quickly, sometimes it took ages just to order a single memory
stick. And for the 3 or 4 iBooks that we have around here, support has
been different as well. As usual with support, YMMV.

As far as the laptops themselves go, I think they're pretty good. Lots
of features for a low price, and besides the occasional DOA they are
only starting to break down after about 3-4 years of hard service.  Do
note that we buy the 'stable' Latitude series that doesn't change
every other month.

Just my EUR 0.02, do with this information as you wish,

--Stijn

-- 
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the most popular are 'Why are people born?', 'Why do they die?', and
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