<p>My D’s college has a deal with Dell for a discount on laptops. But some older students have been posting to say that their Dell laptops were of poor quality–keyboards collapsed and other problems arose after a year or so. Some say IBM thinkpads are a better buy for quality.</p>
<p>Anyone hear have useful insights??</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>My sons both have Dell laptops. My older son has an Inspiron, which is now five years old and still going strong, although it did need a new hard drive after three years. He has been very happy with it.</p>
<p>My younger son has a one year old Latitude 610, obtained through his university. The Latitudes are made for business use, so are supposedly build more strongly. His has been doing quite well, and he has no complaints.</p>
<p>I am not familiar with IBM, however, so I can’t compare the two.</p>
<p>It’s the Lenovo Thinkpad now, and they’re very durable. I’m not a fan of Dells, but they are usually priced very competitively.</p>
<p>Dells (home computers) are cheap, especially if you buy them with a $750 off coupon (just google Dell coupon daily for a month, and you should find one). Sometimes the coupons are better deals than what the college has negotiated. I had RAM go bad, but I took it to the on campus repair place and they fixed it in a day or two. The cases are generally flimsy plastic, and the keyboards have some give, though not as much in newer models. You can extend the warranty and get accidental damages coverage (other than theft and fire) for a reasonable price. The business models are much better built, with more durable cases, but are more expensive since there are rarely coupons. </p>
<p>Lenovo/IBM Thinkpads are built with sturdier cases and higher quality components, but they are more expensive. I still know one person who has a lemon of a Thinkpad, though. Lenovo recently came out with a home line of laptops that might be a good compromise of quality and price, but I don’t know anyone who has one.</p>
<p>Both computers should be fine. My son has a Latitude 620 and it appears to be reasonably well-built. What swung me in the direction of the Dell, though, was that it’s supported by the university with a three-year, on-site repair plan that also covers accidental damage. That’s a pretty expensive option if one doesn’t go through the school. Having it allows my S to get repairs quickly (instead of sending the machine back to Dell through the mail) and have repairs done quickly if young butterfingers drops the thing (a high probability).</p>
<p>I guess my advice would be to very carefully check out the advantages of buying through the school and very carefully compare costs.</p>
<p>The best is not either Lenovo or Dell, but rather what your campus supports. When my D broke her screen, it was sure a lot faster to have the campus folks order and install the screen (for no extra charge) than sending it back to Dell.</p>
<p>My D has a Dell, the service and pricing is great.</p>
<p>My son bought a Dell 4 years ago and it’s still going strong with no problems. The keyboard, mentioned in previous posts as being potentially problematic, is perfect and vastly superior to the seriously bad Sony Vaio keyboard I’m typing on right now which is less than a year old. </p>
<p>Our problems with Dell, which many people have complained about over the years, is Dell’s customer service which is really bad. But we went ahead and bought the Dell offered through my daughter’s university because it has the 3-year service plan previously mentioned and we won’t be dealing with Dell.</p>
<p>Same here, 5 year old Dell Inspiron 8000, still working great, replaced my hard drive once a year ago however (apparently the old drive gave out after literally leaving my laptop on the entire summer). My laptop was part of a rash of Dell laptops that suffered from defective LCDs around 2001, so a serviceman came to me house, replaced the LCD, good as new. Dell CompleteCare, a 2-3-4 year available option, is highly recommended so your laptop will be covered from accidental damage, ie. you get crazy drunk in your dorm room and spill beer all over your keyboard and short out the motherboard, then you can (maybe) get the whole thing replaced.</p>
<p>I am excited that I will be buying a new Dell laptop within the next month, and the quality has increased with time; now the higher-end Inspiron/Latitide models have casings made out of aluminum, not cheap plastic.</p>
<p>I have a four year old Dell Inspiron and have been less than satisfied with it (in fact have considered buying a Mac), although most of my problems are with Dell’s horrible customer service. </p>
<p>Being able to combine the price of a Dell with on-campus service sounds like a good bet to me.</p>
<p>IBM is falling apart as a company - get a Dell.</p>
<p>Lenovo purchased 90 percent of the IBM Personal Systems Group. Lenovo is the way to go. or IBM</p>
<p>D has a Thinkpad laptop. It has been great and customer service is excellent. She vacuumed off one of the keycaps. They sent her a new keyboard. School has a 35% discount on them.</p>
<p>S also has a Thinpad, and it’s been great.</p>
<p>As for Dell, see below:</p>
<p>
<a href=“http://news.com.com/Dell+looking+into+exploding+laptop+report/2100-1005_3-6088686.html[/url]”>http://news.com.com/Dell+looking+into+exploding+laptop+report/2100-1005_3-6088686.html</a></p>
<p>Some inside information on Dell:</p>
<p>Dell once had widely acclaimed customer service. Now, according to Consumer Reports, respondents to its survey say that Dell’s customer service is roughly equal to its PC competitors. Apple scores considerably higher.</p>
<p>The issue is, and will be for the foreseeable future, the fact that the personal computer market is heading more and more towards commodity status. Dell has been able to capitalize on that commodity status with superior supply chain logistics, keeping its prices low relative to its competitors. For some years, this extra margin provided by its cost advantage funded superior customer service, but this is no longer the case.</p>
<p>Analysts estimate that Dell’s pricing advantage has slipped as low as 5% and continues to drop. Interestingly, Dell has been widely reported to be looking at ways to improve margins, and going back to superior customer service is one of the ways they intend to do that.</p>
<p>How this will play out in future customer service is anyone’s guess, but I thought the information that the company plans to improve customer service might be useful.</p>
<p>S’s school offered the Thinkpad through the bookstore last year along with Mac and Dell. We decided to go with Thinkpad and have not been sorry. Since we bought it through the school, the one time that he had trouble with it, he called the IT dept. at his school and they actually came to his dorm room and fixed it right away.</p>
<p>We live in a state that has a tax-free weekend in Aug. Most things school related can be purchased tax free the first weekend in Aug. S’s school allowed us to place our computer order in advance and they held the order 'til the tax free weekend. We picked it up at the bookstore when we arrived for dorm move-in. Saved about $250.</p>
<p>And your state is? Fl has that too but I think there is a limit of $50/=. So tax free computer is out.</p>
<p>They’re both similar since they have to compete with each other. I’d go for the one I got the best deal on including the warranty/damage coverage in the equation but I’d have a bias toward the one most commonly sold/supported by the particular college (if there is one) since it’ll make it easier, quicker, and possibly cheaper to get it fixed if it does break.</p>
<p>One of the things on laptops that breaks more than other components (besides the keyboard) is the hard drive. Neither Dell or Lenovo(IBM) make the hard drives in their laptops - they’re made by other companies. I haven’t researched it but I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the laptops use the same manufacturer of disk drive (many of them are Hitachi).</p>
<p>What ever you do buy make sure it will be able to run Vista. It is the new OS from Microsoft. You can not upgrade laptops as easily as a desktop. Lord knows you don’t want to pay 2K then find out it is a door stop in January.</p>
<p>Remember when XP came out and everyone needed RAM to run it.</p>
<p>Also with Dells, Air Force has been using them the past three years and just about everyone has had to replace their hard drives. The new class are getting Gateway Tablets with AMDs. Much better processor than Intel.</p>
<p>I am from Texas and I woud love to say good things about Dell. They must have been a great company -once- but from our family’s experience, they forgot most of what earned them kudos. </p>
<p>Their laptops are built to be disposable. As long as they work, you’ll be happy. However, if you ever need service, you better off buying the same on ebay, because it WILL be cheaper. Simple things like changing a keyboard will cost as much as buying a new one.</p>
<p>Customer service? Before buying Dell, why don’t you INVENT a VERY SIMPLE problem and start calling Dell. You’ll be routed to Mumbai or another exotic place where you’ll go in circles until you give up. </p>
<p>You could also simply read the forum at Dell. Do it for a while and you’ll be disgusted by the attitude of the Dell people. </p>
<p>Buy the stuff as a disposable and buy the best warranty you can, but read what the warranty covers. A lot of what they is blatantly misrepresented. Pick Dell because they are cheap, but any talk of quality or customer service is simple non sense. The only place you can get good service for your Dell is at Costco: they’ll take it back no question asked for … a long time.</p>
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<p>Ask Dell if they’ll take your notebook back after 5 months for a FULL refund. LOL!</p>