<p>IvyHopefulDad, We live in NC. Everbody flocks to the stores on the tax-free weekend!</p>
<p>xiggi’s right. Customer service horror stories involving Dell abound. OTOH, even if a manufacturer (or 3rd party warranty company) steps up to the plate and takes care of your problem on their dime without an argument, if the process involves shipping the product out and waiting 2-4 weeks or more for it to come back, how cool is that? Not very cool at all, especially if you’re on a 10-week quarter system. When something goes wrong, you have two issues confronting you: the potential financial expense to remedy the situation and the down time. If you have to ship your laptop off to a service center somewhere in East Pondunk just to get a hard drive replaced, you’re looking at unnecessarily long down time. A hard drive is a cheap piece of hardware, it’s no big deal to install, and reinstalling the operating system isn’t brain surgery either. But if you have to ship it out to get this done, you can end up waiting 2, 4, 6 weeks for the thing to come back. Meanwhile, you’re whistling Dixie. (No offense to our friends from the South.)</p>
<p>I have a Dell–have had it for four years. Like everyone else I know that has a Dell, my computer died two years after I got it. There’s a rumor, probably not true but kept alive by people’s experiences with Dell, that Dells are built to last for two years and then fall apart. Luckily for me, I got the extended service plan (3 years) and have had pretty good experiences with Dell Customer Service. During the third year I had my computer, I got a new hard drive, a new keyboard, two new fans, and a new screen. </p>
<p>So, I think Dell’s customer service is actually pretty good, but from the way my computer’s been acting I can tell that the fans are about to die again (which I could easily get replaced at no cost to myself if Dell had extended my warranty like I asked them to, but that’s an entirely different story). I’m already saving for a Mac. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, my sister has an IBM for law school–it died two weeks after she bought it. They replaced it, though, and now she hasn’t had any problems for two years.</p>
<p>I have to say…customer service in general isn’t what it used to be. Usually I cannot UNDERSTAND the person on the other end of the phone. This is not just for computers…Having said all that (which belongs in the Cafe on another thread)…we have had both Thinkpads an Dells in this house. Both have been just fine. We prefer the Dell Latitude line to the Inspiron as the Latitude simply has more options. It is what DDs university recommends for a laptop. We have two in this household…one that is about 7 years old, and one that is about 4 years old. Both are just fine. My Thinkpad died when it was three years old…about two weeks AFTER the warranty expired. You can get lemon computers and terrific computers from any vendor. Buy the one that the college supports…and pray your kid doesn’t transfer!!</p>
<p>Our Dell at home just had a problem with fan breaking. Phone calls to Dell were hopeless. The part was not available. Finally, ordered one on e-bay.
Son is CS major, and is on his 2nd Apple. We’ve ordered thru school for the 3-y warrantee. He’s really tough on laptops</p>
<p>Regarding Dell, or any other company, it seems we can choose two of the following:</p>
<ul>
<li> low prices</li>
<li> decent quality</li>
<li> good customer service</li>
</ul>
<p>Dell correctly figured out that the vast majority of buyers never need any customer service support, so disinvested in that area. That’s part of the reason their prices are so low.</p>
<p>Same choice here. We have a Thinkpad at home and we thought we were going to get another one for S. His school sells both as well as the Macs. However, we got one of those coupons in the mail that makes a Dell hard not to consider. Suppsedly, the coupon was for being a repeat Dell customer, which H is through his business. Anyway, getting the Dell would allow us to customize a machine that far exceeds the school’s model with faster processor, better sound card, bluetooth, audio card etc. AND for $600 less than the school’s already discounted price. We could then buy an extended warranty that would include premium customer service comparable to the kind they used to give, 24 hour service and replacement of anything that goes wrong. Still deciding. I couldn’t believe the bit about the premium customer service, though!</p>
<p>Agree with other posters that availability of service is important factor, not just price. If (when) it breaks, how fast can you get it fixed? Most service agreements require mail-in service that can take up to 2 weeks. If you child needs laptop daily for their major, this may be a problem. I was able to find a thinkpad with 3 year warranty and upgraded warr. to next business day on-site service for $100. I felt this was worth it.</p>
<p>D, who is a rising junior, has already had 2 hard drive fails on her Dell. The on-campus computer repair people saw to her getting replacements under the warranty, but the time delay was annoying and we have never had this problem with any of our IBM laptops, which predate the sale to Lenovo.</p>
<p>u want lenovo. dell’s are horrible.</p>
<p>I have a latitude 800 that I bought through school. Ive replaced a monitor, the keyboard (2x), the video card, and the harddrive (2x).</p>
<p>What NEEDS to be replaced on my computer currently is a USB port, and the entire shell or case or whatever you vall it. Where the monitor connects to the keyboard part of the computer is falling apart. I could litteraly just pull the monitor off my laptop with little to no effort. Also, the volume and mute buttons by the power button don’t work. The c button is currently broken…meanign i have to copy and paste one every time i want to type it.</p>
<p>just don’t get dell…anything but.</p>
<p>Son (rising Junior) has replaced hard drive twice on his Dell
Customer service is HORRIBLE.
They were talking to our son at 2 AM and had to call him back. He gave them his cell number but called our home instead.
We are not buying Dell for second son.</p>
<p>Here’s why I greatly prefer IBM/Lenovo and would never buy a Dell:</p>
<p>A bit about me: If you haven’t read some of my other posts, mostly in College Life, I should explain that I am a computer technician and have been for many years. I work with many different makes of computers on a regular basis because of this, so the stuff I have here isn’t biased.</p>
<p>The trouble for Dell seemed to start around 2002. From 1999-2001, I actually recommended Dell to just about everyone who wanted a PC. Then my alma mater (who I’ve done significant tech work for) purchased a shipment of Dell Latitude notebooks in August 2002. These computers were slow, sluggish, and didn’t seem that well built. Now I know they were the low end model, but I personally owned (and still have) an original tangerine iBook, that I got in August 2000. Despite its age, it was faster on most tasks (like launching Word) and the construction quality was much higher.</p>
<p>Pretty much everything goes on the recent Dell laptops. Stuff breaks off the case like it’s made of low grade plastic (which it is). I’ve seen monitors, batteries, logic boards, everything burn out.</p>
<p>The desktops are also degrading. The XPS series of 1998 was excellent and got me into the brand. The Dimensions our school bought in 2004 were so cheaply made that I could have punched a hole in the front bezel–and I’m not the strongest guy in the world.</p>
<p>But the customer service is the worst part. My last experience with them came in 2003. A guy wanted two floppy drives on an XPS from 1998. When I set the configuration up, the computer wouldn’t even turn on. I tried it again, thinking it was a fluke. Still no luck. So I took everything out and reconnected it, knowing it was set up right. Still wouldn’t boot. Thinking perhaps the BIOS was crippled and would only accept one floppy, I called the tech support guy. It took 20 minutes to speak to someone, and the guy I spoke to knew almost no English. The word I said most often was “WHAT?”. After a 20 minute discussion, he finally admitted to me the computer only accepted one disk drive. This seemed stupid, too…why would they intentionally cripple a computer like this when a much cheaper generic computer from the same time period would take two floppies? There is a reason there is a “B” drive designation…</p>
<p>Since then, I have refused to call their support line and have spent considerably less than 40 minutes scrounging around the internet each time I need a specification like that. It took me about 10 minutes to find the one floppy drive support fact for that computer after I was off the line with the Dell guy.</p>
<p>Dell has gone very downhill, but I personally think the entire comptuer industry has. Why did every OS balloon to a monster that won’t fit on a 2GB hard drive anymore? And why are none of the computers as high-quality as what they used to be? I have a computer from 1984 that still works perfectly! I seriously doubt the 2005 model iBook I’m typing this on will be around in 20 years without requiring at least one repair.</p>
<p>I bought a Dell with the standard 1-year warrenty before going off to college last summer. My family had been using them in the mid-late 90s and generally had good experiences back then, so I figured it would be a good idea. Though I’ve had a few hardware problems, their tech support has been surprisingly helpful. The night before I was leaving for Baltimore, two of the keys fell off my keyboard (don’t ask me why… I have no clue). I called Dell at around 1am to get it fixed. I was leaving for the airport at 10ish the next morning and the support person offered to schedule someone to come replace the keyboard at 8 in the morning, before I left. Since I didn’t want to bother with technicians right before I left, I told them not to bother, but when I got to Baltimore, I called Dell and they sent a technician the next day to replace the keyboard. </p>
<p>The other problem I had happened just two days before my warrenty expired. My DVD+/-RW drive just suddenly stopped working. Before I called Dell, I logged on to their website and went through their full diagnostic process (checking for drive in BIOS, removing and replacing drive, booting to drive etc). Instead of calling Dell, I used their online chat support and within 10 minutes, the guy was taking my address to mail me a new drive. Now, granted, I’m not too happy with the quality of the equipment - a CD drive just shouldn’t fail after a year and I’ve decided to pay for an addition 3 years of support just so my computer doesn’t become a paperweight in a few months.</p>
<p>One other thing to mention… I don’t know if other colleges do this, but at Johns Hopkins, if you buy a laptop through the university, they have tech support people on campus who can do basic repairs (not very helpful), but if they do need to send off your laptop for repair to Dell/Levano/Apple, they have loaner laptops that you can check out until your’s comes back</p>
<p>Here are two things I recommend:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Make a technician friend at college. Unless you can handle the repairs yourself, it’s good to know someone who can. If they don’t have the parts there, they will know where to find them. As a technician myself, I have helped many people and I charge much less than Best Buy or a place like that.</p></li>
<li><p>Take a second computer. I had three when I was away at school. I have four here at home now. One of my “extras” is my old laptop. The other two are desktops. This way if one computer goes you have another. I kept the extra desktop around at college because I wanted something older to run some programs I have that don’t run on new machines (these computers are all Macs). The spare laptop was older but could do just about anything the new one could, albeit with older versions of the software. The only thing I couldn’t plug into it was my camcorder. I decided on bringing the other laptop not only because I’m too lazy to transfer files from old to new, but also because the assembly of my new laptop isn’t as good as that of the older one so I was worried about reliability.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Why isn’t the gear as sturdy as it was, say, ten years ago? Because today, we buy far more computer for far less money. In fact, much of this stuff is approaching disposable status. You can buy a decent desktop (not good enough for video editing perhaps, but fine for anything else) for less than $400. Laptops for $600. </p>
<p>For those prices we expect something built like a tank?</p>
<p>FWIW, I’ve nursed a stable of family computers the past few years, including three Dell notebooks and a home built desktop. While I have not used Dell phone tech support in years, I find their forums to be wonderfully useful. and a few good techs hang out there. </p>
<p>Yes, we’ve had failures - two notebook hard drives in the past year. Interestingly, Dell did not make either. Both were well known brands. Go figure. </p>
<p>I should also note that when my D’s notebook hard drive failed, she survived for a month by borrowing. (why a month? She wasn’t bugging me, so I didn’t rush getting the replacement drive…) It did not seem like that big a deal, even with several big papers, probably because of thumb drives etc. It helped that I was able to recover the key files she needed from her trashed drive (but it took a whole weekend of using some specialized recovery software…)</p>
<p>At any rate, I say again that the best machine you can buy is whatever brand you can get fixed quicly on campus with a normal warranty policy.</p>
<p>Go with IBM. Much better quality and support. Lenovo has been making laptops for IBM for a number of years now; they’ve simply started branding the machines under thier own name. Dell’s consumer line of computers, are, to put it nicely, pure unadulterated…you get the picture.</p>
<p>And as to computers not lasting as long nowadays, well - computers from 1984 were too limited in versatility to be bogged down in utterly useless software. You inserted a 5 1/4" floppy disk, loaded the program from the command prompt, and the computer ran it. No (or very minimal) storing of data to the hard drive (if there even was one attached). No cross-program sharing of files (unless they were in ascii format, in which case you may have had to write your own programs to convert data formatting), etc. No viruses. No downloading files, except maybe from usenet…and even then, you’d likely compile the program yourself.</p>
<p>Add to that things like heat (higher power draw with parts that aren’t necessarily any better thermally), vibrations (more mechanically and optically precise parts that have to withstand just as much damage as previous computers), and so on, well, it becomes quite easy to see why computers may last for a shorter amount of time.</p>
<p>I find it slightly odd every time time someone says “they don’t make them like they used to.” Yes, your computer has survived for nearly 25 years, but what about the thousands/millions of other machines from the same era that failed? If you correct for hours of usage and environmental effects (such as viruses), today’s computers probably have a higher MTBF than their predecessors. Same thing with old cars - yes, someone’s 1935 roadster might still be in perfect condition, but that doesn’t really reflect the condition of the average car from that model year. </p>
<p>In 20 years, somebody, somewhere, is going to proclaim that “nobody makes them like they used to” in reference to a Dell.</p>
<p>I am from the L.A. area and we have a local show hosted by Jeff Levy. He has said that he thinks Dell desktops are fine, but avoid the laptops. He recommends Fujitsu highly and of course, Apple.</p>
<p>I agree with the many comments here that Dell Latitudes are much better than the Inspirons and that Dell’s customer service can be poor. I also agree with those who think you should buy the brand of computer suggested or sponsored by your daughter’s college, not only because the repairs will be campus-supported but also because you will be sure the computer can do the functions your daughter will need.</p>
<p>Our son is a business major and his college, the University of Texas at Austin, recommends a Dell laptop that has been pre-configured for business majors. (Of course, it’s not surprising that UT supports Dell since Michael Dell attended UT and Austin is Dell’s home.) Laptops purchased through this program are preloaded with customized software that freshman will need through their 4 years of business school. I don’t think this is crucial because you can buy any laptop and configure it yourself, but sometimes it’s nice not to have to do-it-yourself. So if your daughter has declared a major - or even if she hasn’t, but she is enrolled in a particular department, school or college - check to see what they recommend and why.</p>