New jargon: Dead as a Dell

[Ken Ibold]

You may recall my trials and tribulations with my Dell Inspiron 6000. It is becoming laughable. The computer has been back to Dell twice now, with the motherboard replaced twice, along with the DVD drive. It arrived most recently from the "Repair Depot" this afternoon. My wife has been without her computer since mid-July, and she is returning tonight from a busines trip, so I wanted to have it set up for her. The operating system needed to be reloaded after the last failed repair, and I got out the disks, set up the computer, and got ready to do battle with Windows. Hit the power button. Nothing. No lights, no sounds, no action.

I called Dell (AGAIN) and they asked me to unplug everything, hold down the power button for 10 seconds, and then try again. Miraculously, it booted up. I began reloading Windows, and after about 15 minutes picked up the laptop to move it over 6 inches on the table. Power off instantly when I touched it. Since then, dead as a Dell.

Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? This is what I call quality control. Cripes.

The bad part is, I have three other Dells, including my main work computer. Time to start shopping for some replacements!!

Argh.

 

[AdamZ]

Well Ken I have had my trials with my Insprion 6000. Lotsa quirks that seem to work themselves out I Did have one major crash that cost me about $90 to fix with Dell Service on the phone. My Dell Desktops have held up well .

For those Gurus out there is there really any very good laptops? It seems that their fragile nature and the way they are used make them prone to crapping out.

 

[mikea]

Ken, sounds like they left a loose power connector or somesuch.

 

[mikea]

Well Ken I have had my trials with my Insprion 6000. Lotsa quirks that seem to work themselves out I Did have one major crash that cost me about $90 to fix with Dell Service on the phone. My Dell Desktops have held up well .

For those Gurus out there is there really any very good laptops? It seems that their fragile nature and the way they are used make them prone to crapping out.

Sure. I haven't had a problem with my Macbook Pro and it's running Windows - the way you want, where you can throw it away and get it back in minutes. It's a virtual machine. The "PC" is two files on the disk.

The Lenovo Thinkpads are suppposed to still be good. Lenovo made them for IBM all along.

Stay away from Dell. HP is slightly better.

 

[bbchien]

The master, Mr. Andrews, has finally taught me to mend my ways. I buy cheap whitebox cr_p. I have a fleet of Averatec Sempron laptops with 512mB and 80 gig hard drives.

One craps out, up goes the next. I bought a few drives, too. Cough? Hiccough? Rewrite the drive. Drive dies? New drive, Rewrite the drive. Other problem? Trash can. New whitebox. Don't spend more than $700 per box and get the 3200 series, they're small and quite light.

 

[mikea]

The master, Mr. Andrews, has finally taught me to mend my ways. I buy cheap whitebox cr_p. I have a fleet of Averatec Sempron laptops with 512mB and 80 gig hard drives.

One craps out, up goes the next. I bought a few drives, too. Cough? Hiccough? Rewrite the drive. Drive dies? New drive, Rewrite the drive. Other problem? Trash can. New whitebox. Don't spend more than $700 per box and get the 3200 series, they're small and quite light.

Point is, now you can do that while keeping your hardware by running in a virtual machine. You can copy the "machine" and clone it or go right back to it as it was when you want.

Even VWare Server and VMWare player come in free versions now. You can host those on Windows or Linux and select from a bunch of pre-configured appliances .

http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

 

[jesse]

Vmware is really a great product. I run several corporate servers in vmware machines. I can easily move a server from one phsyical server to another. If I need more power I can simply get another server and move the image over. No reinstalling, no reconfiguring. It just works.

 

[Ken Ibold]

Dell has agreed to refund our money on the Inspiron. It will be interesting to see if they actually DO refund our money.

Time to shop ...

 

[tdager]

Well I use a Latitude D810 for LOTS of road travel.

It gets beaten to death...and still runs like a champ.

Sorry to hear about your problems, but you do know there is only, what is it, two or three major laptop makers in the world that just rebrand everything for a particular business. So chances are you can still get a crappy laptop.

 

[Ken Ibold]

Well I use a Latitude D810 for LOTS of road travel.

It gets beaten to death...and still runs like a champ.

Sorry to hear about your problems, but you do know there is only, what is it, two or three major laptop makers in the world that just rebrand everything for a particular business. So chances are you can still get a crappy laptop.

The Latitudes seem to be better made than the Inspirons. Keys falling off the keyboard, etc...

 

[etsisk]

The Latitudes seem to be better made than the Inspirons. Keys falling off the keyboard, etc...

How funny! I was JUST talking with a fellow at the table next to mine about the Inspiron 2200 that I have - told him how much I hate it: keys falling off, cable breaks, machine locks up, installed programs want to update, but require the startup disk - it didn't come with a startup disk, etc etc etc etc...

I'll NEVER buy another Dell. Ever, ever, ever, ever.

Dude, you got Delled!

A lot of us did.

 

[Ken Ibold]

How funny! I was JUST talking with a fellow at the table next to mine about the Inspiron 2200 that I have - told him how much I hate it: keys falling off, cable breaks, machine locks up, installed programs want to update, but require the startup disk - it didn't come with a startup disk, etc etc etc etc...

I'll NEVER buy another Dell. Ever, ever, ever, ever.

Dude, you got Delled!

A lot of us did.

I'm on a first name basis with Brian, the DHL guy. (Dell contracts with DHL to bring the computers back to the repair depot.) He says the number of Dells going in for repair is amazing. And not just once, but 4 or 5 times. He will be back to my house twice. Once to bring it back from the repair center, and again to pick it up so I can get my refund.

I have two Dell desktops that seem to be somewhat more robust. One is even 4 years old and still going strong. I have another Dell laptop that is only about six months old. I sacrifice live chickens to it weekly.

 

[mikea]

Vmware is really a great product. I run several corporate servers in vmware machines. I can easily move a server from one phsyical server to another. If I need more power I can simply get another server and move the image over. No reinstalling, no reconfiguring. It just works.

BTW, Jesse Parallels for Intel Macs is so much like VMWare I suspected that they disassembled the VMWare code. http://parallels.com/en/products/desktop/

The only problem I have with running Windows XP in the Parallels VM is that it doesn't support DHCP when you have a WiFi link. They have a perfectly reasonable reason for that to be but I don't buy it. They emulate an Ethernet adapter and I guess there are issues bridging at the MAC layer between Ethernet and WiFi...so I hard code the IP address. It works fine but I don't relish having to hack at it at an outside public WiFi spot.

 

[Everskyward]

He says the number of Dells going in for repair is amazing. And not just once, but 4 or 5 times.

I see I'm not the only one with a lemon. It's also a Dell, an Inspiron 8600. In the two years I've owned it it has had a bad hard drive, three motherboard replacements and most recently a new "heat sink" whatever the heck that is. I just got it fixed again and now the battery won't charge. When booting I get the message, "The AC power adapter type cannot be determined. This will prevent optimal system performance." So now they're going to send me a new AC adapter. We'll see. I think they're rebuilding it part by part. I still have over a year left on the in-home warranty so there's lots more they can work on. Weird thing is that this laptop just sits on my desk. The one I travel with has been good so far, but that's only been 6 months. It's an Averatec.

 

[tdager]

BTW...the Lattitude is their business class of machines, the Inspiron the home-user class.

Now I know why the company INSISTED I get a Lattitude and not the Inspiron I wanted.