[ltp] IBM to sell its PC business

[Patrick Huber]

Sounds familiar...

1 year warranty for my inspiron 4100. All the time, the mouse would 
occasionally move withouth me doing anything. On the last day of this 1 year, 
one key on the keyboard died and I got a new keyboard, mouse stick included - 
mouse problems solved.

Another year later, one of the hinges broke. A friend with the same model had 
the same hinge broken. We tried hard but dell refused to give us the required 
parts to repair the hinge. That's when I finally decided to never buy a dell 
again. I kept on working with the dell, with the hinge 'fixed' with a cable 
zip. When the harddisk died (about the 2nd or 3rd time in that inspiron in 
total) I had a look around and a few friends had (still have) a T20 and T30 
so my decision was easy... T41p :-)

Currently, around 10% to 20% (really rough estimate by looking around the 
classroom) are T40 or X40...

Am Mittwoch, 08. Dezember 2004 15.55 schrieb Joel Ebel:
> I've got some more statistics for you.  I worked for a university
> department that purchased about 25 Dell laptops.  Not one of them
> escaped the need for repair.  They weren't all the same model or
> purchased at the same time either.  Granted they weren't the best cared
> for laptops, but they had things break that never should have been a
> problem.  The most common was keys not working on the keyboard.  Other
> problems included mouse buttons breaking (They have trackpoint like
> pointing devices, but apparently the buttons under them weren't meant to
> be actually used.  If you use them, they break.), screens going bad,
> parts breaking off for no good reason, hard drives failing.  They were
> just poorly designed.  The keyboard had been a problem for years and
> Dell took forever to fix it.  The screens were made of more flimsy
> material that allowed the screen to be pressed against the keys and
> pointing stick leaving an imprint and usually several bad pixels.
> Maintaining those computers was a pain, and when I left I got a thinkpad
> T40.  I couldn't be happier.  Those were inspirons, and I I've heard
> that the latitudes are built better, but after my experiences, I just
> wasn't keen on Dell laptops anymore.  Now I don't know what I'll do when
> I need a new laptop.  I guess I'll have to wait and see.  My T40 still
> has plenty of life in it.
>
> Joel
>
> Richard Harding wrote:
> >>> .
> >>
> >> You ever had a Dell machine in your hand ??? From technical aspects Dell
> >> Laptops aren't bad but the quality from the body is a shame. A friend
> >> of mine had a dell 8600 and after a while the screen hinges are
> >> so lax that a breeze would tip the screen backwards.
> >>
> >> Greetz
> >
> > I have to agree. I had three friends buy dells at school. Two of them
> > had dead lcds inside of 1.5 years and the third was sent in twice for
> > cd-rom problems. I know it's not very statistical, but I know Dell
> > laptops are just not an option to me.
> >
> > Rick