Laptop troubles

I used a Dell, but I bought it used. It was a couple years old so it wasn't at the edge of technology or OS, but was still current enough to be usable for several years. And the price was 30% of what a similar new one would have run so that if something did happen to it I wasn't out megabucks.

Even with manufacturers warranty a lot of the problems I've had with laptops wouldn't have been covered. Like the one where it was in my closed up van on a 105 degree day and the screen cracked. Or the one where the pins on the serial connector broke loose from their mounting point and fixing it would have required replacing the mother board.

Take care, Rich

God bless the USA

I've been using IBM Thinkpads for years, and so far they've been the best I've seen. Not as robust as the panasonics, but enough for most people. You can usually find refurbs for reasonable prices and memory/ batteries/disk/etc are cheap enough.

Then add the cost of installing XP back on it, vista is generally not ready for prime time, and some of your programming apps probably won't run on vista.

z!

I've got a Dell XPX M140 (Which is now the Inspiron 1405 I believe) and it's been pretty good. I've had it for a year but it has all the ports EXCEPT a serial port. A USB-Serial adapter solves that but it does have wireless, wired, modem, IEEE-1394, and USB-2.0 so I can't complain.

Agreed - the biggest failure points are hard drives, CD/DVD drives, and system fans.

That's the thing about my Dell XPS M140, it's very easy to take apart. Just dropping a couple screws on the bottom of the machine gets you at the wireless card, bluetooth device, RAM, CPU, hard drive and optical drive.

I recently upgraded the RAM in my machine to the 2GB maximum (Prices on Crucial.com keep dropping like a rock!) and even though I had to slide the keyboard out it was easy to do. Two screws and pry up the panel above the keyboard and flip keyboard forward.

Of course I did manage to find all the documentation on doing these things on Dell's service web site.

Actually Dell is now letting people buy computers with XP instead of Vista. The outcry was so loud that they had to do it.

Friend recently wanted to buy a new laptop and Dell was still pushing Vista so she ended up going to HP and managed to get an XP laptop from them.

Yes. What a dilemma. For $699 I can own a Dell with a special screen, same specs as the Acer Aspire, and Win XP, with a 12 month on site warranty.

I may have to suck it up and get that deal instead.

Carl

Any time you buy a computer you face the same kind of dilemmas - which OS, when is a sale or a 'special offer' truly a special offer, do I want the standard version of a preinstalled software or the 'deluxe.' It's almost as bad as buy a new car.

Good luck.

Take care, Rich

God bless the USA

True - usually just go for one with bare minimums on it but a good mboard. Memory and hard drives are dirt cheap now.

For example, 2 months ago I priced maxing out my laptop to 2GB, it was a bit over $350. I bought the upgrade a few weeks ago for $143 and now I see it's down to $117.