Dell Laptop reliability...

[Nessal]

Would it be wise to purchase a 3 year warranty rather then a 1 year? How is the reliability with their laptops? Thanks guys.

 

[tangotracker]

Well I work for a company that purchases a ton of Dell laptops. I will say that at the two year mark most of them are way ready to be recycled with keyboards and such falling apart. I'd definitely go 3 years.

 

[DaveSimmons]

If you are buying with a credit card that doubles your warranty then a 1-year warranty might be OK ... at least for a budget laptop.

For an expensive one I'd be much more likely to buy the 3-year.

 

[V00D00]

It depends on how much you beat it up. As with any laptop, it will last you as long as you want it to. Where I work we have some old laptops (probably 7-10 years old) and they work. They're slow as hell, but they still work. We have some brand new laptops just sitting on a dusty shelf becase some dumbsh!t dropped it.

I have a dell that's from 2003 and it's great. It still looks damn near brand new. Not a problem with it yet. I even bought it on ebay. I figured it would have had at least something wrong with it... but it's perfect.

 

[vanvock]

My daughter's Inspiron is over 3yrs old. The only real prob was the system fan started making noise (going bad), had to COMPLETLY disasemble the thing to change it out. Parts are expensive too if you can find them. I wound up getting a refurb fan from Dell. I don't usually buy the extended warranties on stuff but if it's not too expensive & you don't like to tinker it might be a good idea.

 

[Nessal]

Damn you guys are starting to scare me. I'm looking at a Inspiron 9300 right now and I can either go with a Pentium M 2.0Ghz with 1 year warranty, or the Pentium M 1.7Ghz with 3 year warranty. Which do you think I should go for? I never had any experience with Dell stuff. My last laptop was a IBM and that thing was a work horse!

 

[Nessal]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
If you are buying with a credit card that doubles your warranty then a 1-year warranty might be OK ... at least for a budget laptop.

For an expensive one I'd be much more likely to buy the 3-year.

So if I flat out pay for the laptop with my credit card, it will extend the warranty to 2 years for free?

 

[V00D00]

Yeah IBM is definitely quality, but you pay for it.

I would go with the 2.0ghz.

 

[WackyDan]

Originally posted by: Nessal

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
If you are buying with a credit card that doubles your warranty then a 1-year warranty might be OK ... at least for a budget laptop.

For an expensive one I'd be much more likely to buy the 3-year.

So if I flat out pay for the laptop with my credit card, it will extend the warranty to 2 years for free?

No... Research your card member benefits to see if your card offers that type of benefit for purchase protection.

 

[WackyDan]

Originally posted by: V00D00
Yeah IBM is definitely quality, but you pay for it.

I would go with the 2.0ghz.

You'd be surprised how cheap ThinkPads are if you look.

 

[ribbon13]

Originally posted by: WackyDan
You'd be surprised how cheap ThinkPads are if you look.

I'd tend to say IBM isn't what it used to be.

What's your budget and intended usage? Costco had a sweet deal on an HP laptop with 15.4" screen, A64 2.0GHz, 512MB DDR400, 40GB Seagate, Toshiba DVD-RW, Wifi+GigE for $700 not very long ago at all.

 

[jjsbasmt]

My Inspiron 5100 is 2 yers old this month, no problems noted. Had it delivered 2 days before xmas and Dell really sweetened the deal. Free memory upgrade, screen size, free 2nd day business shipping, free extended 3 yr in-home warranty, and $100 rebate which came in 2 weeks.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: Nessal

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
If you are buying with a credit card that doubles your warranty then a 1-year warranty might be OK ... at least for a budget laptop.

For an expensive one I'd be much more likely to buy the 3-year.

So if I flat out pay for the laptop with my credit card, it will extend the warranty to 2 years for free?

Like WackyDan says, some cards do, some don't. I know Platinum visa cards do, I don't know which other ones do.

 

[WackyDan]

Originally posted by: ribbon13

Originally posted by: WackyDan
You'd be surprised how cheap ThinkPads are if you look.

I'd tend to say IBM isn't what it used to be.

What's your budget and intended usage? Costco had a sweet deal on an HP laptop with 15.4" screen, A64 2.0GHz, 512MB DDR400, 40GB Seagate, Toshiba DVD-RW, Wifi+GigE for $700 not very long ago at all.

THinkPads are still the best built and most reliable and support for N. AMerican customers is US based... not over-seas.

My point was that they are not as expensive as some people here think.

 

[OdiN]

I recommend purchasing a 3-year warranty with ANY laptop.

Sometimes parts just go bad...and if that part happens to be something on the mainboard or the LCD...well that would not be worth paying to have fixed, but it would be worth paying a little extra now for the warranty so if it did happen it would be fixed for free.

 

[Boobers]

I just replaced the hard drive in my firends Dell. The HD died just after the one year warranty expired and Dell refused to take care of fixing it.

However, I contacted Toshiba directly and they will RMA the drive as they have a 3-year warranty on all their notebook harddrives...YMMV

 

[imported_goku]

Yea On my sister's laptop, the machine completely overheated one day and just wouldn't turn on agian. Sent in the machine and they replaced the motherboard, now the warranty is over, not sure what we'd do if this happened agian. (Warranty ended 3 months after the failure).