How good / bad are Dell notebooks?

[mshan]

How good / bad are Dell notebooks?

Also, why are IBM thinkpads and Toshiba notebooks thought of so highly?

 

[helo7050]

i have a dell notebook and its pretty good. When i buy my next notebook mabe in a year i'm going to get an HP widescreen.

 

[bob4432]

i know dell tech support is excellent. personally i like ibm notebooks better but like dell tech better. i did a little work on a friends 5+year old dell desktop, and although the support had run out years before, the guy was more than willing to help me. on the other hand i did some work on a guys ibm laptop and it was just a little out of the free tech support time and they would not help me unless i paid $60+ hour...

 

[mshan]

Why are IBM thinkpads thought of so highly?

And is this reputation based only on their high end and very expensive laptops?

 

[yadda]

IMHO...There is nothing wrong with Dell laptops. You will find a horror story from any brand. Personally they refresh their line quite often and are one of the best values out there.

Y

 

[Philippine Mango]

IBM laptops are thought of so highly because they are of very high build quality. I've gone through 2 sony laptops, 1 fujitsu which was alright but was fairly old, 2 dell laptops and this is my first IBM laptop. This IBM laptop out performed all the other laptops I've EVER had. It's a wonderful machine with very good battery life [on 1 battery I can get up to 6 hours while on my sony with 2 full sized batteries, I could only get 3 hours with maximum power savings (typing,web browsing on wifi)but if I wanted to watch a movie, the sony only got a measly 1:20 with both batteries full charged]. The dell laptops are still not much better then the sony and the dell's build quality is quite poor for a laptop (sony's have better build quality for the most part).

 

[JackBurton]

The Dell X300 is AWESOME! I love that thing!

 

[Melchior]

Dell's are the best Price/Performance Laptops out there. Period. No problems with my 700M.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

No problems with the hardware, but their customer service/support can kiss my @$$

Thats from a consumer POV and from a corporate IT POV, you get treated like crap both ways

 

[WobbleWobble]

Having owned an IBM Thinkpad, HP Pavilion, Toshiba Satellite and Dell Inspiron, the Inspiron had the worst build quality out of all of them. Doesn't feel solid, cheap plastic, flimsy keyboard...

IBM was definately my favourite. Trackpoint and a very solid feeling keyboard. Very well built machine overall.

 

[powerMarkymark]

I like my Latitude D800

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: powerMarkymark
I like my Latitude D800

Yep, the D600 and D800 are nice.

 

[modedepe]

Originally posted by: mshan
How good / bad are Dell notebooks?

Also, why are IBM thinkpads and Toshiba notebooks thought of so highly?

I didn't think anybody thought highly of Toshiba notebooks, especially with all the class action lawsuits for overheating.

From the Dell laptops I've seen I haven't been very impressed. All plastic, seemed cheaply made all around. I know my friend has had a lot of problems with his, though he is extremely rough on it and probably needs a Panasonic Toughbook in reality.

 

[Arcanedeath]

Dell's tech support is just awful unless you happen to be one of their corp. customers who pay an insane amount of money for "premium" service, also unless you are getting a Latitude series laptop the build quality is pretty sub par, the only real reason to buy a dell is price / performance in that one area they are hard to compete with.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

I used to work for one of those big corps that pay extreme amounts of money for the "premium service" and still got morons who gave me the run around

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Originally posted by: modedepe

Originally posted by: mshan
How good / bad are Dell notebooks?

Also, why are IBM thinkpads and Toshiba notebooks thought of so highly?

I didn't think anybody thought highly of Toshiba notebooks, especially with all the class action lawsuits for overheating.

From the Dell laptops I've seen I haven't been very impressed. All plastic, seemed cheaply made all around. I know my friend has had a lot of problems with his, though he is extremely rough on it and probably needs a Panasonic Toughbook in reality.

I think very highly of toshiba and thier customer support, very friendly and they even *gasp* speak english and not "engrish"

 

[n0cmonkey]

Averatec will get my money for the next non-Apple notebook I get. :light:

 

[sniperruff]

dell's are fine but IBM's are bullet-proof.

 

[LoganP]

I can't speak for the other brands but I deployed 180 Dell Latitude D600's to our salesmen after using the C series for years and we've had nothing but problems with them. We've had to have service on 40% of them over the past year with most of them being a motherboard replacement. The other issues I've had are hard-drives and the hinges.

The reason for so many problems is because we use a wireless air card to transmit orders from the field and the pc card slot isn't built for the abuse we put it threw. Slot goes bad, whole motherboard has to be replaced. In defense of Dell, our salesmen use the hell out of these things and they stay on 24/7 but when you have to call in at least 10 laptops a week, it gets old fast.

 

[jjsbasmt]

My Inspiron 5100 at the 18 month point has been stellar. Although I have repaired other Dell laptops for customers, I've rarely had to deal with their tech support. But when I have, support was top notch. However, I personally know a couple of folks who have had serious issues with Dell's customer support. A couple of friends have the Avertec and are please with that brand.

 

[saltedeggman]

i think dells are fine...but build quality is not on par with other brands

if you do get a dell lappy, do a fresh install when you get the laptop because they will come with lots of programs installed...