Ok, let me expand: My Dell had two harddisk crashes within the first 3 months of use. When that happens with IBM (has happened once before in 8 years of thinkpad ownership), I bring it in to the nearest service people. If the HD still works for a data transfer, they ghost the disk onto the new disk and I'm up and running again in less than a day.
With Dell, it first took me almost a week to convince them that the harddisk crashes after a few hours of use, after making an ugly noise (they in all sincerity asked me to video record it and play the sound to the support technician!).
Well, after that, they sent me a new harddisk by way of a technician that wanted to take the old harddisk with right away. A couple hours of available runtime allows for a ghost, so instead of setting up my entire machine again (which takes anywhere between 2-3 days of work), I wanted to ghost to the new harddisk. Not only did the tech not even have the material with him (additional drive bay for instance), he also did a freakout on me regarding me not letting him take the old disk with him. After a long discussion on the phone with the homebase, he said it was ok but I had to ship it back to them within 2 days.
So I network ghosted the old disk, got the machine back running, and then the display failed.
Tech comes back (after a long struggle to find a suiting time and day, after they refuse to specify time of arrival any more precise than 5 hours).
Luckily, in the meantime my IBM Thinkpad had been delivered and I had a machine to work off during that disaster.
Oh, and the funny thing was: Dell support told me that in fact I was the one who screwed up, not them, because I bought the wrong model. The inspiron is not meant to be in constant use, just occasional home use. Professionals should be the latitude line of laptops. What a crock of sh...!!
So here you have my story why I will never buy Dell again. There's another one with a Dell Poweredge server I had bought about 4 years ago which has (and always had) system hangs every now and then despite numerous OS reinstalls. But they won't replace the motherboard or memory because I can't proof it's a component fault. This despite extended warranty I had purchased.
I should also add that the inspiron was by far the cheapest manufactured laptop I had ever seen. titanium thinkpad, or aluminum powerbooks guarantee for a much longer life.
Argh. While I'm at it the beginning was bad, too: After I ordered from their website, even BEFORE the laptop was delivered, they had the 1.7GHz model out at the same price I paid for the 1.5 GHz model, and I saw that on a flyer they snail mailed to me. That's just not right...
With Dell, it first took me almost a week to convince them that the harddisk crashes after a few hours of use, after making an ugly noise (they in all sincerity asked me to video record it and play the sound to the support technician!).
Well, after that, they sent me a new harddisk by way of a technician that wanted to take the old harddisk with right away. A couple hours of available runtime allows for a ghost, so instead of setting up my entire machine again (which takes anywhere between 2-3 days of work), I wanted to ghost to the new harddisk. Not only did the tech not even have the material with him (additional drive bay for instance), he also did a freakout on me regarding me not letting him take the old disk with him. After a long discussion on the phone with the homebase, he said it was ok but I had to ship it back to them within 2 days.
So I network ghosted the old disk, got the machine back running, and then the display failed.
Tech comes back (after a long struggle to find a suiting time and day, after they refuse to specify time of arrival any more precise than 5 hours).
Luckily, in the meantime my IBM Thinkpad had been delivered and I had a machine to work off during that disaster.
Oh, and the funny thing was: Dell support told me that in fact I was the one who screwed up, not them, because I bought the wrong model. The inspiron is not meant to be in constant use, just occasional home use. Professionals should be the latitude line of laptops. What a crock of sh...!!
So here you have my story why I will never buy Dell again. There's another one with a Dell Poweredge server I had bought about 4 years ago which has (and always had) system hangs every now and then despite numerous OS reinstalls. But they won't replace the motherboard or memory because I can't proof it's a component fault. This despite extended warranty I had purchased.
I should also add that the inspiron was by far the cheapest manufactured laptop I had ever seen. titanium thinkpad, or aluminum powerbooks guarantee for a much longer life.
Argh. While I'm at it the beginning was bad, too: After I ordered from their website, even BEFORE the laptop was delivered, they had the 1.7GHz model out at the same price I paid for the 1.5 GHz model, and I saw that on a flyer they snail mailed to me. That's just not right...