G_DOGG619

SlowSl that is true about their customer service heard that before buying laptop. My wife has one and it has taken a beating over the years and still works. What hardware issue have you had with dell computures if you don't mind me asking.

SlowSL

I'm not saying they are all damned, asside from the power supplies the ratio of working to broken computers is in the favor of the working, however it's still a staggering number of our computers that have had major problems. Your wife is one of the lucky ones. I would have to ask our computer guy, but from conversations I've heard.....

Ram failure caused some kind of bios startup fault, replaced ram & fixed it.
DVD-rom failure
power switch intermittently working

More windows related are the blue screens of death that many have encounterd on a monthly basis. I know it's a windows fatal error for some hardware problems, or hardware assignments, etc.

I don't know what happened to our server computer, but it's gone out from time to time, as well as the server battery backup, it took a crap and it's less than two years old.

If you buy a dell, you have a good chance of getting one of these nightmares.

I work on a lot of computers for friends & family. HP seems to be the most broght to me. It probably has a lot to do w/ how many people own them, they are cheap and every store sells them, but man. One computer shop in our town said they get more HP's than any other. My laptop when brand new had a problem that it would randomly drop internet connection. I called & called & called and they ran this test and that test and kept insisting that it's fine & wouldn't do anything about it. Finally, after about two months they actually admitted that it was a problem that they were getting swamped w/ calls & that they would honor the warranty. Sent it back and they fixed it. When it was returned there was a huge scratch/gouge on the top of the laptop & it took hours of arguing and pushing for them to replace what they scratched. A year later it's doing it again. On top of my DVD burner went out. Replaced it and still no-go, the pins, or one of them had broken off the board, and disconnected contact. Junk. Pieces of ----. E-machines & alienware seem to have a good reputations. My moms had an E-machine for 6 years now and not one problem. I'm not even going to mention the details on my old HP laptop is now having w/ a bios error..... My 3rd, old old Dell laptop I use to tune my car had the power board fail shortly after buying it, so it is it detects a 70 watt instead of 90 watt power supply & goes into system optimized power save mode & does not charge the battery. Customer support said to replace the board & it will fix it. So I buy one and replace it..... Dont get an awful gray screen anymore warning about the 70 watt, but then still goes into power save, & now it charges the battery, but only 10% and it takes overnight...... a few months later that board failed again. The power plug jack also broke two of the pins, due to the crappy engineering of the casing allowing it to flex all to hell. Had to fix that., ugh.

G_DOGG619

Thanks for the heads up on the issues with some of the software. Just asking due to having problems with it running slow and not wanting to get onto yahoo mail, but other than that it runs like a chance. Thanks again for the info.

sha-d

shut the ---- up whiner.

ILL BILL NECRO

I am typing this on a hp netbook I got for 180 bucks (refurb).... works like a charm.... but if you want a good REAL computer build one with brand name parts.... it's not that expensive and if you use http://www.tigerdirect.ca/
and buy all the parts as a kit and build it yourself it's 100 times better.

SlowSL

Thought you all might find this humorous. My mother in law ordered a HP desktop online, AMD quad-core, 6GB ram, 1.XX TB HD, etc. etc., great specs. It was put on back order and she ended up finding the exact same model at another store in stock. My fiancee ended up buying this one off of her for some reason.

Her computer went out, so just to get her by I found an old junk 10yr old computer and set it up so she could use it for work. 1st thing when she gets the new HP setup, the internet is noticeably slow. as an example, testing the old computer, her old old computer, and the new HP, using the exact same router, modem & net. adapter, the HP is less than 1/2 the speed. As an example, on the HP, most youtube videos buffer every few seconds, it can't keep up. She upped her service through verizon to double the speed, and it still is exactly the same. I don't have a clue how that could be, but it is.

2nd issue, we get my fiancees HP setup, and put in a dvd, and nothing...... The computer doesn't recognize the drive. After quite a while w/ customer service, we pop open the cover and check on things, the ------- SATA wire wasn't all the way plugged in, I mean come on, WTF. Pieces of ----. BTW, same thing at our house, with comcast's 20+mbit service, internet is slow, and all streaming vids buffer every few seconds.


I couldn't agree more. I had built a monster for around $500 about 5 years ago w/out any problems w/ it. I just watched for a few months and jumped on the deals.