On Sun, 3 Apr 2005, Tim Reid wrote:

Doese anyone have any experiance with the Dell inspirion line of laptops? Are they good/bad? How is Dell's service? (i've heard it sucks)

TIA,

I guess I will stand alone in my opinion that I have had really good luck with them. I have owned 4 of them and only one of them I don't really like. It was a quick buy for my job and I also wanted to play Doom 3 on it, so it is beafy, but it is more of a luggable instead of a portable. The thing people need to realize is that since you carry around laptops and expose them to a wide variety of conditions - they *will* break periodically. I usually get the 3 year onsite next business day warranty. If I call by about 3ish in the afternoon they will have a guy there the next day. Occasionally I have had a part come D.O.A. No biggie, then they are back the next day. Some people get really worked up over this. I don't. Why?! Well, it isn't costing me money to ship it back and forth to Dell and it is quicker even if the first part is D.O.A. Plus, in shipping stuff gets knocked around pretty badly ... it might leave the company fixed and arrive broken to you. It doesn't get lost in the mail either because it never left my hands! If you do buy a Dell laptop - get the onsite warranty ... it doesn't cost that much more if you recognize that you *will* use it.

//========================================================\ || D. Hageman dhageman@dracken.com || \========================================================//

On Sunday 03 April 2005 08:45 pm, Tim Reid wrote:

Doese anyone have any experiance with the Dell inspirion line of laptops? Are they good/bad? How is Dell's service? (i've heard it sucks)

IBM and Apple get the top satisfaction ratings for their laptops.

Toshiba and HP usually rate better than Dell, but below the above.

Winbook laptops are reasonable in feature-for-price, but not as repairable.

I agree with Mr. Hageman that having an on-site service contract is a big plus. They seem to take you more seriously.