Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge junky a$$ computer

i've spent another 100$ ths week getting my 1200$ laptop worked on,,,,,, yeah,,, i know,,,, i should have paid dell 400$ for the in-home warranty, but i say f%*@ them, they should build it half- a$$ decent to begin with, i'm not gonna pay to warranty there junk. it is 3 months old, maybe it's time for there junk to start messing up. the computer repair shop told me, windows vista has lots of problems, that i'd be better off with xp, which has all the problems worked out. i really don't know,,,, reason for this post,,, can anybody give me any SOLID advise on this?????? i don't do anything but play on motorcycle forums, just need something that will work . hope dell taught this sumbitch to swim,, i'm a'feared it's gonna get wet.[sumbitch, sumbitch, sumbitch.]

get a mac

I have no faith in Dell and do have some experience with them. Thankfully I never actually owned one of my own just helped friends try and get theirs going. I have heard of many many drawbacks to Vista and would much rather XP. That being said I liked 98 better than XP too but XP does better with the larger memory from what I am told. I don't know what to suggest you do about yours except at only 3 mos. old I would be shoving that thing somewhere when I saw some rep for Dell. Last I heard if you call thier tech people you are talking to some clown in India. Wendy had a Dell and it was nothing but trouble. I have had several Gateways and they have been great, very fast front buss speeds , no real problem with any of them and the tech support was good. I can't say about them now, I have some reservations about them now that the are together with E machines. We have 2 of those for our daughter and they are extremely SLOW. They work fine and are trouble free but very SLOW.But to be fair they were $300 each with a printer , mic, speakers,monitor, keyboard and mouse, both are about 2.5GHZ with DVD drives but only burn CDs. For $300 they are good but did I say they are SLOW? LOL

so is this a 3 month old dell laptop? what is wrong with it and who is getting the $100? there should be a 12 month warranty even if you have to bring it somewhere.

dell makes pretty good stuff and vista is not awful.

I have a new Sony Vaio all in one with a beautiful 19" flat screen, it has Vista and so far it has been flawless. Had a Mac, but I need windows for Autocadd.

Can't go wrong with a new Mac. You can run Windows partitioned on it when you have to, but you'll much prefer OSX. Better hardware, better operating system, less headaches.

I might be wrong but I think Mac comes with 24 month warranty. Cant find paperwork to check, but its nice that I dont need to.

Only time I needed my warranty was when my monitor quit. And mine was 3 years parts and labor and lifetime tech support, even 2 of my old machines have the tech support still on them.

i've spent another 100$ ths week getting my 1200$ laptop worked on,,,,,,
[...]
the computer repair shop told me, windows vista has lots of problems, that i'd be better off with xp, which has all the problems worked out.

What exactly was the problem? It seems by what you say that it was an OS thing, which of course Dell has no control over (well, you can now get some Dells pre-loaded with another OS besides windoze )

I've had a couple of Dell laptops, purchased used for cheap and never had a problem with them. Last one was an Inspiron that I abused for over 4 years until the screen died on it. I currently have a Toshiba that rocks.. bought it new at Best Buy for about $600 w/1Gb of memory and a 100Gb drive. It's only a 1.6Ghz dual core machine, but it runs circles around my friends 2+Ghz box w/vista, and since I run Linux w/Beryl, it can do 1280x800 truecolor composite video tricks that make them drool.

Cheers,
Brad

this peice of s#%& just locks up and crashes right in the middle of something[such as now] BLAM my tech support guy, sahib, rajah, sahilya or which one i get, says [i think] "et try to lod up-dat, get very confused, go bad. don't worry, we fix in 2 or 3 hours please. very good,, yes?? i say up yours sahib ,,, and dell's too!!!!! the only logical thing to do is "donate" this POS to local small town library [tax purpores, ain't i a nice guy?] and get something that will work, after a little research, hence the post. it will be cheaper in the end, i guess i just maade a bad choice, not real computer savvy, be reading too many magazine ads. when you're dumb,,, you gotta be tough!!!

A Mac comes with a 1 year warranty and you can purchase an additional 2 years (AppleCare). And yes...This is being typed on a 3 year old PowerBook with no problems. Even my University is now encouraging us to purchase Macs instead of Dells.

this is an inspiron 1721 AMDturion 64 with upgrades in hard drive, memory, and battery, plus other stuff. i don't know jack about computers, so i gave my very knowledgeable buddy a card,"get me a good laptop". he strongly suggested i get a in-home warranty, but noooooo, i'm not gonna pay big bucks to warranty there s%@#, you're not SUPPOSED to have problems with a brand new [pick one] that just sits in a climate-controlled environment, no banging or jarring. i've got the red-a$$, as ya'll can probably tell, no patience with this unit now.maybe i'll go look at something else tomorrow, and see what their service policy is, i might just be a little wiser consumer. [sumbitch,sumbitch,sumbitch]

Well, I have to agree on getting a Mac, the new OSX Leopard just came out and as far as i can tell, you don't even need to partition the hard drive to run windows on it. Mac's are better by far, I'm loving mine.

Personally I always liked MAC better but my old Performa 575 (that still works fine) was way too slow and wouldn't run a lot of things. I know that isn't the case now or even about 4 years ago when I bought the Gateway I have now. This and the last one I had have been totally trouble free except 1 monitor and my last one was hit by lightning but only damage was blown modem. I looked into MAC before I got this one and even then they were supposed to be able to run any windows program. Trouble was the one I bought was $1800 and the MAC was slower , smaller hard drive, no DVD burner, and over $3,000. Oh and only 1 yr warranty and limited tech support. I don't know what they like now in comparison so those things may have changed.

First of all, never buy a Dell, they are very poorly put together machines, very cheap construction unless you buy the XPS model for gaming. Vista is a great product and runs flawless for me on my HP laptop. I hate to say this, but I would try getting a new computer and scrap the Dell.

I have a brand new compaq that the hard drive went dead on, I was told it is beacuse of the Visa os..

You should boot into safe mode and just see if you have a corrupt driver. When you start the machine, tap F8 repeatedly until you get the text screen and choose safe mode with network support. That will give you a windows machine that will offer basic functions and have internet capability. If you don't lock up it will tell you it's not a hardware failure. Then you could roll it back to the first install using Windows Restore...

I'm not sure how close Birmingham, AL is to you, but there's a Apple Store there. Go in, try out a Mac of your choosing. I'd recommend a iMac (20") or a MacBook. I've been finding it easier to convert some of my friends lately because:
1. You won't get spyware when you surf using the Mac OSX.
2. Viruses are rare and easily prevented without buying Symantec or Mcafee. But a friend of mine used Windows XP on her Mac for one week without protection and caught a virus on the XP portion of her drive. She's pretty much a believer of the Mac OS now.
3. You can run Windows XP or Vista using Parallels at the same time you run the Mac OSX and it runs pretty decent.
4. If you hate the Mac OSX, you can still install Windows on it and use it as a full-time Windows machine.
5. Everyone that doesn't use a Mac doesn't understand that good technology should be transparent. You should be able to pick the computer up and start using it. Without worrying that someone will break in and start using your computer remotely or trash your data.

You bought a Triumph because you wanted a great bike without the problems of a Harley. Try a Mac.

messed with junky a$$ laptop an hour this morning, tryed to post reply,,, would'nt let me. i can read some threads,,,, others says "this web-page not available", called computer repair shop, gonna send out tech monday to see if they can fix in home environment. this is a dell desktop i'm on, 3 years old and not a bobble. maybe i ought to sh#tcan the laptop, and get another desktop, altho not as convenient.anyway thanks for all of your advice, maybe get it resolved monday...

It does not sound like it is a problem with the laptop itself. It sound more like a software/windows configuration problem.

Soren

My first computer was a Packard Bell. When I went to upgrade the modem I found out was also the sound card. This cured me of buying "brand" name computers. I have had a friend who owns a small computer store and had him build my next computer. Since then I have done 2 more. When you buy the "brand" names such as Dell,Gateway,HP's.... ect. you are not necessarily buying the best. They scrimp on things like mother boards,a small part of your computer,to be able to give you larger processors and more memory. A lot of things such as video and sound are on board and use shared memory. This helps to slow down your computer and make upgrades difficult. My computer now is about 4 years old and I have upgraded the video card,memory,hard drive all without problems.

Nowadays, with the exception of Gateway, brand name does not matter anymore. Gateway is the only company that still uses proprietary parts and I think thay are getting away from that.

Soren

I have an old Apple Powerbook bought shortly after OS-X came out. No problems, it seems to be as reliable as my old Atari 400.

No one's mentioned this, but have you THROUGHLY gone thru your machine and checked for viruses?
they will slow you machine down and you'll think it's the hardware or software....
there's programs that can check on line, but I'm having a momentary brain fart and dont' remember any names..
also check out
http://www.grc.com/default.htm
if you can get online...
If I get another windows machine it will be a Panasonic bulletproof one, otherwise a Mac....

Mary

Symantec has an online scan I think it's www.SARC.com

i don't think i got a virus, had norton from factory, plus i think they added mcafee???? when setting up.[got friends who have com. repair shop]my wife treated me, just walk in the door wireless dsl connected, ready to go anywhere in home, recliner and all. i think when sahib had me put it in "factory condition" i lost that, was re-installed thursday. we'll get her monday, needs someone besides a dummy like me to get straight.

Daughter's Mac has been flawless, worked when none of the windoze machines would...... Not sorry I bought it for her, first year college. choice was dell or mac. mac was a little more $$ for a little less performance, but, it has been flawless and works everytime....besides..... it's cool and that matters........