Dude, you're fixing a Dell!

[primarylupine]

Now, I've been a fan of Dell's C-Series business laptops for a while, owning a CPi366, a CPxJ-650, and the latest, a C840. I'd recommended the Vostro line to a couple other people at work, and figured that we could use one for a business laptop too. Mainly, we have it on hand for people to do presentations on if they need a laptop and didn't bring

Comments

[viqsi]

Further proof that the ThinkPad is the one true worthy line of laptops. *nod*

;)

[primarylupine]

I like my ThinkPad 500, a.k.a. "DinkPad". It runs Win95 decently, but can't do much with it these days. My main turn-off for the entire Thinkpad line is that damned "nipple" mouse. As much as I tried, I've never gotten used to them. The Dells at least offer a choice between the nipple mouse and the trackpad.

I tend to like the older Dell business lines since they're built like Soviet tanks. Plus they're loud, hot, and heavy, like Soviet tanks.

[viqsi]

Recent* Thinkpads also offer that choice of pointing devices. (*: By "recent" I mean "since 2003 or so" ;) )

My Dell experience was permanently and irretrievably soured by the Inspiron 3800 I used to own. The reason why can be summed up with the following list:
* Five or six keyboards (lost track after a while)
* Two motherboards
* Three motherboard-to-LCD cables
* Two LCDs
* The entire plastic shell
* The CD-ROM drive
* Audio jacks on one of the motherboards
* Two batteries
* Four hard drives
* Two and a half years

With the exception of that last, those are all parts I ended up purchasing to try to keep the thing running since I didn't feel I could afford a whole new laptop. Note that that is literally *every single part* except the actual CPU and the RAM - many of them twice, and the keyboards were especially bad. Yeah, I'm not about to buy Dell again. :)

[primarylupine]

Hmm, my first Dell was the CPiA 366, which is the same thing as the I3800. Didn't have any problems with that one. It was the 650 that developed the bad RAM slot.