A hit and miss laptop
Written: Nov 03 '00
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Pros: when working properly, a great system, lightweight
Cons: poor customer service
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| KaylaRaine's Full Review: Dell Latitude LS |
My company recently ordered two of these machines (500Mhz, 128MB Ram, 6G hard drive) and I was the one who got to set them up and install all the software. First of all, I want to say that these little machines (about 3.5lbs worth) are very attractive. They are slim, light, and very "cute."
The first laptop worked wonderfully. Windows installed easily as did the software that I loaded. I had no connection problems, no driver problems, no installation problems. The speed of this lil' guy was great for something so small. One thing that I didn't like is that the harddrive was partitioned into three drives. I think three harddrives is too many, especially with only 6G of space overall. I would rather have it just as one drive, or two at the most.
The second laptop was the laptop from hell. Originally, I didn't have any problems installing windows or software. However, when it came time to use the software, I was getting all kinds of errors, I was having connection problems (couldn't connect at all to the internet), and the bootup seemed alot slower than the other laptop.
After trying various attempts at making the applications work, I decided to uninstall everything and reinstall it. Well, needless to say that didn't go well. I had no problems uninstalling the software, but when it came time to reinstall, each program either timed out or froze the screen before the installation was complete.
Well, I figured that it was time for a reformat and called a Dell Technical Assistant to help me out as I did not want to do anything to further damage the system. This dilemma began at 10am.
I called Tech Service, waited on hold for 20 minutes, finally reached a human being, asked me some info., put me on hold, 10 minutes later, the connection hung up on me.
Called again, waited on hold for 20 minutes, reached a tech service person, she and I argued for a few minutes and then decided to do a reformatting of the hard drive with the recovery disk. Sorta worked. It reformatted the hard drive into a 16 bit system instead of 32 bit. Problem made worse.
It is now 1pm. Called again, talked to a tech service person, explained my problems and told him that I wanted to return the laptop and get a new one that actually works properly. He said ok and told me that he was going to transfer me to customer service. 20 minutes on hold later, I reached customer service. Wrong division. "Would I hold please so she can transfer me?" Sure. 20 more minutes on hold. A new customer service person. We argued for several minutes about the laptop exchange. She said that her records showed that my problem had been fixed. I informed here that, obviously they weren't. She told me that I should call tech service and try to get the problem solved. I told her I called them three times and the problem is only worse. I wanted an exchange. "Would I hold please while she transfered me to her supervisor?" I told here that I did not want to be put on hold again and she assured me that it would only be for a couple of minutes. I guess 10 minutes means a couple of minutes in Dellspeak.
Finally, after speaking to the customer service supervisor, I managed to arrange a laptop exchange. That was at 3pm.
I have never had poor service with Dell at any other time. My home system is Dell, several people I know have Dell computers and overall, they are very good systems. I guess the lesson learned is that if you do have a problem with one of their systems, you need to be persistant with tech support and customer service in order to get what you want.
Dell Customer Service: 1-800-624-9897. x669966.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2500/laptop
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 501-600
Screen Size: 12"
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): 4-6
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Epinions.com ID:
KaylaRaine
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Reviews written: 116
Trusted by: 17 members
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