great screen but poor quality and service
Written: Oct 26 '03
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Pros: performance. screen. tracking when they ship the new notebook.
Cons: overheat problems. repair is slow and they ship without tracking info. poor overall quality.
The Bottom Line: avoid this product because overheating risks to destroy your investment.
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| danou's Full Review: Dell Inspiron 4150 (A-i0209) PC Notebook |
i bought this laptop in january 2003. i was amazed by the very high quality of the screen, that delivers 1040x1500 pixels and allows me to read easily two pages side-by-side of a pdf document for instance. windows xp and the 1.8 GHz processor and the 500MB ram are more than enough for the tasks I asked (engineering programs and multimedia).
I immediatly noticed that the laptop gets so warm that you cannot put it on your lap. kind of shame for a laptop. Problems started in the warm summer 2003 in new york. the laptop crased unexpectedly more and more often. I then had to wait a couple of minutes before restarting it, or it would crash immediatly. i contacted dell telling them about a probable overheat problem (laptop was always unbearably hot and smelled like burned plastic). dell first asked me to perform tests that required to unmount components like memory. i then was asked to ship the notebook for repair at their expenses. they first promised the repair to be done within 5 business days. after 15 days without any tracking information, i asked the same support who emailed some clearly copy-pasted (one phrase was uncompletely pasted) about backorder delays, without any precise tracking information. i asked for a clear answer and they finally told me that i had to ask other persons from the dell support (apparently they expect you to deal with many different departments during the whole repair process). one month after the repair i received the notebook. it works well, but i am concerned that it will die again by overheating in the next summer days. i asked dell and they do not extend for free the one-year guarantee even if the same overheat problem occurs. i will have to buy a $139 additional year warranty. i am doctor in engineering, teach heat transfer at a new york state university and am very unhappy to to give out more money to Mr. Dell whose company poorly designed an overheating product.
among other problems are the cheap keyboard that makes typing unprecise and slow, the plastic pads under the laptop that detach after 6 months, the on off button that requires unfolding the laptop before starting it, the software-controlled volume control that cannot be controlled when the computer comes out of hibernation. i also found stupid that dell had put a wifi network card without linux driver: dell makes money with servers using the free linux system and they do not make the small effort to find linux-compatible parts for their laptops.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 1100
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 14 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 21-30
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Epinions.com ID:
danou
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Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 0 members
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