Wow, sorry to hear about that. I'm not a dell advocate by any means, but I've had by far positive experiences. I believe there was a time when even Lat support was handled outside the US, so perhaps you ran up against that. Having used Apple, Dell, HP, Sony (Sony actually the worst by far) etc.. I think Dell has the best support bases covered the best through sheer size. I usually have a knowledgeable tech here the next day (or 4hrs if it's a server) with the right part, and often I don't even have to call, I just create the case on the web. I am investigating being "Certified" by Dell which I believe costs around 300 dollars and lets you directly dispatch techs from their website as though you were actually and inside Dell tech. Chris -----Original Message----- From: tclug-list-bounces at mn-linux.org [mailto:tclug-list-bounces at mn-linux.org] On Behalf Of Loren H. Burlingame Sent: Monday, December 13, 2004 9:18 PM To: TCLUG Mailing List Subject: Re: [TCLUG] Laptop advice On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 17:00:20 -0600, Chris Smith <christophermsmith at mac.com> wrote: > Now that IBM is > selling though, I'd go Dell. You can get repairs done and get ahold of > someone, and their onsite service is good. (get a lattitude and you > can talk to US based support, vs. India.) I have a Lat D800 running > FC3 and it works very well, though I haven't had time to play w/ the > wireless yet everything else works great. I strongly recommend *not* going with dell for laptops. I have a Latitude c640 and while it works just fine with linux I have had some serious overheating problems. The thing always seemed to get hotter than I would ever imagine could be normal (regularly runs at about 141 celsius with nothing else going) and sure enough less than a year after I bought it the motherboard died due to overheating. Looking at message boards, this would seem to be a very common problem with Dell laptops, to the point where there are a couple 3rd party fan utilities written specifically for them to keep their fans running at full tilt at all times. I spent a week with support trying to get my motherboard replaced, which did ultimately happen, but it was a hassle. -- Loren H. Burlingame <loren at lhb.name> GPG Key ID: 0x112DCF4F "Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes." -William Shatner (a.k.a. Buck Murdock) _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list