This weekend I ordered glasses from two different websites. (I’m going to hold off mentioning which ones for now. I’ll wait to find out what kind of a job they do.)
I ordered four pairs of glasses for much less than what a single pair used to cost me. If all goes well, I’ll be getting one pair of sunglasses, one pair of color changing glasses, one pair that looks almost identical to the ones I wear now, and one pair of funky glasses (this was the free one).
The trade-off is that the glasses will take about two weeks.
Dell’s customer service has been my single greatest customer service experience with any product, ever.
Let me break it down for you:
My computer, a Dell XPS m1210 was out of warranty. ((It died within 1 year after my warranty expired, but by the time I talked to Dell it was more than a year out of warranty.))
Here’s Lionel’s e-mail to me from just after midnight this morning:
“Jay:
That’s great news. I’m really glad to see it all worked out smoothly. I appreciate you being a loyal Dell customer. Feel free to tell any other Dell customers how to contact me directly if they need some assistance.
It’s customer’s like you that make this the best job I’ve ever had.
If you’ve got an issue with your Dell, get a hold of Lionel directly. He’s an incredible guy working for an incredible company. Lionel and Dell took care of me. This Dell XPS m1210 is my third Dell laptop, and my next computer will absolutely be a Dell too.
Since I had nothing to lose, I sent an e-mail to Dell’s head blogger, Lionel Menchaca about my problem. He was lightning fast in responding to me – asking for my Dell service tag. ((This is a number on a little sticker underneath the laptop. The service tag code is essentially a serial number they use to track your computer when its being repaired or you call for technical support.))
When Dell had lost my prior laptop and replaced it with the XPS m1210 I purchased a warranty extension. I had spent a fair bit of change on that laptop and I was expecting to keep it around a while. However, that extended warranty lapsed a little over a year ago. ((Although, less than a year from when I first started having this problem)) I explained my problem with the bad nVidia video card. He responded telling me that I would be getting a call from someone soon.
Sure enough, less than a day later I received a call from Dell’s corporate customer service program. They told me that as a “gesture of good will” they were going to replace my computer’s motherboard – by sending a technician to me to do the repair.
Replacing a motherboard is so expensive its almost always cheaper to buy a new computer. Offering to repair an out-of-warranty laptop by sending a tech to me to replace the motherboard???
Yesterday I discussed the basics of buying a new computer. The most important first step is figuring out what you need and what you want out of a new computer. There are three main types of portable computers available these days: netbooks, basic laptops, and high-end laptops. Today is all about “netbooks.” ((Photo courtesy of Ciccio Pizzettaro))
(Scroll to the end to see my picks…)
Netbooks
A netbook is a very small laptop designed to extremely mobile and portable. They are optimized for portability and wireless connectivity.
Netbooks typically have a display of 10″ or less. ((TV’s and monitors are always measured by the diagonal.)) They usually don’t have any CD or DVD drives. ((This means they’re no good for watching DVD’s or playing CD’s.)) They usually have very small solid state drives or mid-sized hard drives. On the plus side, they usually have bluetooth, media card readers, and WiFi. They’re typically between 2 to 3 pounds, depending upon brand and type of battery. They’re also relatively cheap – between $350 to $500.
My requirements may differ from yours. If I were to buy a netbook, I would want:
Minimum 2 USB ports, preferably 3
Minimum 100 GB hard drive
1 GB RAM
Bluetooth
WiFi aka 802.11a/b/g, and preferably also 802.11n
Ethernet port
Modem port
Other things people might care about (but I don’t):
Webcam
Keyboard size
Monitor size
Keep in mind, I’ve never used any of these laptops – I’m just evaluating them based on their prices and my own opinions as to their respective brands and specs. Although, I’m enough of a nerd that I put together a spreadsheet to compare those five netbooks as well as about another dozen or so models and submodels. If anyone is interested in seeing the spreadsheet, mention it in the comments below or drop me a line.
Dell has a new netbook too, but it only has solid state drive options – which are too small to be of use to me. ((8 GB of hard drive space is barely enough to run an operating system and a few programs these days…)) However, I’m sure it would be perfect for some people.
If I were to buy a netbook today, I’d probably go for the Acer Aspire One. It occupies a sweet spot in terms of price, is a decent brand, and has very comparable specs to the higher-end models.
I’m undecided what kind of laptop I want/need. A netbook? A basic laptop? A high-end laptop? ((Photo courtesy of Ciccio Pizzettaro))
Figure out what you need, then figure out what you want
Needs
Its all about what you want and what you need. I need a laptop that will let me program, surf the web, listen to music, and send e-mail. This accounts for roughly 98% of my computer usage.
The last 2% of computer usage is comprised of processor intensive activities such as watching DVD’s, video games, video editing, DVD and CD burning, and manipulating large amounts of programming code. For instance, the WCAB legacy number to EAMS number converter involved more than 4.6 million lines of code. ((Seriously. 4.6 million.)) My previous laptop struggled with that one. I probably only do these things once every six months or so.
For what I need, a netbook would actually work very well for me.
Wants
As any computer user knows, its very frustrating to have a computer that will not do what you want or takes to long to do it. My wants are a super slim, light-weight, battery efficient, computer that has the processing power to deal with large amounts of data and the ability to burn DVD’s and CD’s.
A netbook fulfills the wants of a slim, light-weight, and battery efficient computer. A basic laptop would suffice for the processing power and CD/DVD burning capabilities.
Having it all
When it comes to laptops, sometimes you can have it all – it just depends how you’re going to compromise.
If money were no object, this would be a no-brainer: buy a high-end light and powerful laptop. These cost $1500 and start climbing steeply after that.
The other compromise is not so intuitive. A very decent external CD/DVD burner combo drive would probably only cost $75 or so. If I’m only burning discs 2% of the time, this is a very reasonable solution. The bigger problem is the underpowered processors in netbooks. They simply do not have the ability to play new games, handle large amounts of data, or deal with too many simultaneous tasks. The only possible work around here is where you use your underpowered laptop to remotely control a more powerful computer and use that more powerful computer to crunch numbers. ((Scroll down to the part about TightVNC.)) However, this won’t help with video games. ;)
Decision Time
What am I going to get? I’m going to run down the pro’s and con’s of netbooks, basic laptops, and high-end laptops next time. Stay tuned!
