Laptop – PDRater – Permanent Disability Calculators

One Bad Mother – shut your mouth!

By Jay Shergill Posted on September 9, 2010 Posted in Laptop, Technobabble No Comments Tagged with Bad Mother, bad motherboard, Bad Shape, Battery Life, Customer Service, Dell, dell customer service, Kick Ass, Lionel, Mgm, Motherboard, motherboard repair, nerd, Photo, Power Cord, richard roundtree, shaft, Shut Your Mouth

Youd have to know the theme song to really get it... — You'd have to know the theme song to really get it...

You’ll understand the title in just a moment…

For the last few months my laptop has been in bad shape. Such bad shape I’ve been using a backup laptop. ((Trust me, the back up laptop is nothing to brag about.)) Something on my laptop’s motherboard went bad and killed the battery. ((You see, the motherboard – it went bad. It was one bad mother… Oh, forget it.)) ((The photo does not belong to me and is probably the property of MGM.)) I could still use it – but I had to keep it plugged in all the time. If I needed to move it, I had to shut it down all the way, move it, then boot it up – since it had no battery life at all.

Well, Dell’s kick ass incredible customer service took care of me – once again. I can’t thank these guys enough for going above and beyond. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, my next laptop is going to be a Dell. Thanks to Lionel my laptop is sporting a totally brand-spanking new motherboard and power cord. I’ve also just slapped in a totally new battery as well.

Anyhow, I’m beyond happy. ((Yes, yes, I’m a nerd – whatever.))

How to Buy a New Computer: Part III Basic Laptops

By Jay Shergill Posted on June 14, 2009 Posted in Laptop, PDRater, Technobabble No Comments Tagged with Alienware Laptop, basic laptop, Battery Life, Bored, Buy Computer, Cd Drives, Choices, Compromises, Computer Id, Computer Laptops, Computer Part, Deep Thought, Desktop, How To Buy A New Computer, Keyboard, netbook, Netbooks, New Laptops, Optical Drives, Photo Courtesy, regular laptop, Shame, simple laptop, Sky

I recently posted about how to buy a new computer. First, you need to think about balancing wants versus needs. My second post was about the new laptop category of cheap and lightweight netbooks.

Why should you choose a basic laptop?

If you are highly concerned about cost, portability, battery life and not as concerned about optical drives ((DVD/CD drives)) , screen size, or keyboard size you probably want a netbook. It will probably run you between $300 – $500. ((Photo courtesy of Ciccio Pizzettaro))

If cost-be-damned you just must have absolutely everything, well, then get yourself a high end laptop. ((Scroll to the bottom for my pic k.)) The sky’s the limit with a computer like this. You can configure an Alienware laptop that will make Deep Thought hide its processor in shame for $5,000.00 or so.

If you are concerned about cost but just cannot sacrifice optical drives, screen size, or keyboard size, you probably want a basic laptop. A basic laptop is all about compromises. You get the hardware you need from a desktop, but without the thin, light, elegant, and portable design. These laptops typically weigh between 6 and 8 pounds and cost between $600 and $1000 or so.

There are so many nearly indistinguishable computers in this category, there is no real point in suggesting a particular laptop. Just about every manufacturer has several choices for basic laptops.

Drooling over the Dell Mini 9

By Jay Shergill Posted on March 24, 2009 Posted in Laptop, Not Workers Compensation, Open Source, OpenOffice, Technobabble No Comments Tagged with Computer Dell, E Mail, Filezilla, netbook, Netbooks, Next Computer, Notepad, OpenOffice, Operating System, Pidgin, Price Tag, Programming Text, Remote Access, Sd Card Slot, Spreadsheets, Thunderbird, Word Processing

Since I reviewed available netbooks about two months back several new options have opened up. ((Photo courtesy of Ciccio Pizzettaro)) There’s the new Samsung NC110 ((The Samsung NC110 is the successor to the NC10)) ((A review of the NC110 I found helpful)) and a slew of new Acer One’s.

However, none of them can touch the 4GB Dell Mini 9 on sale right now for $199 with Ubuntu.

I know I had earlier said that 8GB was too small for my purposes. I had even suggested that I was more interested in some of the other available netbooks over the Dell for this reason. However, I want to make my next computer a Dell, true to my word.

The reason I’m considering the 4GB version where I was dismissing the 8GB version before is the incredible price and the purposes to which such a laptop would be put. In order to do about 98% of what I need with a laptop, I could easily use a netbook. On any given day I use:

Firefox for web browsing
Thunderbird for e-mail
Pidgin for instant messaging
FileZilla for FTP transfers
Notepad++ for programming/text editing
OpenOffice for word processing, spreadsheets
TightVNC for remote access

All of these programs are open source software and available for Ubuntu ((An easy-to-use Liniux installation.)) and Windows. So, in shopping for a laptop, I really don’t care about which operating system I use. The 4GB Dell Mini 9 with Ubuntu could do all of these things – and for a $199 price tag. Plus, with the Mini’s SD card slot, I could pop in an extra 16GB of memory for only $26.

400 Registered Users!

By Jay Shergill Posted on February 13, 2009 Posted in Calculators, Case Law, Laptop, Ogilvie, PDRater, Technobabble, Website Updates, Workers Compensation Resources No Comments Tagged with 400, Adobe Flash, almaraz, almarez, Backpack, benson, blogging, Calculator, Car Road, Computer Operating System, Dell, Glasses, guzman, kitten it, Motherboard, Netbooks, Rebuttal, registered users, road warrior, Unix, Unix Epoch, Warranty, Website Photo

February has been a wacky month. And, on Friday February 13th the 400th user registered for this website. ((Photo courtesy of atxbill)) Since the 300th registered user, quite a lot has happened:

Ogilvie, Almaraz/Guzman, and Benson came down.
I wrote an Ogilvie DFEC Rebuttal Calculator.
I added to my “Road Warrior Checklists”
I ordered inexpensive glasses online:
- Cheap Online Glasses – Received!
- Cheap Online Glasses?
I wrote about Dell’s customer service:
- Dell sent a tech to my home after hours for free to fix the motherboard on my out-of-warranty laptop
- Dell offered to fix my out of warranty laptop
I wrote about how to repair a laptop:
- Repairing a laptop with a repair facility
- How to decide whether to repair or replace a laptop
  - Hint: Scroll all the way down to the end of that post for a formula to help you decide whether you should repair or replace.
- Repairing a laptop with the manufacturer
- Repairing a laptop at a “big box” store
I wrote about how NOT to build a successful website: ((Trust me, its easier than it sounds…))
- How NOT to build a successful website: Frames
- How NOT to build a successful website: Adobe Flash
I wrote about How to Buy A New Laptop: ((I have several more of these planned))
- How to Buy A New Laptop: Balancing Want and Need
- How to Buy A New Laptop: Netbooks
Besides being Friday the 13th, today has a very special meaning for the truly nerdy. Unix is a computer operating system developed back in 1969. For those of you who remember DOS, that kind of what it looked like. The up-and-coming operating system Linux is based on Unix. The Unix epoch, the time from which it starts to count “up”, was on January 1, 1970. On 2/13/2009 at 6:31:30PM ET the Unix epoch reached the time “1234567890“.

Dell Customer Service!!!

By Jay Shergill Posted on January 9, 2009 Posted in Business, Laptop, Technobabble 2 Comments Tagged with Corporate Customer, Customer Service Experience, Dell Customer, Dell Customers, Dell Inc, Dell Laptop, Dell Xps, Dell Xps M1210, E Mail, Integrated Graphics, Motherboard, Next Computer, Nvidia, Nvidia Graphics Card, Technical Emergency, Warranty

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.))
It had a bad nVidia graphics card.
I wrote one e-mail to Dell’s Chief Blogger, Lionel Menchaca, stating the nature of my technical emergency. ((It was a very simple and short e-mail, so it took me forever to write.))
He told me someone was going to contact me.
Less than 24 hours later someone from Dell’s corporate customer service called me to tell me they were going to replace my entire motherboard. ((The only way to fix a bad integrated graphics card.))
Less than 24 hours later I got a call from their local technician – James. He came to my home that very evening and swapped out my motherboard. ((“Rock on completely, with some brand new components!” – CAKE))

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.

Sincerely,

Lionel Menchaca

Chief Blogger, Dell Inc.

www.dell.com/blogs

e-mail: lionel_menchaca@dell.com

Twitter: twitter.com/LionelatDell

phone: 512.728.8685″

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.

Category: Laptop