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!
Before I start talking computer repair, I offer three caveats. First, I have no formal training in diagnosing, repairing, or even using computers. Second, I have no experience with repairing an Apple or Mac computer. Third, all of the below only applies to laptop repair. Its incredibly easy to swap out components on a desktop. ((Photo courtesy of Just Us 3.))
So, you’ve done the math and decided that it is more cost-effective to repair your non-functional and out-of-warranty laptop. You know that having the manufacturer or a big box store like Best Buy, Circuit City ((They’re bankrupt, so don’t bother)) and Fry’s is a very bad idea. ((For those of you who just can’t wait to find out: I think a dedicated computer facility is best.)) About the best you can hope for is that it will only cost you much more money than your computer is actually worth. The worst you can expect is to pay for your computer to be returned to you in worse condition. ((Or, in my case, have Dell ship your laptop to a construction site in Oakland. Yay.))
Option 3: Dedicated Repair Facility
Since I use my laptop constantly, it was extremely important to me that I took it someone who I could trust to do a good job. Unfortunately, this is the kind of decision I agonize over. Weighing the various pro’s and con’s, relative merits, creating formulas or spreadsheets to help me synthesize and digest the data.
I over-analyze, in part, because I want to make sure I spend my money well. However, its far more important to me that I make sure that whatever item I am researching is the most perfect fit for me. I spent my free time for the better part of the week Googling for local laptop repair places. Once I had a list of places, I started to par it down.
My criteria included: location, accreditation, apparent familiarity with my problem, initial diagnosis based upon my description over the phone, whether they performed a free diagnosis, whether I could locate any review or complaints, and price. You know, that’s all.
I first created a list of every laptop repair facility in my area and then tossed out the ones with bad reviews.
Question 1: Can you repair laptops?
This is a really good question even if you’re looking to have your desktop computer repaired. Repairing a desktop is dead simple. If a part stops working, you open it up, pull it out, slap in a new one and “rock on completely, with some brand new components“. ((Thank you Cake!)) Repairing a laptop is far more involved.
If they couldn’t repair a laptop, I would not have any confidence they’d be able to repair a desktop and would move on.
Question 2: Can you repair components?
There are a lot of “computer repair” places, but most of them either only deal with software problems or only replace large whole computer parts. Their solution to a laptop problem is to replace the motherboard or tell you to buy a new computer. That’s like a mechanic telling you that you need to either replace the entire engine or buy a new car because spark plugs are just not their thing.
The good thing about a repair facility that does “component level repair” is that they will actually look for what caused the problem. Then they will need to try and replace just that little part. Depending upon your computer’s symptoms, you might need a new power jack, new chip on the motherboard, or even have the solder on the board around a chip melted and re-applied to the motherboard ((This is called a “re-flow,” since the original solder is melted and made to flow back around the chip or connections. If your computer gets heated and cooled a lot, this might be your problem.)) .
If the repair facility couldn’t repair a component level problem, I moved on.
Question 3: Can you diagnose the problem over the phone?
When calling a repair facility, ask for a technician and describe the problem for them. Obviously, you can’t expect them to actually know what’s wrong, so don’t hold them to it. On the other hand, they should be have some inkling as to the cause.
A small aside about workers’ compensation defense, and then back to laptop repair:
Sometimes during a doctor’s deposition I need to ask a question that deals with legal issues. Invariably, the other attorney present has a different take on the applicable medicine or, more likely, the law. In these situations, I state my position about the medical-legal issue in terms of, “Doctor, its my understanding that…” Then, I say, “Doctor, for the purposes of this question, assume that my understanding about the applicable law is correct. Now… [insert insightful question here]?”
This keeps objections and interruptions to a minimum and allows the doctor to focus on my question. If the other attorney is correct in their legal position, my question and the corresponding answer are irrelevant. Posing the question in this fashion completely removes any basis for objection since the doctor’s response becomes entirely dependent upon whether or not a given legal position is correct.
When describing my computer problems over the phone and getting a snap diagnosis from the technician, I ask them the following, “Assuming the problem is [the problem you’ve just diagnosed], are you capable of making this repair and how long would it take?”
If the repair facility technician had no idea what the problem was or would refuse to venture a guess based on what I was saying, I moved on.
Question 4: Who will be doing the diagnosis and repair?
I located a surprising number of local people who represented via their website or a posting on CraigsList.org that they were able to repair a variety of laptop problems. Some of these were just people who did the work out of their home. They may very well do a good job and certainly charged less – but they weren’t for me. I had a little more confidence ((And, perhaps wrongly so. This is just a gut feeling.)) in a repair facility employing a repair technician than I did in a some guy who put up an ad or website.
Occasionally, a local repair facility will actually out-source the diagnosis and repair. This, of course, begs the question – why do I need you?
As I mentioned above, I wanted to talk to a technician – preferably the one who would be performing the job themselves.
Question 5: How did you treat me on the phone?
Some technicians can’t help feeling superior to the their clients. ((Unfortunately, this is also true of some attorneys.)) If the technician was the least bit rude or condescending, I hung up and moved on. Repair facilities are in the customer service industry as much as they’re in the computer repair industry. All it takes is one unfriendly or unknowledgeable person answering the phones for you to lose a potential client.
If you follow the above criteria to create a list of local computer repair facilities and ask the above questions, you’re going to stand a decent chance of finding the best place to get your laptop repaired. Good luck!
Everyone has heard the phrase, “pull oneself up by the bootstraps.” ((Photo courtesy of Jarl van Hoother)) It basically refers to using your current resources to reach the next step.
In a prior post I talked about “How to Start a Business: Plan B,” which was mainly about fund raising. Fund raising is the exact opposite of bootstrapping. If you can’t raise funding for your business and you’re really committed to it, you’ve got to find another way. That would be “Plan B.” In hindsight I would have entitled that post, “B is for Bootstrapping” or “Starting A Business On A Budget.”
For a very nuts-and-bolts look at starting a business, look to Guy Kawasaki‘s “The Art of Bootstrapping.” This is an excerpt from his new book, “Reality Check.” My understanding is that this book is a distillation of his prior books and blog posts. Its on my Christmas wish list, so I’ll look forward to reading it in about a month.
I used many of these bootstrapping techniques while building this website. Using the bullet points from Guy’s post, here’s some of the things I used to start this business:
“Ship then test.” To be more exact, I tested the calculators rigorously but didn’t spend nearly as much time testing how the earliest versions of this website looked in different web browsers. Once I got it to work in Internet Explorer, I started marketing it.
“Start a service business.” In the first few months of building this website I worked as a technology consultant and part-time programmer. In addition to being a nice change from my day job as an attorney and earning a little extra, it also gave me the chance to learn some new programming languages and techniques.
“Go direct.” I schlepped my laptop to every appearance and showed off the website to every single attorney that was foolish enough to sit still and listen to me. Besides not having the resources to hire people to sell for me, it also allowed me to learn more about what my customers wanted. Keeping in touch with my clients/customers has lead to a LOT of new developments on this site.
As to “how” I started this business, here was my process:
I wanted to build my own online rating calculators. ((The exact reasons why are the topic of an entirely different blog post altogether.))
I bought some books about web based programming languages. $55.00 or so for two books.
“SAM’s Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL, and Apache” is probably written for the beginning programmer who’s already familiar with other programming language structures, but not with PHP, MySQL or Apache. I found this book the more helpful of the two.
