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Congrats on the new ‘puter!
And I’m with you, I freakin’ HATE Vista.
HATE.
Dell is actually rated very highly, and I’ve owned several that have worked flawlessly. Right now, the highest rated laptops are by Dell and Toshiba. I was pretty sure that Alienware was owned by Dell now, too.
In my opinion there’s a huge difference between Dell desktops and Dell laptops. I have a Dell desktop that is about 8 years old now and I never had a single problem at all. All my desktops at work have been Dells, and they’ve been flawless. My personal experience with Dell laptops has been vastly different though, so perhaps you guys have been lucky. I don’t disagree that Dell laptops are a great value, but I just have doubts about their long-term reliability. This is solely from observation, not actual statistics.
I love my toshiba satellite… my only complaint is it runs hot… but I use a chill pad and that seems to keep it from overheating.
enjoy your new toy!
The international experience of the Dell company in every respect seems to vary greatly. I have dealt with Dell PC’s and laptops purchased in all corners of the globe and the hardware seems to be the same across the globe - the same models and chipsets have the same running problems or inherent reliability depending on the model.
The difference is in the support - from how easy it is to get through to someone intelligent on the other end of a phone, through to actually getting them to replace broken/faulty bits, the best support seems to be in the US and Western Europe. Asia-Pacific Dell support are much slower and have a much less user-friendly structure to the support systems, and annoyingly I nearly always seem to end up speaking to the same Indian call centres that handle front-line UK support if I ever have to deal with them.
However, I am not a big Dell fan in general - their PC’s are great, but I would rather just build one. I realise this is a skill not everyone possesses, but can pretty much be done by a complete beginner these days just by reading the basic instructions that come with the products. It can also work out much cheaper, especially for the top end machines.
Dell laptops seem to be, on the whole, less reliable than other brands, based solely on my experience. I would personally recommend Toshiba or Lenovo for a good, solid, inexpensive laptop.
I would be interested to know what the Fujitsu is like - they are a brand I have next to no experience of (I recall someone I worked with having one once but other than that I don’t think I’ve ever come across one). I feel I should say right here, however, that if it were my machine the first thing I would do is go and get XP drivers for it and fork out the £65 for an XP license or whatever it is these days(I have no idea what that is in USD, but I believe we get ripped off for stuff like that in the UK). Vista seems to be well on track for being the new Millenium Edition and we all remember what fun that was…
Apologies for the epic comment, enjoy the laptop…
Forgot to mention that the “shiny screens” which your trying to avoid are mainly due to the “privacy screens” that are fitted to most off the shelf laptops. Most of the major manufacturers can supply you with at least 5 different screens if you phone up the small business sales department.
This, I have found, is the most productive way to buy any IT equipment even for personal use - they will give you the full range of options, icluding stuff they target at the business market, which for some bizarre reason they quite often don’t even let the home users see.
They will allow you to buy any quantity of whatever you are buying (in other words they will let you buy one) and you don’t necessarily need to give them a business name - all the taxes will be charged as normal, it would be the responsibilty of the non-existent business to claim them back.
Really sorry for filling your comments page with so much crap.
/Chris
Good to know. I’m in the market for a new laptop too. I was leaning towards a mac, because they seem to have the fewest problems and they have a stable OS. I may email you in a few months and ask you how you like the laptop after you’ve used it for a while.
Tori, I’d read about a lot of Toshibas and Dells with overheating problems due to the battery. There were even reports of them bursting into flames! 
DaveRandom, privacy screens? So it’s shiny to keep others from looking at your screen?? That’s just stupid! That should be an option you ask for, not something they put on by default. I would love to special order one, but that would mean paying full retail price. The one I got was on clearance because it was a discontinued model.
Zoe, Macs probably are solid. I know Microsoft styled Vista to mimic a lot of the graphical elements that the Mac OS has. Macs are kind of expensive though, I think largely due to their overzealous branding.
Well, BP wants me to get a Mac so she can use it for freelance work. She’s been using her work laptop, but she’s afraid she’s gonna get busted. What she really wants to do is skip the laptop and get an iMac. I don’t really care as long as I can have something that is mine and she doesn’t clutter up with her stuff. Besides, as often as we are working online at the same time we really each need our own machine. So that really brings me back to the beginning again doesn’t it.
In that case, steer clear of the Mac laptop! 
You’ll never see it again otherwise, heh.
Most companies usually only care that you’re working on their stuff while they’re paying you, and don’t much care what else you use the hardware for, especially at home. Unless she works for a crew of control-freaks, in which case they might track what websites you visit while on their network. They’d have to be real paranoid shits to actually inspect the files on the laptop with any kind of regularity. And they can’t monitor your internet activity if you’re not logged into their network. Hmm, unless they have some special software I don’t know about… 
There must be a massive difference between the US Dell company and the Australian/Asia Dell company. My last computer was a Dell desktop that has run flawlessly for the past 5 days. My whole company uses Dell desktops and laptops and there is rarely an issue with them and I just brought a Dell Inspiron which is running like a dream and was higher speced and much cheaper than the Fujitsi laptops.
Anyway, I am glad that you have a brand new laptop and remember, you can always downgrade to Windows XP.
Riayn | 03.15.2008 | 4:38 AM