New Laptop questions

[rlk-FrUbXkNCsVf2fBVCVOL8/A at public.gmane.org (Robert Krawitz)]

   From: Derek Atkins <warlord-DPNOqEs/LNQ at public.gmane.org>
   Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:21:33 -0400

   Robert Krawitz <rlk-FrUbXkNCsVf2fBVCVOL8/A at public.gmane.org> writes:

   > I've had very good luck with Dells (Inspiron 8000, 8200, and
   > 9400/E1705).  They're also usually quite easy to fix or upgrade.

   They need to be easy to fix because they need to be fixed quite often.
   The one (and ONLY one) time I've had a Dell in my posession it broke
   approximately once a quarter and needed to go back to get fixed.

I haven't had that experience, with certain specific exceptions.

My 9400 has been flawless.  I've had it for close to a year now.

My 8000 was also clean, and I had that for 3 or 4 years.  I think I
had to replace the keyboard once.  That was the only real repair that
I had to do on it.

My 8200 did have issues.  The first one I had had lots of problems,
but the machine had been quite beaten up before I even bought it.  The
second one generally didn't have a lot of problems, but I had problems
with the backlight going out on me several times due to problems with
graphics cards not seating properly (the Radeon cards had more
problems in that regard, but I didn't want nVidia cards).