I'm writing this because we have five of these machines, brought from Dell on their no payments for one year deal. This allowed us to get the machines and then shop around to get the finance, in this case we used the Virgin credit card offer of 0% for 16 months and are slowly paying it off. We should have got the whole lot for 0% by next year......so shop around and do not get Dell's HP scheme as the interest rate is huge....ouch!
So back to the machines, there are five people in our family and having had a selection of laptops, Acer and Fujitsu-Siemens, they were all creaking to a halt with all sorts of damage, wear and tear and just plain slowness so that upgrades were essential, we also work from home so really needed new and reliable machines.
Dell had good finance offers; the machines looked good, the spec was so much better than the previous ones that it was an easy choice to go ahead. They were very easy to set up straight out of the box, and logged onto our wireless router with no problems, it all took less than 15 mins for each one.
So now a year on how has it been living with them? The first problem to occur was a "stuck" mouse pointer. I rang up Dell support and they said it was due to a build up of static charges and to turn the machine off, take the battery out and hold the start button down for 30 secs to release the charge. This worked fine and we have had to do it for all the other machines at various times.
We have had a few minor problems with the sound, where it would not play via the headphones or the speakers, and these were sorted out by Dell support who have always been very helpful.
So far the machines have proved very robust, however after 14 months the capacity of some of the batteries is now only half what it was.
The main worry in most laptops is the power connector and adaptor. One of ours failed and was replaced very quickly within the year's warranty, and they are very expensive to replace when out of warranty! So if you have the slightest doubt get one replaced within the warranty. You do not have to send the faulty one back. The laptops have a connector that exits on the right hand side at 90 degrees to the body. This means they are vulnerable. They are also a connector that is not available separately so if it is damaged you will have to replace the whole unit. So far we have had no problems, but it was connector failure and the damage that it eventually caused to the motherboards that finally brought down our other machines.
In summary, good value, fast machines well specified, no major problems 14 months on. All ours have different coloured backs, it's a nice personal touch.
This review is on dooyoo too.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
(+) Product is fine but dont bother buying from them direct due to poor customer service/ norights (-) Product is fine but dont bother buying from them direct due to poor customer service/ no rights
(+) cool and quite robust trackpad, good display,64-bit windows 7 (-) few connectors,dell drivers only, not realy for gameing (most models), finger print prone!
Channel DDR2 SDRAM [1x2048 + 1x1024] - Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64bit- English - 250GB (5,400rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive - 15.6in Widescreen High
Postage & Packaging: see site for shipping costs Availability: 3-7 days
Advantages: Wide Screen, Integrated Webcam & Card Reader,WiFi Access, Blue-ray Drive, Two Headphone Ports Disadvantages: Mic Problem, No Bluetooth Access
Darvaish 28.05.2009 ·
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: somewhat helpful
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