Laptops, durability and warranty

MutantScalper

MutantScalper

Dogmeat
Would be interested to know how many here have had laptops and what kind of experiences you have had with them in terms of durability and, when something goes wrong, warranty.

In -08 I got a laptop that worked ok until last spring when partly due to my own mistake I had to replace the hard drive. No biggie although the company did do a piss poor job initially in the copying of the data to the new HD.

And then about a month ago I started getting this sound from what I think was the grafix card. It became gradually worse and led to the whole screen going dark. Ok, I contacted the company that brings the particular brand to this country and they said that since the grafx card and mobo are 'infused' they can't replace the grafx card. Plus the warranty for that particular machine is 2 years and the warranty was just up by a couple of months.

Now I recently found out that I might be able to claim some kind of compensation since the theoretical lifespan for a laptop should be 4-5 years. Problem is the company I bought the laptop from is no longer so that's a problem right now, not sure I can claim any compensation from the maker company.

Oh well, live and learn, now I know that many laptops are basically just toys and not even meant to last beyond the warranty.

Sorry for the long message, would be interesting to hear other experiences.
 
You're generalising a bit, IMO.

I've had a laptop for two years, one year was on the road in Australia and NZ, where it was subject to sand, dust, extreme heat, intense sun etc. Always played games on it without a hitch. I was very satisfied.

Recently I opened it up to clean dust inside, only to find there was none(!!!) Like, zero dust particles anywhere. So I removed CPU and GPU fans to look further, still nothing.

Since then the GFX fried though - not sure what caused it - undoubtedly my messing around the inside. Sent it for repairs, will see what happens.

But generally, I was always uber-satisfied with my laptop. Beats the hell out of a clunky old desktop with so much accessories stuck to it. On a laptop, I could watch a movie anywhere (even through power shortages which were frequent in my town), play games wherever I pleased... And I could do my (web)design work under the palm trees, as opposed to sitting in a stuffy room somewhere :D
 
i had a laptop for 3 years and never had problems with it.
what i do know on the subject is that most companies gives only one year warranty and you can extend it to 3 years
but here is the catch many stores that sells you laptops in barging price doesnt gives you full 3 years warranty but only parts warranty, which means they usually screw you on their technician time fees...

also i dont know if its applicable to wherever you are but here you can sometimes buy your laptop from a none official distributor, thus save a lot of money the only differences is who(which lab) will serve your warranty if they got a good reputation its usually worth it.
 
Also don't forget that most people buy laptop by going to the local media store and asking for a "laptop that's good and got Windows 7 and is currently on sale and can play DVDs" without really giving a fuck (or knowing about) any of the components. Those people are bound to get shitty deals most of the time. That's why most laptops out there are quite crap.

If you buy a laptop, at least do it with some company that allows part-by-part customisation. If you can choose every part, you shouldn't have any more problems with the laptop than you would with a desktop version.
 
I've always been a fan of Thinkpad T series. They can take the licking and keep on ticking, and IBM worldwide warranty is pretty awesome. There has been some decline since Lenovo took over though.

I own a T61 and T43 and the T61 is experiencing problems with a faulty Nvidia chip which is integrated in the motherboard. Already had to replace it once (under warranty) and it's starting the bluescreen bullshit again so I'm guessing I'll have to do it again pretty soon.
 
SkuLL,

oh I agree, laptops are great, when they work. When they don't they are just an expensive missile to throw at a bird.

I had to clean the fan thing a couple of times, if I put the laptop on a sofa or some other soft surface it quickly sucked up dust to the filter that became clogged. This lead to one (1) instance of the heat rising above what was normal. Didn't last long until I cleaned up the problem so that probably wasn't what broke the thing.

Anyway, I agree with what you say but from my own experience (haven't had any good modern laptops that do everything but walk the dog) table top computers still have the edge in heat issues and also overall reliability etc. But I guess laptops are catching up though.

Wonder if there would be a way to change the integrated grafx card thingie myself, would theoretically solve the problem.

Edit. My laptop was an Acer, sadly I can't really recommend that brand.
 
Wife's iBook G4 is about 5 years old and still running fine. It's been dropped couple of times and got some tea and water from flower vase spilled on to it. The second major drop was pretty bad, straight on the side where power plugs in and the adapter of course was plugged in too. Got mangled up nicely, yet still works with a little wiggling, I'm intending to replace DC-IN board soon, already got the part from iFixit.
She loves the little machine and wants to hold on to it as long as possible, which of course is fine by me.

My Macbook is 2007 model and I feel no need to upgrade yet either. It's been pretty solid, some heat issues aside. Planning to check the thermal paste situation soon though, sometimes this thing heats up like there is no tomorrow. More efficient fan would be nice too, but I guess that isn't really an option. Upper case plastics have been replaced couple of times, in and out of warranty, let's hope they hold up now.

If these machines seem to hold up maybe I'll put SSD drives in them to prolong their lifespan even further. Should be pretty nice speed boost even with iBooks IDE-connection. I'm probably going to get an iPad for my day-to-day browsing and such, but keep the Macbook and my gaming PC for more intense tasks.

Edit: "as" not "ass"
 
I had this acer 5520 and it broke after friggin 16 months (1year warranty)

Got it to work, (by shaking it furiously) after being broke 2 months, but usb ports didnt work and it lost connection to screen every now and then (it just went blank and little shaking fixed it)

Now after total 20 months of working time (22 months total) it went completely silent, tried reflowing and all the usual stuff but nothing worked.

Long story short acer sucks. At least this one did. No wonder it was so cheap.

Or maybe shaking isnt viable repairing method =P
 
Mutoes said:
I had this acer 5520 and it broke after friggin 16 months (1year warranty)

Got it to work, (by shaking it furiously) after being broke 2 months, but usb ports didnt work and it lost connection to screen every now and then (it just went blank and little shaking fixed it)

Now after total 20 months of working time (22 months total) it went completely silent, tried reflowing and all the usual stuff but nothing worked.

Long story short acer sucks. At least this one did. No wonder it was so cheap.

Or maybe shaking isnt viable repairing method =P
Click to expand...

Haha, I think I have the same model. I haven't tried heavy shaking yet.

I talked to an IT repair guy in a good store today, he suggested that the problem with my laptop might be the coolant for the integrated grafix chip and the cost to fix it might be around 150 e. So, I dunno, might as well invest in a new one with a better reputation for durability.

Other option would be to buy a rig for an external HD and mount the HD from the laptop on one of those. Would at least save something from it.
 
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