M1210 Left speaker doesn't work & other high pitch noise

I've had my new M1210 (dual core 2g, 2gb ram, vista, nvidia 256) for a few weeks now and I love it. I do have a couple of problems though.

1. My left speaker doesn't work. The right one works fine. I checked volume details and the balance is fine. Has anyone else had this problem ? I'm thinking it may be a loose or disconnected cable. I'm not sure how I would even check though. I haven't called Dell support yet, not looking forward to sending my laptop back just to fix the left speaker.

2. I have an intermittent high pitch noise coming from the left side. I've noticed it when the cpu is idle, but it is intermittent. I got some good feedback on another post that it may be the dual core cpu and a motherboard replacement may fix it. Again, I'm not particularly excited about sending my laptop back for it to be fixed. Does anyone have the same issue and just live with it or did you send it back to get fixed ?

3. I also heard that Dell support may come to your home to fix issues with Dell laptops. Anyone have any comments on that experience.

Thanks in advance for all your feedback! Joe.

 

As far as the high pitched noise is concerned, search the forums there have to be atleast 1,000 threads about it pertaining to Core 2 Duo and Core Duo notebooks.