Notebook Reliability

I will be ordering a 9300 soon and I was wondering what warranty most people usually get.
I have bought a non Dell notebook before back in 1998 and paid $2400 and after about 2 years I was having problems but only had a 2 year warranty.

Every system I have put together in the past week I made sure that I got the 4 year warranty and the 4 year Complete care first and then started to add my options.

I noticed that there are lots of people that do get only the 1 year warranty and have been fine with that but I have two young kids (2 & 4 year olds)that love to play with my computers. The 4 year old actually took over my wifes, so its more of a piece of mind issue knowing that if something goes bad I wont be stuck with a large paper weight.
I will be using it at work 75% of the time keeping it on at least 8 hours a day sometimes not even turning it off for weeks at a time when I am not planning on going anywhere.

So basically how many issues have people had with their Dell's?

My fear is that with the 4 year warranty my notebook will be pretty obsolete by then and the added money I spend on the warranty will be for not.

Before I was planning on getting the 9300 I was looking at the 700M but that would be used on the road 50% of the time and I would definately need to get the 4 year complete care since I would probably take it everywhere I go.

 

With smaller kids I would get the accidental damage coverage, which will cover anything, even if the kids spills something on it.

The 4-year does seem kind of long, but if you using it for work then it will be worth it, especially if you do non-CPU intesive work. If you are using it for word processing and the sort. I would go with the 4 year, but it all depends on how much you want to pay.

 

Personally, I wouldn't get anything more than two years. I figure that if my laptop breaks after two years, that I'll want something new and better anyways.

You might looking into getting insurance from a third party. I don't know all of the details about it, but we did have a thread about this exact topic awhile back. You can find the detials of it and other suggestions for warranty here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=9486

SG

 

I looked at a third party insurance company already. They wanted $120/year for $1500.00 worth of coverage which included theft or lost.
I am not worried about theft or loss but for $119 I can have complete coverage for the entire 4 years.

Oh well, Looks like I will spend the bit more and have the peace of mind.

Wish Notebooks were like Desktops, I can do practically anything with them since parts are easy to replace and get.
I still have a older Gateway 6400 server that I converted to Desktop which I havent turned off in 6 straight years and the only thing I replaced was the large case fan in the back.

 

Good idea, if worse comes to worse you can have that piece of mind for 4 years or 2 and pass it off to someone else. At least you will be covered for the duration until you want a new laptop.

 

If you have Blue by American Express, they'll insure it for another year on top of your warranty. So if you get 2 years, you'll actually have three..

 

Yes I do have Blue but its Blue for Business.
Gonna read up AMEX and see if the business is covered as well.

 

I bought an inspiron 5000 back in feb. '01. A friend dropped it and broke a hinge. I wasn't aware of purchasing a waranty, but apparently mine was covered b/c when i phoned in they ended up sending somebody out to fix it. Must have been some sort of mistake by the operator, or maybe they were having a lot of problems with broken hinges (as I just said that mine broke and didn't go into details).

For my recently purchased 9300-- I chose to go with the one year deal.

 

• Automatic Protection—Charge your covered purchases entirely to the Card and the Buyer's Assurance Plan* will extend the terms of the original manufacturer's warranty for up to one additional year on eligible purchases.
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• Double Your Warranty—For example, if you have a six-month manufacturer's warranty, we will add another six months. If you have a one-year manufacturer's warranty, we will add one additional year.
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• Coverage Up to $10,000—So don't think twice about those big purchases—the coverage is good for the amount charged to your Card for the item or $10,000, whichever is less (not to exceed $50,000 per Cardmember account per policy year).

 

You can also extend your warranty if you call Dell before the current one expires. When I did it, it was about $70 for another year of warranty.

 

If you don't mind buying a new one after a year then I would not get a warranty. I am a student so I cannot afford to buy a new notebook every year so I opted to get a warranty when I had to replace my Dell. The dell I had they same problems over and over again so I would get a warranty for as long as you want to keep the notebook.

For some reason Dell wanted $160 for me to upgrade my warranty for another year. I guess this was because of all the problems they were having with my model or the rep quoted me wrong.

 

I have been using Dell Latitude laptops (2 models) for the past 4~5 years and I am a frequent traveler (international).

As of today, I have been using D800 for about 2 years.. no single problems.... no single problem in previous model (forgot the model #) either....

Since my company has policy with pc purchase, which is "FULL WARRANTY", I think it is some sort of contract with Dell. However, for my case, I have never used any warranty service so far...

Anyway, per my 15years of PC user experience, 10 desktops + 4 laptops, I have experienced only 1 monitor problem (HP monitor) and 1 Harddrive failure (IBM 40gb model) and 1 mainboard problem. When I get rid of old pc, it is mostly because of it is outdated, not usually due-to hardware failure... Am I so lucky or what?

I usually purchase minimum amount of warranty (mostly 1year manufacturer warranty), my general rule is that, if PC lasts for 1year, then, it will last until it becomes obsoletely out-dated...

By the way, for kids, I would suggest buying a economy desktop and let them play with that... any laptop is pretty delicate for kid to play regardless of warranty coverage....

 

At work, I have had my Dell Latitude C610 for almost four years now. Never had a single problem - and it is used every weekday for about 8 hours. Impressive!

I also have an older Dell Inspiron 5000 lying around - about 3.5 years old. It still works just fine, but the hard drive went on that and I haven't gotten around to replacing it.