OK, my friends and colleagues and I don't always agree when it comes to computer purchases. There are 2 schools of thought here which I see.
1) Buy on sale and keep upgrading as needed
2) Hand pick your equipment and pay more but it tends to last longer
Now, without giving precise numbers I can honestly say when I compare to colleagues over the last 5 years that both schools of thought amount in almost equivalent dollar amounts. I follow #2. I take my time and hand pick all of my components in the hardware when I shop.
In 2006 I finally decided to shop for a laptop. I looked all over and found close competitors. The choice wound up being between Toshiba, and Dell.
The reason at the time was because those were the 2 manufacturers that sold 7200RPM hard drives in their laptops. My purchase ended up being a Dell Latitude D820 which I am very satisfied with overall despite this issue. At the time, 64-bit OSes were still new. I insisted that my purchase must be 64-bit capable. I was weary at the time and had Dell Engineering confirm for me whether this Intel Core Duo T2400 1.83GHz CPU was 64-bit capable. For a reason that I do not entirely recall, this was not certain...
The issue was: if the laptop supports hardware virtualization, it must be 64-bit capable. This is what I was told by engineering. This never sat quite right with me but it was confirmed by the manufacturer so I was satisfied and made the purchase.
Here is where I was wrong: I am a consultant and my laptop is my work tool. It may as well be a third arm... I never had need to test the 64-bit capability until November 2008. Now I needed to load Hyper-V which requires a 64-bit capable OS. Guess what??!! CPU not compatible...
I was livid! One thing about me is I document everything and so I am on the phone with Dell before you know it. 27 months later, I explained to anyone who would listen that I was assured this laptop was 64-bit capable and wanted a solution. After 3 weeks of bi-weekly phone calls I got a supervisor...
The supervisor actually listened and went offline to phone me back. He was not promising anything...
An hour later, he phones me back. He had been authorized to exchange my D820 for an E6500! Now I was still able to purchase and extended warranty for 2 more years on the D820 which I was neglecting to do... That choice, suddenly was made for me since I can transfer the warranty to my new system.
3 weeks go by and my laptop arrives! I opened it up and it is... a D830. OK, 64-bit capable laptop. I phoned Dell to advise of the shipping error. Mr Bird, we sent you a 64-bit capable laptop as you wished. That was my answer. Interesting, I had a Tercel, I was promised a Camry and agreed to the exchange and was sent a Corolla. Weird...
Almost a full 2 months later, I finally got the same supervisor who agreed to the exchange to begin with. He agreed. This was not what we negotiated and set out to fix the issue... I am skipping some steps here. One thing I learned with Dell, e-mail is useless. The old school phone is the way to do business when you have an issue.
Well, the end result is that I have an E6500. Interestingly enough, I have decided NOT to return the D820. I will buy it out. I do want to say that at the end of the day, Dell has a happy customer who will refer them business and purchase again.
