A heads up for Dell owners

[betsytom]

Just prior to leaving on our three week trip the desktop started to act up, the monitor would not come out of 'power saver' mode unless the power was shut off to the entire system for a few hours, eventually the monitor would not wake up at all.

When we returned I brought it to our local computer shop, two days later I got the call to come and get it.

They did the following two things and all is well:

Removed a defective modum, we have dsl so it isn't needed

AND removed and reseated the memory chip/chips, they had loosened up.

Works perfectly and the cost was $100 total.

I mention this because while researching this commonly mentioned problem the consensus seemed to be that either the video card or the monitor was the culprit, or at least those were the posts that I had found.

If you have a Dell, ours is a 4700, with the same problem invest a few bucks (if you have an honest shop that is) hopefully your cure will be the same as ours; sure beats buying a new tower.

[bukhrn]

Thanks for giving others a heads up, but Dell has seen the last buck ever from me.
I had a Dell for years, in computer terms, it was a dinosaur, so I thought I would replace it with a new Dell, to make the story short, after getting the run around for over 3 months, they cancelled my order,(without telling me).
The only way I found out was by calling them to check on the status, the person on the other end of the line,(obviously in India), said that they had "oversold that model".
Now i'll be the first to admit that I'm not a business man, but if I were trying to sell a product, it seems to me, that I would build at least as many as I had orders for, then when they were all sold, stop taking orders.:confused:

[jeffmue]

In all honesty you are both better off getting Mac's. I've worked on almost every type of computer out there and the Mac's got one of the most simplistic and intelligent hardware configurations I've ever seen. On the software side.... well we all have our windows horror stories. I whole heartedly recommend OS 10 although windows users will need about 2 weeks to "stop" thinking like a PC.

Mac's are much more expensive but they are worth the money!

[betsytom]

bukhrn, you got treated very badly; no offer at all from Dell under the circumstances?

jeffmue, I destroyed our laptop while on the road, the shop has highly recommended Lenovo or what used to be the IBM 'Thinkpads', the reviews I saw were highly favorable-your thoughts?
And, just out of curiosity, can you see a defective modum and loose parts causing a problem with the monitor?, as I mention all works perfectly but I do understand that problem fixes can be -coincidental- with work done.

Oops, its a modem, not modum.

[jeffmue]

jeffmue, I destroyed our laptop while on the road, the shop has highly recommended Lenovo or what used to be the IBM 'Thinkpads', the reviews I saw were highly favorable-your thoughts?

Betsytom that's a very tough question to answer because it's all subjective. There's a site I use for research called Tom'sHardware... well I'm all over the place but Tom's is my first stop. http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ From a tech's perspective: Macs are by far the easiest to work on because the parts are better, tech support is better, the warranty's are better, and they don't send "refurbished" replacement parts. "That's one of the biggest problems in the industry." Again.. it's subjective and I'm extremely anti PC / Windows.

If I had to get a PC, I'd go with the Lenovo because of the customer satisfaction. Be careful about the OS version you choose because Window's 7 is just as bad as Vista and Microsoft's charging it's customers for rollbacks. If you're use to XP or Vista.. stay with that.

Dell, Toshiba, HP, etc.. their work is just passible and there's always some class action lawsuit in the background. Toshiba's still whining about its Satellite hinge problem, HP is dealing with weak soldering points on it's motherboards, and Dell is still reeling from it's backfired bate and switch scheme. Apple and HTC are sparring over the iPhone's patents too.

Here's an excerpt
from Tom'sHardware in relation to customer satisfaction:
"Based on responses from owners of 3,685 laptop computers, Apple scored 86 points out of 100. Second place Lenovo earned a 63; third place Toshiba had 60; fourth place Dell has a 56; and HP/Compaq has a 53. Trailing far behind was Acer/Gateway/eMachines with 39." (ref: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/computer-tech-support-quality-ratings,news-32958.html)

And, just out of curiosity, can you see a defective modum and loose parts causing a problem with the monitor?, as I mention all works perfectly but I do understand that problem fixes can be -coincidental- with work done.

If the drivers for the modem were faulty it could affect the system startup precess coming out of sleep mode. Pulling the unused card would take care of that problem.

[betsytom]

jeffmue, interesting thanks.