2016 laptop crashed Saturday after Thanksgiving 11.27.2021
Bought $1,800 Dell Inspiron at Best Buy that night Win 11
It crashed 12.15.2021
Got it running 100% perfectly by 12.26.2021. ?ÿEstablished a System Restore point that day. ?ÿGeek Squad has since told me that those have not worked well since Win XP.
Tried to download and install a driver for a 5-7-button mouse on 12.29.2021. ?ÿPC (laptop) crashed.
Geek Squad today tells me the hard drive is no good can not be salvaged. ?ÿI am still within the holiday return period until 01.16.2022. ?ÿI am going to the store now to return it.
What PC (laptop) should I buy now?
My main usage is simple Adobe pdf manipulator and Carlson IntelliCad dwg work.?ÿ
What PC (laptop) should I buy now?
We use Lenovo Thinkpad X models.?ÿ My old 32 bit IBM Thinkpad is still in use and I travel with my X260.
Latitude is Dell's business computer. I've liked Lenovo since I had school-supplied one for three years. It was a tank, with the little red homing key in the middle of the keyboard.
My current one is a Lenovo IdeaPad with an i5 processor. I don't do the heavyweight stuff I used to do, don't need Windows Pro, and it rarely travels, so it's pretty near perfect for me. But I do like that ThinkPad name stamped on the keyboards of the next level machines. I don't have that and I'm jealous.
I just looked at Dell Latitudes on their website. They're $2000 plus. purportedly marked down from $3000 plus. I think I'd look at MSI gaming computers at that price point.
Roger that thanks!
They replaced it with the exact same model. Geek Squad said chances very low same problem will appear. I might try to load Win 10 instead though this time.
I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T530 from I think 2012. It was top of the line when new and used for drafting with microsurvey but it got retired after about 5 years and sat for a year or so before the boss gave it to me. It still works perfectly to this day. Battery has maybe half the original capacity.?ÿ
I also have an entry level Lenovo g550 I bought before going back to college in 2010. It also still works but I installed Linux mint to speed it up a bit.?ÿ
I use a Dell Latitude 17? laptop with fast graphics and 32gb of RAM. New in 2016.
Eventually the new hp workstation replacement laptop will arrive to replace it. I.T. has no choice, it??s policy and they say hp??s warranty is better. I guess my desktop workstation will disappear eventually.
Definitely load Windows 10. There will be many devices lacking Windows 11 drivers for atleast another 6 to 12 months.
bummer, hope the new drive fixes it. Will they allow a ??downgrade? to 10? My IT guy said stay with 10 for now.
FWIW, I like the Dell xps. I have one of those and an MSI, THE MSI was cheaper which was why I bought that 2 yrs ago over the dell, ?ÿbut poor build quality led me back to Dell.?ÿ
IMO, you are making 2 mistakes.
1) buying work computers off the shelf from Best Buy.?ÿ
2) trying to be your own IT support.
If you are buying Dell you should be buying from the Precision line, not Inspiron.?ÿ Inspiron are consumer grade, and Geek Squad is for helping grandma get her email to work. Precision is for commercial service. And there are small business IT services out there.
Being your own IT support is akin to the IT guy staking his own boundaries.?ÿ?ÿ
Of course, you should get more than a week of service out of a new laptop but sometimes you just get a lemon.
@jitterboogie it??s the government. Computers don??t last forever so there needs to be a policy in place to replace computers so we aren??t just winging it. I believe it??s a 5 year replacement cycle although I??m past the deadline due to supply chain issues.
He was going to replace it with a standard laptop last summer when I said that isn??t adequate. So he did some research and was able to put together an acceptable hp which we are now waiting for it to arrive.
Absolutely get a Dell Business computer and get the business support plan (whatever it is called). I had that on my last Dell XPS laptop -- got an alert that the RAM was going bad, and I was directed immediately to Dell business support, with a ticket already filled out. Guy shows up the very next day and installs new RAM at no cost to me whatsoever. Highly recommended and worth the cost. How much time, and therefore money, would I have lost if I hadn't bought the business support plan?
they say hp??s warranty is better
My first laptops (2003-2009) were all HPs. 4 of them in 6 years. That is why you need a great warranty if you have an HP.?ÿ Since then I've had a Lenovo and a couple of Dell Precisions. All good.?ÿ?ÿ
Oh I know.
Been there, and then we rose up and said hey, before YOU tell us what we need, since OUR dept is paying for it out of OUR budget, we'll spec out what we need, and then YOU can order it with our govt vendor relationship we all share and we won't need to call YOU back when the 16G of insufficient memory can't keep up because of all the tracking and anti hacking software you're running while copying and remote storing everything we do every second.
They actually listened.?ÿ 64G machines hit our desks and wow wouldn't you know it, we didn't have any issues like we predicted.
It's all about the relationships.
Happy New Year!
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P&V is almost gone I'm sure of it!!!
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@jitterboogie yes, we have our own I.T. guy so he gets us what we need. 64gb is the minimum now. Our requirements are far beyond the typical Fire Captain computer.
