Laptop Reliability

I have one, it sits unused in my apartment because parts have gradually broken to the point that it is essentially unusable. The DVD drive doesn't work, the battery doesn't work etc. It's a Dell. Instapundit is reporting that Jeff Jarvis is having trouble with his Dell but the Blogfather's Dell desktop is wonderful.

Laptops are neat pieces of tech. Lots of components are crammed into a small space. That is their blessing and their curse especially as processor speeds have increased and CPU temperatures have done the same. It is my belief that laptops are one of those technologies that will break, usually before they move into obsolescence. The breakage will usually occur before you can really part with them. My dell went through 3 screens and two keyboards while under the three year warranty. I used it a lot, the CPU got hot and this tended to wear out the keyboard and screen components faster. The usual repair time was a week, although once it took a month because Dell was waiting for a parts shipment. Amybear's Toshiba went in for service Monday, also with screen problems. In her case it is probably just a loose connection.

This brings me to my point: if you are going to buy a laptop, purchase the extended warranty. Something will break and unlike a desktop, you probably won't want to fix it yourself even if you could get the (generally proprietary) components. You probably don't need the more expensive "we will come to you" service plan though. Jeff Jarvis's experience says that home service probably won't reduce the repair time in the (likely) case they don't have the parts.