Question regarding laptop (legal matters)

[Skuzzy]

Your analogy would be covered under fraud or false advertising laws, depending on how the customer was lead to believe he/she was getting a different engine.

[Hoarach]

Does anyone have experience with Sony laptops?  I'm looking at dell xps or a Sony laptop so I can get the 3 year warranty in case I get these numerous problems again.  I saw Sony offers 10% discount to students off their products.

[Dragon]

The most memories I have of Dell laptops is trying for days to get proper drivers reinstalled after hard drive failures and reformatting due to viruses.

Sony, I've never had to work on.

[RTHolmes]

Does anyone have experience with Sony laptops?

yup, vowed never to buy one again. that was a few years back though so they might have improved.

[Hoarach]

How about HP since I found out they do a student discount about $150 off.

[Doctahg]

Laptops, Desktops, RootCanals!  You rarely hear about the GOOD ones...mostly about the BAD ones...If you get a lemon it sucks, but most are OK.  I never liked HP cause they were one of the brands that built their computers so you couldn't do anything with the insides.  Don't know if they changed, but I never liked their Proprietary parts they used.

[eagl]

Laptops are not going to last as long as a desktop and if something breaks in a desktop, you can fix it yourself, if you build it yourself.  Long term, a home built desktop that is not striving to be "state-of-the-art" will last much, much longer than any laptop and long term cost of ownership is also less.

Never expect a laptop to last more than two years.  That way you are not surprised when it breaks at the three year mark.

Gotta disagree with you here Skuzzy...  If you buy a laptop from a company that supports field repair, then you can expect the thing to last as long as you feel like tinkering with it.  My IBM T41p is over 6 years old and the 2 things that have failed on it are the hard drive and cooling fan.  The cooling fan repair was a bit tricky but IBM (now Lenovo) posts the repair manual and you can buy parts either direct or through a number of third party retailers.  The hard drive was a typical HDD replacement, rather trivial for the hardware side of it.

Some laptops are darn near bulletproof.  The T series thinkpads back when IBM was selling them were outstanding.  I think Lenovo has done a decent job keeping them reliable as well.  Also, my last 2 laptops each lasted over 5 years.  My first was a Zeos 286 purchased in 1992, my second was a Micron XKE purchased in 1997, and that was only replaced by the T41p in 2003 when it couldn't decode mpeg files due to not having SSE2 instructions.  None of those laptops were replaced due to hardware failure.  Similarly, my wife's laptops have also lasted until replaced because they were either stolen or simply got too slow.  She had a toshiba satellite that was stolen, and we just replaced her fujitsu lifebook because it was slow and she needed a second video output port for dual external monitors for work.  We got a toshiba portege R700 and expect it to last for years.

As for the starving student argument, all I can say is that you get what you pay for no matter what your income level is.  Hate to sound pessimistic but 2 or 3 years of chasing RMAs and repairs is beyond the tolerance level of most people and companies.  The only positive thing I can suggest is that you draft up a nice letter (send via registered mail) to both the laptop manufacturer and the retailer explaining the situation and indicating that you are willing to press a claim through small claims court under lemon laws and for breach of contract.  The laptop isn't worth the price to get a real lawyer to draft up the letter for you (many charge about $350/hr for such services) but you might be able to get them to offer a partial refund or a hefty credit towards a replacement laptop.

[eagl]

Does anyone have experience with Sony laptops?  I'm looking at dell xps or a Sony laptop so I can get the 3 year warranty in case I get these numerous problems again.  I saw Sony offers 10% discount to students off their products.

My old IBM T41p is still running great after 6+ years, and they publish their field service manuals so you can do many repairs yourself after the warranty runs out.  That laptop can be completely disassembled in about an hour with one of those double-ended geek screwdrivers.  I've dug deep into it twice, once to upgrade the cpu (yea, the cpu was upgradable with a new bios) and once to replace the cooling fan and heatsink.

Lenovo sells the thinkpads now, but to my knowledge they are still very reliable and durable, if not exactly stylish.  You get what you pay for, and if you buy sony you're paying for the name, some glitzy chrome badges, and a legal department that occasionally has to pay out for installing rootkits on a few million customers.  If you're on a budget, avoid sony.

I just got a toshiba portege R700 for my wife.  There are 2 versions of that laptop for under $800, one sold by best buy as the R705.  It is very small and lightweight but it has dual external monitor outputs, tons of features, and still has an internal optical drive.  The keyboard sort of sucks but that's what external keyboards are for.

[Hoarach]

Ive pretty much decided on the Sony laptop with the 4 year warranty with all accidental damage covered.  My only concern is the ATI video card as I have 0 experience with ATI.  Believe it is a HD 5870.

[Tigger29]

Ive pretty much decided on the Sony laptop with the 4 year warranty with all accidental damage covered.  My only concern is the ATI video card as I have 0 experience with ATI.  Believe it is a HD 5870.

The desktop version of the 5870 is very nice and will handle just about anything you can throw at it.  I have a 5830 and even it handles Aces High VERY nicely.  As for the mobile (laptop) version... well if it does half as well as the desktop version you should be fine, just make sure you turn off all of the 'power saving' options and make sure it comes with Windows 7 and not Vista.

[SunBat]

See Rule #5