I bought a Dell Laptop, an Inspiron 8600 with a 15.4 WUXGA screen. When it arrived a few days later, I booted it up and instantly noticed that the screen was funky. It was kind of sparkly, almost as if it were covered in dust or something. I used it for about 15 minutes and felt the headache coming as a result of the eyestrain. I work on computers for 8-12hrs a day, so to get a headache from a screen that quickly is not cool. I jumped on the web and did some searching on the issue, turns out a few other people have reported similar things with the screen. So I got on the line with Dell's tech support to see what they could do for me. *sigh* I then spent 20-30 minutes of trying to convince the tech that it was a hardware issue.
"Have you rebooted the computer?" "That's not going to fix it" "Please reboot your computer sir." "Fine, -pause- ok, it's back up and it's still doing it. Have I mentioned for the fifth time that it looks the same way in the POST screen?" "Please try changing your resolution" "Nope, still looks like shit" "Please hook it up to an external monitor" "Yep, looks fine on the monitor" etc,etc,etc.
Finally he said "Ok, what are your options sir? If we replace this you're going to have the same issue" to which I replied "I guess I need to return this then and go with a different laptop." Now I had heard that other people had simply gotten the LCD replaced with a different brand and the problem went away. It definitely looks like a bad application of anti-glare coating or something that was probably in a bad batch of screens. But I didn't want to deal with it, I was already turned off to the Dell. The other big factor that turned me off was the size of the keyboard. Here was this enourmous wide screen laptop, with tons of space, and they put in a keyboard the size of my tiny Toshiba Portege that's half an inch thick with a 12.1" screen.
He gave me another department's number to call to arrange the return. I called them, spent about 30 more minutes with them getting things sorted out for the return. They tried to tell me to ship it back on my dime, I said no way, they said, alright we'll schedule a pickup. So I boxed the Dell Inspiron 8600 back up and dropped it off at the rental office for a pickup and return to Dell.
After a few more days of laptop research, I went to CompUSA and picked up a nice Toshiba A75-S2762 with better features and a cheaper price that I've been loving ever since.
Posted by Divinity at January 31, 2005 01:03 PM