Have Dell killed my laptop?

gotan

Still waiting. The carry case has arrived but not the PC. I hope by Friday?!
the graphics card is the dedicated one that they offer with the 6400, not the integrated. How do I check that if and when the machine arrives please?

Little_John

Graphics cards in laptops are all integrated on to the motherboard. right click the desktop and click properties then the settings tab, it will then tell you the graphics card in use.

You can also get the same info from device manager.

gotan

thank you. The laptop arrived this morning. I had asked for an agreed XP Pro. They have shipped it with Vista Business. They are unbelievable. Another day, another email.

Little_John

dont accept it and get them to pick it up.

gotan

I clicked My Computer and the graphics appears to be media accelerator. I think this is integrated graphics (?) whereas they promised the ATI Radeon dedicated graphics card. They appear to have just changed their Inspiron range. I think I have been sent whatever was lying around to be honest.
India on the phone tomorrow.
Of the new spec laptops, what should I ask for? The 6400s have all been downgraded according to the Dell website. The new one is 1520??

gotan

The engineer has now refitted the laptop. It has a start up error which I will ask about on another thread. He seemed to think it was quite funny to refit a laptop rather than send me a correct spec new one, but so far so good. It has dedicated graphics and XP Pro and they replaced Office with 2007 student and teacher edition.
He told me something that may be of interest here: the 1501 Inspiron is often unreliable and needs to have the motherboard replaced. Then again he prefers Intel to AMD processors. Personal opinion but the screen is a lot better for me than the Trulife one. Dell also upped the warranty by a year to compensate somewhat for the delays and the unfortunate demise of my old computer.
I would like to try to have that one fixed as it has a display that is just not available any longer. Does anyone know of any very reliable and affordable laptop repairers in the central or SE London area please? If so please pm.

Little_John

When you keep going on about dedicated graphics what do you mean? the only thing I can think is the memory isnt shared with the system memory but what type of chip is it useing? You dont want the crappy intel 950 graphics chip its pants if you want to do anything a little more advanced.

Intel or AMD? its all about personal choice, I have been using intel due to overheating problems AMD suffered from in the past.

gotan

It's an ATI Radeon X1400. The laptop had a few bugs but Dell tech spent an hour on the phone sorting it out. So far so good.
What is a bit odd, but no complaint, is that it has the hdd listed as 109GB of which 105 is free. Of course with them changing the motherboard to fit the graphics card, all the pre-loaded Dell junk got wiped so I put on AVG free and MS Office and asked the engineer to leave off Works. But that is a strange size hdd isn't it?

Little_John

Its possible 120GB with a recovery partition.

check under disk management, right click my computer and click manage then disk management.