Gateway ML3108b 14.1" Laptop,

Stantheman

I bought the more or less the same laptop from Tesco. Just a slightly better spec at £499 (dual core - 1gb ram). Now reduced to £450 I believe.

The first thing I noticed when I got it home was that one side of the keyboard was a bit springy. I took it back and the sales manager told me he had one and it was the same. WE tried the display model and it was slightly better so I took another. When I got it home it was still springy but a lot better than the first. I manged to wedge a small bit of tape down the side of the keys and it was fine. Not ideal for a new pc I know but I needed it urgently and the spec and price was great. Other than that I was very very pleased with it and would still recomend it despite the keyboard problem.

Oh forgot to mention that a month later one of my kids spilt a cup of orange all over it and unsurprisingly it went pop. I took it apart, dried it off with a hairdryer and its been fine ever since. The worlds first waterproof PC??

motorguy

sarylou wrote: »

I'm not going to quote experiences of high-volume sales. That's not relavant to an individual purchase. But fair comment, nonetheless.
(although I'm curious as to why you - as a 'seller' - would need to contact them, but that's off-topic)
However, 3 months is not a 'warranty'. It's their support period which you pay for, surely?
12 months is the rule as far as I'm aware, so offering that option is a little silly...are they looking for a 'way out'? :rolleyes:
I read good stuff and bad stuff about Dell - all the time.
For such a big corporation they have too much bad stuff to warrant taking the chance, in my view - naturally.:D

We sold them into businesses, with software and network support, so the business would come to us first for support. partly as a goodwill gesture we would arrange the repair with dell, hence our direct experience.

Not sure which is the correct term - warranty / support - i know they will try to baulk on the 'warranty' if you opted for the minimum 3 months, then expect them to repair it after, say 9. my opinion is they will be / should be / are obliged to repair it for at least one year, but i know they arent keen to if you've went for the min 3 months. the laptop i quoted above had a one year business warranty so no problem.

They offer(ed) the three month option to keep the headline cost down. They strongly encourage people to spend the extra for a longer / extended warranty, however a fair percentage of people dont. Thus i would say its a market ploy rather than 'silly' - its also what the likes of BMW do with the options list, the car itself may not be more expensive than its volkswagen equivalent to rope you in, then they catch you with £5000 of extras. :eek: I dont think they do that 3 month warranty any more, so it wont be an issue for a purchaser going forward.

You have to remember that dell are probably the biggest suppliers of laptops / pcs in the world, and that you will generally only hear from the very small percentage of people who have problems, not the vast majority who dont - Its easy to say 'a friend of mine had problems with their dell laptop' or 'i hear their warranty is crap', hence why i gave details of my actual experience with the units.

I've nothing against the Gateway unit, however as most people agree - yourself included - it really needs 1 Gb RAM and ideally a bigger HDD, and for not a big hill of beans more, you can buy that preferred spec from Dell and a host of other suppliers.

Mist001

I'll chime in and say that with a laptop, always, always take out a three year warranty. All the components are on the motherboard, so if one goes, you have to replace the whole motherboard which is pretty expensive.

It's probably sods law but most people will find that laptops will break down after the standard years guarantee, so it makes sense to cover that inevitability.

It might make things more expensive at the time, but it is money saving in the long term.

Michael.

tlck9

Can you tell me if either the tesco £299 or £369 laptop has a modem, as I'm thinking for someone that only has dialup and no intention of broadband

John_Gray

It would be interesting to know for how long dial-up internet connection will still be available. Will it go the way of the 5¼" diskette, cassette tapes, the VideoTape Recorder?

John