Dude, I'm not getting a Dell.

April 6, 2007 5:57 AM

I need advice on purchasing a laptop from a company other than Dell. Price is not and option, and I have two criteria: 1) Windows XP pre-installed, and 2) Telephone and email technical support that are competent in product information, and are technically savvy.

I've been trying to help my father purchase a new laptop, and we've both become very frustrated. He's a previous Dell laptop owner, and was happy with the product, but our patience has worn thin trying to get direct single sentence answers from Dell's support. By asking simple questions like 'Which of your products offer the option of having XP preinstalled', has resulted in 3 wildly different answers from them and email chains 10 messages deep. It's clear they don't know their own product line.

If y'all could point me in the direction of some laptop manufacturers that you have dealt with personally that provide excellent customer service (yes, I'm aware of the company in Cupertino, but I can't convince the old man to do it), I could do the legwork on the pre-installed XP part.

Bonus points if it's customer support staff speaks English as a first language.

posted by voxpop to computers & internet (24 comments total)

Are you at all bothered about the quality of the after-sales support, or are you only interested in getting this pre-sales 'is Windows XP pre-installed' question answered? Because your question makes it sound like the latter. And if that's the case, then, dude, you're better off looking at the websites.
posted by chrismear at 6:12 AM on April 6, 2007

Sorry, I should have made more clear. After-sales support is the key. The initial email to them stemmed from some confusion about which of their products listed on the website could have XP pre-installed. Like I said in my initial question, if you point me in the direction of companies with excellent customer support, I can do the other legwork.
posted by voxpop at 6:16 AM on April 6, 2007

By "price is not and option" do you mean that cost is not a concern or that you have specific price requirements?

A few years ago I received a second-hand, no longer warrantied, Abacus laptop. I git it all cleaned up and loaded with software for my sister. I spent some time on the phone with them and they were awesome. Their computers are well made and last forever (or so I'm told, and this was evidenced by the fact that the 7 year old laptop was still very much alive and kicking).

Try contacting them. they're a smaller company so the service is more likely to be good.
posted by mds35 at 6:40 AM on April 6, 2007

I'd look for a small PC integrator in your dad's home town. He'll be able to run the laptop by their store if he has issues, and the support will likely be coming from the guy the owns the company.
posted by COD at 6:49 AM on April 6, 2007

On second thought, I'm looking at the Abacus website and it's pretty bad, files not found, broken links, etc. They may no longer be the company they used to be.
posted by mds35 at 6:50 AM on April 6, 2007

I think that the experience that you've had with Dell may be similar to all the other computer companies out there, unfortunately.
posted by k8t at 6:52 AM on April 6, 2007

Dell's premium support packages are very good - particularly the ones that provide on-site support within 24 hours.

What sort of customer support do you expect? If you want a company where your dad can call up and chat about general computer issues, you won't be satisfied by anyone.

FWIW, my Sony Vaios have been extremely reliable. When a DVD drive broke on one of them, it was easy to have them fix it.
posted by b1tr0t at 6:58 AM on April 6, 2007

Had I not switched to the Mac, I would be using a Thinkpad. They still let you build them at their site with XP.
posted by 4ster at 7:10 AM on April 6, 2007

What sort of customer support do you expect? If you want a company where your dad can call up and chat about general computer issues, you won't be satisfied by anyone.

I think the basic, 'can answer simple direct questions about the product', would be a good place to start. We're not looking for a therapist, just an english speaking support professional.

I'd look for a small PC integrator in your dad's home town. He'll be able to run the laptop by their store if he has issues, and the support will likely be coming from the guy the owns the company.

That's an excellent idea, and I'll have him check around his home town, but unfortunately if it's anything like the small retailers around my town, the products are far from reliable. The problem is that unless they're distributors of name brand laptops, they're limited to a very few 'generic' manufacturers, none of which provide quality products.

Of the big players, Toshiba, Sony, Lenovo, HP, Falcon, etc., which provides good support?
posted by voxpop at 7:24 AM on April 6, 2007

I got an Asus laptop at ISTNC a couple years ago, and their service was good. I was able to contact the owners via email and ask questions, and they were even on IM sometimes. I have no idea if their service levels are still good or not, but at the time I was quite satisfied.

There are a couple different laptop forums out there where some of the smaller vendors are active. NotebookForums.com is a place I frequented before buying my last (non-apple) laptop.
posted by hedgehog at 7:24 AM on April 6, 2007

At work, I've been ordering the Sony Vaio SZ series laptops almost exclusively for the past two years and have found them to be extremely reliable. Because of that, I haven't had much experience with their tech support, but my experience with their customer support has rocked (transferring an extended warranty from a laptop that was stolen onto a newly ordered laptop).

Your mileage may vary.
posted by wearyaswater at 8:14 AM on April 6, 2007

If price is no object, buy a Lenovo. They make the IBM Thinkpad, and I've bought two recently with good results. They have fantastic support (basically, you call them up, they deliver an empty box to your door, and you get the laptop back ASAP fixed or new.) Not sure about the XP pre-install; I've heard that that is next to impossible since Microsoft made the switchover.
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:00 AM on April 6, 2007

Sorry, I see 4ster already settled this. Thinkpads are available with XP (and you'd be a fool not to stick with it for now.)
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:04 AM on April 6, 2007

Lenovo/Thinkpad.
posted by radioamy at 10:45 AM on April 6, 2007

This new widecreen Z Thinkpads are pretty frickin' sweet. It's what I'd be using had I not switched to a MacBook Pro.
posted by ReiToei at 11:03 AM on April 6, 2007

My apologies. The link above timed out. Here is a better one.
posted by 4ster at 11:16 AM on April 6, 2007

I have owned Dell's, Gateway's, HP's and Compaqs and hands down HP is the best computer I've ever had. It's an HP Pavilion it has all the features you asked for, and more. It's been very reliable, I'll never buy another computer again that's not a Hewlett Packard.
posted by unhindered at 11:47 AM on April 6, 2007

Another vote for IBM (Lenovo) Thinkpad. You just can't go wrong. They are build very solid and have a very nice classic look too.
posted by qvtqht at 11:54 AM on April 6, 2007

Lenovo/IBM. I love mine. Got two. If you can find a friend who works for IBM (or lenovo) you can use their employee discount.
posted by jeblis at 12:09 PM on April 6, 2007

I would vote for Acer. They have made some really good products and Acer actually self-manufactures a lot of the components.
posted by slavlin at 1:12 PM on April 6, 2007

Last year, Consumer Reports published the results of a survey of major brand laptop owners concerning the tech support they'd received during 03 and 04. They rated Apple the highest with a score of 84 out of 100. In second place was IBM (now Lenovo, I think).with a 69. Then came Toshiba, Dell, Gateway, HP, Compaq, and, finally, Sony with scores ranging from 58 all the way down to 46.

I've got a pdf copy of the article and I can email it to you. (My email address is in my profile). It has the spiffy little chart and so forth.
posted by Clay201 at 2:50 PM on April 6, 2007

Lenovo/Thinkpad. I've owned 6 over the past 12 years, and I ran a team that managed about 1100 in a corporate environment. The overall quality of the machines is second to none (Apples were a very close second prior to the Intel/MacBookPro changeover, they've slipped somewhat since). Technical support is outstanding -- even for non-corporate customers. (In the corporate environment, we had on-site support with a 4 hour turnaround, but home users don't get that).

One of my home units (a 560) had to go back to IBM for a hardware repair (the cable that connected the screen had an intermittent short). I called them, got an intelligent tech on the phone immediately (no phone tree, no hold music, "ring, ring, Hello, IBM"), who immediately recognized it as a hardware problem (no "have you reinstalled the OS" bullshit). There was an empty padded mailer in my hands the next day, the delivery guy waited for me to pack the machine and hand the package back, and the repaired machine was back in my hands 48 hours later.

Thinkpads are a little more expensive than equivalent Toshibas and Dells, but they're worth every penny if you're a heavy user or intend to travel with them (which is rough on laptops, and increases the potential for dropping). In the corporate environment, our failure rate over a 2 year lifecycle was less than 2% -- including dropped/crushed machines. This is pretty typical for Thinkpads, and a dream for virtually everyone else. Our TiBooks were about 4%, and the Dell inspirons that were in place before we rolled out thinkpads were close to 9%.
posted by toxic at 3:47 PM on April 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

I used to work support for an authorized Lenovo/IBM reseller that mainly catered to the public sector. I dealt with Lenovo in that context, rather than as a consumer, so I can't speak to the consumer tech support experience. However, I can tell you that my dealings with Lenovo were mostly positive, and Thinkpads are, as laptops go, utterly AMAZING to work on, in terms of ease of disassembly/part replacement. They're also built like tanks. They get my vote all the way.

I'm also in favor of Apple machines. You can buy Macbooks and Macbook Pros with XP and BootCamp pre-installed from MacMall. However, I'm not sure what the user experience will be like during the Tiger upgrade, so YMMV.
posted by Alterscape at 6:15 PM on April 6, 2007

Stick to business lines of Toshiba or HP. The consumer line of laptops tend to have inferior parts and nothing is worse than having a hardware failure and have to deal with incompetant tech support that can't even figure out what the problem is and make you run around in circles.

As for tech support, I think it's hit or miss depending on the person you end up talking to on the other end of the phone. I work in the higher education sector and have had good and bad experiences with different vendors. If you don't like what one person is saying, hang up and call again. Hopefully you'll get someone who knows what they're talking about.

Also, if you can go to their website and customize your system, you can find out if they even offer XP pre-installed. It's quite standard though I know they offer Vista now. I can't imagine anybody giving you difficulty regarding factory installed XP.
posted by loquat at 11:06 PM on April 7, 2007