avoid doing business with dell

[rone]

A friend had his credit card number stolen after a site he used was cracked. His bank rep told him that two of the charges had gone through because, even though they'd received "Confiscate card: stolen" notifications, they nonetheless ran the charges through. One of them was dell.com. The rep went on to say that Dell is the king of credit card fraud — they do no address checking or any sort of verification. He also said that nearly every card he dealt with in November had Dell charges.

Comments

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

If you're going to get a laptop, you'll probably want to get an IBM Stinkpad.... those cost more, but a refurb should be pretty decent. I also check PC World's Top 15 Notebooks (http://pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,113454,00.asp) list often, just in case i ever do break down and buy a laptop of my own (not that it's necessary anymore, as i have two work-issued laptops, an HP OmniBook 6000 [not bad, but the newer HP stuff sucks] and a Stinkpad T40 [very nice]).

Packard Bell.... aieee. The horrible memories.

[vspope.livejournal.com]

Packard Bell was an object lesson in Why You Don't Buy PCs Off-The-Rack From Big Retail Chains (in this case, the late-and-not-lamented Computer City). It was my first PC (I had Apple IIs before that) and it showed. It had a hydra modem-sound card, it had a highly incompatible CD-ROM drive, and it performed like a constipated wombat, even with subsequent processor, memory, HD, video card, modem and sound-card upgrades.

I've never actually owned a laptop; I'm considering one now because my wife and I are on two-to-three-hour car trips relatively often, and it'd be neat to have a portable machine that whoever's in the passenger seat can watch DVDs or play Ultima on. That's not doesn't require major specs, so I'm torn between a used laptop in the 600-1000MHz range or a new one that'll essentially replace my 1300. If I go the latter route, I'll want one with at least SOME video card on board in lieu of "integrated video," so that if I want to even pretend to 3D-game with it (say, Morrowind on the road) it won't catch on fire.