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We try to avoid purchasing too many low-budget laptops and try to stay with mid-level units.  We are almost exclusively Dell here and so we go with the 4yr (actually might be 5yr now) NDB hardware (no software) support with accompanying CompleteCare warranty.  That covers pretty much everything except fire, flood and theft.  This works out great for us as many of our faulty and staff use their laptops for this long (if not longer).  So yes, it is more expensive than buying a $600 system, but if you have to replace it every couple of years (or pay out of pocket for H/W replacements) you end up saving in the long run.
 
And yes we have had people go against our strong recommendations and go the cheap route, only to be upset when there system has issues or suffers from a severe lack of performance after a year or two.
 
Stephen Bogdanski          
Information Technology Center
College of Veterinary Medicine
Michigan State University


>>> On 3/19/2010 at 12:07 PM, Stephan F Andre <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Well Rich, if you get disposable laptops, then the point is moot. ;-)

I detest the downward spiral of quality of all things electronic, and
try to get real stuff whenever possible. I'm still a Thinkpad snob;
the quality of them has gone down somewhat, but everything else
has and TP's are still at the top of the heap.

$600 and cheaper laptops are really really comon these days and
I've generally failed at getting friends to get the more expensive
thinkpads, and there have been nasty consequences to that: a
cheap HP that died during a presentation in front of a lot of folks,
a laptop that died during a writing retreat far away from any help,
and of course the obligitory death 5 minutes before submitting
a term paper. I, sucker that I am had to deal with them.........

More and more, people are putting a huge amount of their lives
into laptops. I now have 1T of disk and I'm not alone in that.
I think it only makes sense to get the best possible machines.

But obviously I am in the minority, and, given the expected budget
apocolypse(s) in the future I'm not sure this will be possible to
continue.

--STeve Andre'

Quoting Richard Wiggins <[log in to unmask]>:

> STeve,
>
> Does that equation change -- for institutionally-owned fleet machines
> as well as for individually-owned computers -- as the price of decent
> laptops continues to plummet?
>
> Back when a reasonable laptop cost $1500 or $2000 or more, a $250
> no-questions-asked warranty made sense.
>
> Today, when reasonable laptops can be had for $750 or less, does it
> make more sense to roll the dice? Recently an attorney friend needed
> a new laptop to be mostly kept stationary and we ended up buying a 17"
> (and over 7 pounds) HP model for $500.
>
> We said no to the all-inclusive warranty. It's a roll of the dice,
> you figure it depreciates rapidly and it's not for road warrior use,
> so he went with the dice.
>
> How does this equation change for fleets of laptops, especially those
> that roam daily?
>
> /rich
>
> PS -- As a long time lover of Thinkpads, I finally abandoned them when
> the cheaper Lenovos featured crappy non-sculpted keys -- a Thinkpad
> with a lousy keyboard is not a Thinkpad -- and the premium ones with
> real TP keyboards way outpriced the market.
>
>
>> This issue has only come up for me once, in 13 years. My solution
>> for laptops is to get the all-encompasing warranty on a thinkpad,
>> such that no matter what they do, its covered. Accidental dropping
>> of the laptop seems a legitimate blameless problem, so thats
>> covered.
>>
>> --STeve Andre'
>> Political Science
>>
>>
>
>