I Haven't Complained About Anything In A While
Back on May 1, I wrote this post:
“I just powered up the Dell laptop. I got a popup, not identified as from Dell, that told me that my battery may be ‘nearing the end of its useful life.’ It gave me the handy option to click a button and buy another battery. Now I'm wishing I'd clicked it and confirmed that Dell had planted a little ad in the software, rather than clicking ‘don't show me this [garbage] again.’ The computer is just over a year old. I’ve used the battery, rather than the power cable, maybe ten times.Just how stupid does Dell think I am?”
Well, Dell apparently knows that it put a lousy battery in the laptop and was just giving me a heads up on what was about to happen.
I flew to Dallas last week. The day I left, my latest Netflix movie arrived, Stardust (recommended). I loaded it into the laptop on the plane, plugged the earphones in, and enjoyed the movie – for about forty minutes – until the battery died.
I charged the battery up that night. Forty-five minutes of juice was the result.
This is my third laptop, its predecessors being a Dell and an IBM. The batteries in both lasted as long as I had the computers, about three and four years respectively.
Now, Dell is selling computers with a battery that lasts a little more than a year. Dell’s price for a replacement - $134 – is about 15% of what I paid for the laptop. My next laptop probably won’t be a Dell.
12 comments:
I think manufacturer pop-ups are just the way things are now. My old Toshiba had embedded links to their home page on the start menu, and my HP printer kept throwing up pop-ups to their website.
My niece and nephew are oblivious to advertising, and as advertisers work harder and harder to get the attention of their young eyes, it's going to get more and more frustrating for those of us with old eyes.
Thomas, you're right, though the pop up for the battery was the first of its ilk I've seen.
As to ads on sites, I'm like your younger generation, I don't "see" them. The NYT and AJC sites have transitional ads when you go from page to page - I spend the time they are displayed looking for the close button or finishing what I was doing until they go away.
I'm wondering when the idea of free sites dependant on advertising that many people ignore will die. That said, newspapers have had ads forever. I and many people don't look at them. I suppose there are enough people that do look at them.
Dave -- Not that I have any interest in defending Dell, because lately I have been disenamored of them, but for a different reason (fried hard drives, poor customer service), but in the case of the battery's life, sometimes batteries just die early. Lots of reasons why. So, before you write off Dell for the battery thing, consider that every now and then, I buy a brand new light bulb, put it in a lamp, and *poof* -- within a week it's toast. Batteries are like that too. Dell doesn't make em. They buy em from the same source that everyone else buys em from, so you could have had the same problem with an IBM/Lenovo, an HP, a Gateway, a Toshiba, etc etc.
Pos, you're right that stuff does give out before its time; but, the pop up coupled with the demise of the battery a couple of months later, leads me to believe that Dell knows that it is buying cheap batteries. If that's the case, tell me up front and I can factor that into the decision to buy. Don't tell me and implant an ad into the software to pop up at about the time the cheap battery is about to die, I'm a bit unhappy.
Hmmm. I don't think my next computer will be a Dell either. My Sony is now a nearly ancient four years old. I've had a major issue with it, that they eventually fixed for free even after the warranty ran out, but the battery has been just fine. I do run the battery completely down every now and then, which may or may not be necessary to good battery health (I have heard that it matters, and also heard that it no longer does). It certainly won't hurt it.
MacBook Dave.....MacBook
Fermi, I probably should have exercized it more, but....
Moe, double the price, double the price. Even with a &*()#$^ $134 replacement battery, cheaper.
The standard battery in my Toshiba laptop never lasted more than 45 minutes of screen time, and now, after three years of use and regular battery discharges it lasts much less than 45 minutes.
I think you got an industry standard machine.
I have two batteries for my HP. One lasts no more than 15 minutes. The other lasts 2.5 hours at least.
The 15 minute battery is a bit smaller, so is easier to carry. But I do need to stay plugged in when I use it.
Oddly, the darn thing won't run at all without ANY battery, even if it's plugged in - which it should.
So, I was getting a Lapdance and my battery..... Oh this is about Laptops. Sorry. My Bad.
I just today paid $325 for a battery from Dell. How sick is that? Has everything energy related spiked in cost?
I just paid around $150 for a battery for an HP laptop. But it was at least three years old, I think.
I first bought a third party battery through an Amazon dealer, for $65. It should have worked. It fit. But ... when I turned on the machine I got an error message that it wasn't right. I returned it and got charged a $15 restocking fee because the dealer said there was nothing wrong w/ the battery. Grrrrrrr.
Shelling out $150 for the HP-sold battery really hurt.
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