Dave Lewison
EF1
I know a lot of folks chose the Dell Inspiron series laptops because they're very reasonably priced and offer a lot of features for the price.
However, I thought I'd share this, as my Inspiron 5150 just totally died due to a hairline crack in the motherboard. Apparently, this is a somewhat common occurence, possibly brought on by processor overheating, warping and cracking the traces on the motherboard. I know the chase vehicle environment is not particularly laptop-friendly. I had mine mounted on a homemade "desk" behind the front seats, with a clear path for air to get to the fan. And yet, it still got very hot on most occasions, especially if I left it in the car without A/C for 15 minutes or so. Couple this with vibration in the vehicle, and it enhances the risk of developing a motherboard crack.
Midway through my chase trip, mine began randomly shutting down. I attributed this to overheating, so I would wait a few minutes before firing it up again. But it would do this in hotels sometimes too, when I picked it up off a table. It got to a point where I can no longer turn the machine on. Now this machine is 14 months old - 2 months out of warranty, so Dell basically told me where to stick it. $700 for a new motherboard. I don't think so...I'll be buying a new laptop...a NON-Dell laptop.
So, I'd recommend that if you own one of these machines and it's still under warranty, purchase an extension on the warranty. It's pretty reasonable (less than $100 I think), and you can do it anytime while you have the original warranty still in effect.
If you're curious, there is a message board with 60 PAGES worth of posts from people with the SAME problem. Seems like a design flaw to me, but good luck getting Dell to admit that...
http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/bo...scending&page=1
However, I thought I'd share this, as my Inspiron 5150 just totally died due to a hairline crack in the motherboard. Apparently, this is a somewhat common occurence, possibly brought on by processor overheating, warping and cracking the traces on the motherboard. I know the chase vehicle environment is not particularly laptop-friendly. I had mine mounted on a homemade "desk" behind the front seats, with a clear path for air to get to the fan. And yet, it still got very hot on most occasions, especially if I left it in the car without A/C for 15 minutes or so. Couple this with vibration in the vehicle, and it enhances the risk of developing a motherboard crack.
Midway through my chase trip, mine began randomly shutting down. I attributed this to overheating, so I would wait a few minutes before firing it up again. But it would do this in hotels sometimes too, when I picked it up off a table. It got to a point where I can no longer turn the machine on. Now this machine is 14 months old - 2 months out of warranty, so Dell basically told me where to stick it. $700 for a new motherboard. I don't think so...I'll be buying a new laptop...a NON-Dell laptop.
So, I'd recommend that if you own one of these machines and it's still under warranty, purchase an extension on the warranty. It's pretty reasonable (less than $100 I think), and you can do it anytime while you have the original warranty still in effect.
If you're curious, there is a message board with 60 PAGES worth of posts from people with the SAME problem. Seems like a design flaw to me, but good luck getting Dell to admit that...
http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/bo...scending&page=1