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Diggit2001

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19 years ago

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August 7th, 2007 12:00

Motherboard Replacements

Hello there. I am the Network Administrator for a company that is standardized on Dell Latitude D510/D610 notebooks. We have approximately 100 to 150 notebooks deployed in our main office and about 30 to 40 remote job sites. Starting about 6 months ago, we had a user complain that their notebook battery was not holding a charge and it would not boot up when plugged in with the power adapter. We tried a few other batteries and as long as the battery had some juice in it, the laptop would work. Even when plugged in, the batteries would not charge up. They would just steadily drain and then the laptop would shutdown. Trying other power adapters resulted in the same thing.

We typically buy gold level support on all our laptops, so a call to Dell resulted in them sending a Tech out with a new motherboard. Everything was then OK. Over the last 6 months, we've had about 10 or 12 other users bring their notebooks to us with the same problem. Each time, Dell sends out someone with a new motherboard.

Yesterday was my most recent call to support and when I asked if there was some sort of recall for this problem, I was pretty much told that 12 out of 150 is not a bad proportion of bad to good laptops. Back when it was just 3 or 4 bad machines, I might have agreed with him but this is getting to the point where we're seriously considering looking at a different brand of notebooks. When the Tech told me that since we have the gold level warranty on these machines, it's not really a big deal, I sort of got the impression that they could really care less about the inconvenience our users are experiencing.

I guess this is not really the point of this post though. What I'm hoping to find is other people out there that might be experiencing the same issues with their Latitudes. I fail to believe that this is a problem that just plagues my company.

I appreciate any feedback.

Thanks
-Chris

Message Edited by Diggit2001 on 08-07-2007 08:44 AM
  • ejn63

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    Posted August 7th, 2007 12:00

    It may be annoying, but it's not out of proportion to the norm. 20% of all notebooks have major failures within 3 years (considered to be a normal useful lifetime) so if you're at around 10-15%, you're still doing well.
  • 135

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    Posted August 7th, 2007 17:00

    I can kind of almost not quite really dig that, but for all of them to have the exact same problem seems a bit odd.

    Oh well, I guess I just have to deal with it, like everybody else.