About a week ago I tried to open my Acer Travelmate Tablet PC and noticed the little hinge where the screen attaches to the base was broken. No idea how it happened. Wear and tear I guess. I’ve had this machine for two and a half years. Now I can’t open the screen up at all. So I took it into Acer’s repair joint in Melbourne last Thursday. When I realized this morning I hadn’t heard from them, I gave them a call. They told me they had assessed the unit and it would cost me $300 to get it repaired!
I only paid $1000 for the whole machine.
So I went in today to see the quote. Turns out, the replacement hinge will cost $120, there is $60 for labour, and the remaining $120 is to replace the whole upper casing. Why? Because I mentioned that the little latch that hooks the screen onto the base at the front was broken.
$240 for two little pieces of plastic. A quarter of the cost of the entire unit. Makes you wonder what the other pieces of the unit are worth. The screen? Hard drive? Memory? Apparently not as much as the hinge and latch. THAT’S where the big bucks are.
So I told them to forget it, there’s no way I’m paying $300 for two little bits of plastic on a 2.5 year old laptop. That’s highway robbery. I paid my $50 “assessment fee” and left.
Now I’m in the market for a new laptop. I’ve been fairly happy with the Lenovo desktop I bought earlier this year. It’s bloody quiet. Maybe I should get a Lenovo? On the other hand, perhaps it’s time I bit the bullet and went Mac? Is it that time?
Did I mention that I run the largest independent media company (by reach) in Australia? You’d think there would be a whole bunch of hardware companies wanting to buddy up to me….
Dell! They are still the best in my opinion!
Molly
Talk to your accountant before purchase and make sure you’re buying the best item for your tax return, then get yourself a Dell with a warranty. I’ve got three years on mine.
BTW – thumbnails please, pics are BIG
I’d say Mac dude! If you still want a tablet you’ll have to get one of the modded version from OWC. They look pretty sweet though. Having said that – I’m an Apple fan boy that has to suffer on a PeeCee all day long at the office. You on the other hand used to work for M$ so you might not object to Windows as much as I (though I wrote the training for the MTCs selling Vista and the new Office 2007!) Ah, good times.
Buy Apple. If you can’t stand Apple, buy Lenovo.
IBM Thinkpad with Trackpoint… never have to take hands off keyboard.
MacBook Pro running Vista if budget isn’t a consideration
Sony Vaios have come down in price
Dell is best value/quality for money if good looks aren’t your thing
Check out eBay for Travelmate hinges.
My old Dell Latitude had broken hinges a few months ago as well, and it’s just a matter of spending $20 ordering replacement hinges from US, and spend one evening fixing it up…
Otherwise Dell or Lenovo.
Yeah…gotta luv the “we can legally rape you” “assessment” fees they tack on to everything these days. Does the $300 price tag include dinner? Yeah, I’d check eBay for something a little more sane on replacement hinges.
As for a new laptop, I’m torn. I would personally like to get myself a MacBook Pro with all the bells and whistles, BUT I keep hearing stories about batteries dying, or logic boards failing. Is Apple really a “good machine” when you pretty much HAVE to fork out the extra $400 for AppleCare? We’re talking $3000 for a laptop! It’s kind’ve like admitting you know the machine is going to die in the next three years, so you better charge the buyer an extra $400 to cover the stuff that you know is gonna break down. I mean, come on! If the logic board dies you pretty much have a very expensive brick. Why not figure out why they’re dying to begin with and fix the bloody problem? Sure I can run Windoze (no Vista for me, thanks!) and MacOS, but still…
On the other hand, I’ve been pretty impressed with the newer Acer dual-core laptops I’ve seen out there, and you can get a pretty decent one for about $1500. Ok, maybe I can’t run MacOS, but I can still run Photoshop and all the other apps I really need.
I switched to a MacBook about a year ago and have been *very* happy with it. Before that a Dell. I wouldn’t go back…
Obviously a Mac. Why anyone would even consider anything else is beyond me.
Hi Cam,
I’m interested to know will you definitely buy a tablet as the new laptop? If not, have you gone off the idea of the tablet? I would think as a regular tablet user that you would never want to go back to a standard laptop? I’m interested in your thoughts on this.
Jodie, the problem with the tablet is that nobody has yet written the killer app for it. Microsoft didn’t invest in the software enough. I hardly use the pen.
Cam – you have any idea how big that image is in a feedreader? Crap me dude.