As a mobile computer technician and network administrator, I’ve come across a wide variety of consumer and business grade laptops. From the boxy IBM line around the time they changed their name to Lenovo (for some reason) to the garish Acer Ferrari line and everything in between.

My first tech job involved getting certified to maintain an array of HP servers, desktops and notebooks, so I could take them apart and re-assemble them almost with my eyes shut (the exception being the laptops whose disassembly steps haunt me in my sleep to this day). There are a number of quirks about laptops I’ve learned in my travels, the first being that repairs are usually difficult, and always expensive. The magic number for out-of-warranty replacement parts is $600, and when you include labour, it’s more than enough to justify the purchase of a new laptop. Then there’s the “crapware” most vendors still seem to load the system down with. I can’t stand my computer coming out of the box with a dozen trial versions of software I don’t want or like. Some vendors like Dell have promised to tone down this kind of thing, but some other companies have not yet learned their lesson.

My mom bought an HP Pavilion dv2310 laptop, and a few months back the wireless device disappeared from the device manager. I tried new drivers and updated the BIOS but to little effect. Being an experienced laptop technician, I was comfortable checking the connections of the wireless card on the motherboard, and confirmed they were installed properly. I was to the point of considering purchasing a new card when the monitor stopped activating when I opened the lid. I figured the writing was on the wall and the laptop was a lemon. Which wasn’t far from the truth, but I came to find I had more options than I thought. Originally when I looked into the problem, HP hadn’t acknowledged these as issues, and the laptop was months out of warranty. But a few months later – today in fact, inspired by the beginning of this article, I did a quick Google search that yielded a warranty extension for specific models which I found included my mom’s lemon. A half-hour phone call later and a box is on its way here to place the laptop in and send it away for a free extended warranty repair.

Anyway, what I was originally getting at was that I am quite impressed with the style, performance, support and practises of Dell. When I first pulled it out of the box and booted it up, the extra software installed was minimal. The driver updates have always been available when I’ve encountered a problem. Sometimes it seems that companies ignore drivers for hardware that’s already sold, but I’ve never found that with Dell, from the Bios to the fingerprint reader, it’s all updated where necessary. As a bonus, a couple weeks back my 9-cell battery started charging only to 80%, then the next day only to 50%. I discerned right away there was a problem. There was still a Warranty for a couple more weeks, so Dell support agreed to send me a new replacement (although I admit it was my suggestion – Dell support initially told me I had to buy a new battery until I reminded them my warranty had not yet expired, which does make me wonder what would have happened if I didn’t know).

I am absolutely in love with my Dell laptop. The only way I might be equally satisfied is if I could afford a MacBook Pro.

Update: FYI when I purchased the laptop, I opted out of the so-called “upgrade” from Vista to XP. And it is wonderful. I could never go back to XP.