Laptop Rant

I love my laptop.  It's a Dell Inspiron, red top with a 17 inch screen, running on Windows 7 (which coincidentally I love as well). It forms my life line in many ways.  I find myself catching up on my TV shows on it, playing games on it, blogging (obviously) on it.  It's usually on in the area of 12 hours a day.

I've been finding lately it, has a lifespan.  The screen a while ago started to turn some unusual colours in rainbow patterns.  I took a picture of what it's doing went to Best Buy and visited the geek squad.  They tell me my screen's starting to go; that the cable inside has started to jar loose somehow.  Lucky for me, I have the monitor to an old desktop so I hook it up, and have had no problem using it ever since.  The lifespan of a screen they told me is about three years.

Fast forward to yesterday.  The power light on the front of my laptop is blinking a couple times orange, then back to white- it's as if it's trying to transmit Morse code or something.  "this isn't normal" I think to myself, so it's back to Best Buy again to the geek squad to see what's wrong.  Guy at Best Buy takes it out of the bag looks at it, and says it's fine, it's just the hard-drive.  I say  "even when it's off?" Best buy guy says yes.  And he tells me I "might" get another year out of it if I'm lucky, but a motherboard can go at any time.   I walked away irritated, and still am.

I get that technology advances quickly; that a laptop bought four years ago is likely out-of-date in within a year, two tops.  But on the flip side; I spent around $1100 bucks on this thing- hard earned, long-time saved money.  I don't think it's too much to ask that  I get four, or even gasp five  years out of it. Technology advances, yes and we all should keep up. 

I love Dell products.  My parents bought a Dell desktop that lasted them for 7 years; it was a good quality product. Given that I've had a great experience with my Inspiron, I see myself staying loyal to the brand. I just want them to start building better products, because I want value for money.  I don't think that's asking too much, do you?