> > > Because they are brilliant machines, and the customer support is equally > brilliant > > if > > > you invest in a decent warranty plan. > > > > They do occasionally come up with a lemon, I had one that had a separate video card > > and the way the two boards connected meant that there was a lot of mechanical > stress > > on it. > > I put in a second hand motherboard & graphics card from ebay in there and it > doesn't > > get moved much now and is still going, it must be nearly ten years old now. > > > > The dell I had before that used to cook hard drives and the tv out on most of them > > blew after plugging them in a couple of times. The first indestructible dell laptop > I > > had was an inspiron 8600. The latitude d820 I had after that blew it's graphics > card, > > although the monitor was a bit rubbish. > > > > My next was a xps 1530, which is fine except it had one of the NVidia chips that > > died. > > > > I would still recommend dells, but if you're spending a lot of money then I would > > always pay for on site warranty and if it's a laptop then also accidental damage. > > Probably the only lemons out there are SFF PCs, there's no way you will get more than > 2-3 years out of a PC when the entire case is 50°C with fans running at full speed - > once that fan starts making grinding noises and drops to 1/3 speed, swap it out right > away. > > Also, it doesn't help when some companies cheap out on power supplies and put low > quality caps in the power supply (CapXon caps don't even belong in a fire, they'd > likely cause the fire to fail too!). Bestec power supplies were probably the biggest > killers of HP products in the last decade - when they failed (notably the ATX-250-12E > model), they used to send 12V through the 5VSB while the PC was "off" and fry > everything!
Ouch. Kinda like the early model 3 PSUs then?
I was recently working on an SFF HP. The PSU wasn't supplying any power other than 5VSB, short the power pin and it'd try to but the PSU would sometimes click and never give any volts above 1v and dropping. It was making an awful squealing noise when turned on so I didn't bother repairing it and put in a new PSU, works fine now.
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On a quest for Digital 573 and Dancing Stage EuroMix 2