Samsung X20-XVM 1600-V

[Rainer Duffner]

Oliver Fromme wrote:

>Rainer Duffner <rainer at ultra-secure.de> wrote:
> > Oliver Fromme wrote:
> > > They give a 2-year pick-up warranty.  What more could I
> > > ask for?  
> > 
> > They don't say how long it takes to "pick" it up
>
>Yes, they do:  Next workday.
>
> > and you don't know how long it takes until you get it back.
>
>5 to 7 days, including pick-up and return.
>
>  
>


That's good.
 From FSC, I'd get a replacement notebook meanwhile (at least, my 
colleague was offered one, when he went to Sinitec's service-point with 
his E7010).


> > While various trade-magazine horror-stories may not be representative, 
> > they are reason enough for me to stay away from consumer-level 
> > notebooks: simply too many customers and too little incentive for 
> > vendors to produce quality goods.
>
>There are horror stories for every major vendor, consumer-
>level or not.  I agree that they're not representative,
>but I refuse to pay twice the price for the same hardware
>(basically) just because the vendor is a "big" name and
>doesn't call the thing "consumer-level".
>
>  
>


You pay twice the price basically for that fact that:
- you've got extended warranty (3 years)
- replacement-parts will be available for 3 or 5 years (at a price, 
possibly)
- the notebooks are generally less susceptible to breakage
- spare-parts and add-ons are interchangably between models of the same 
series
- for a Dell, your support-calls are not routed to India ;-)


I can say that compared to the Samsungs I've seen in store, my Lifebook 
feels much more robust, though this comes at the price of higher weight.
If you have the samsung in front of you, open the lid and close it 
several times and ask yourself: "Can I do that 1500 times?"
;-)


>Personally, 500 Euros make a huge difference for me when
>buying a notebokok for my private desk at home.  My options
>are not to select between a cheap one or an expensive one
>-- it's rather to select between a cheap one or keep using
>my old one.
>
>Mind you, 1199 Euros is _not_ really cheap in my opinion.
>  
>


Depends.
I'd have bought a PowerBook back then, but I didn't have the 3k € for 
"the big one" exactly lying around.


>There are notebooks for as few as 699 Euros (sempron-based,
>512 MB RAM, 40 GB HDD, CD-RW/DVD-ROM, 1024x768 SiS VGA).
>_Those_ are cheap.
>
>  
>


The saying in de.comp.sys.notebooks goes like this: "Buy too cheap and 
you're going to buy twice".
They'll also recommend you HP, IBM, Dell and FSC there, together with 
Acer-laptops (yuk).

Dell is also quite good (I hear), and the hardware is pretty "standard" 
for a notebook.
Too bad you can't go to a shop and try-before-you buy.




Rainer