What's the average life of a Dell laptop?

[Janie]

I have a four year old Latitude D531 that I use literally all the time. It is up and running every single day. I do back up my files on an external hard drive just in case.

 

I still have the original power cord and take care to wind it up carefully every I transport the laptop (every day). I replace the battery a year ago.

 

So, without any mishaps like spilling something on it or dropping it, what can I expect as its life?

 

Thanks!

[Nestof3]

I'm sure it's hard to say. I think many people give up their computers when a complete hard drive restore would fix their problems. I know my husband was ready to just buy another. I restored it, and now it's fine.

 

I read somewhere on a computer geek forum that computer geeks expect to restore a computer every couple of years to keep it at its best performance.

 

I've had my Dell desktop computer for five years, I think.

 

As long as you are still happy with the capacity (another reason many people buy another), just keep maintaining it. :D

[Guest TheBugsMom]

I have had my Dell Ispiron for about 8-9 yrs. It runs but is became very slow due to all the Windows updates it had to make over those years. My husband just reformatted it and put Linex on it and it works faster then my Acer I got this year.

[BikeBookBread]

We've had two. The first lasted 5 years, the second lasted 4 (before we had it re-worked). Both died horrible deaths from virus attacks. We wiped the second one and had all the software re-installed. No new hardware or memory was added. We only use it for web surfing now, but it is still working.

[MomOfOneFunOne]

Ours is 2.5 or so. We just had a back-to-back hard drive, optical something failure. It was getting sluggish and unpredictable b/f but now it seems just fine.

 

Of couse, we lost a lot b/c we never backed it up. Lesson learned.

 

We are reasonably careful with our laptop. We are certainly not careless (well, there was that cord thing) but we're not hyper cautious either. It's a laptop and gets taken all over the city, state, and country by a family on the go when one of them is 11 and several of them have fur or feathers. The laptop is the only thing we've ever bought the extended warranty for and we're glad. Everything we've ever needed it for has been covered at no further cost. Sometimes they send us a part and then we call and the tech support guy talks us through and sometimes they send someone to do it. When our hard drive went out, they said they'd send the hard drive and we could change it. That sounded way too intimidating so we opted for the guy. Then, of course, we saw how easy it was and when we thought it went out the second time, they sent the hard drive and my 11 year old changed it out.

 

I've had a few problems with my Dell but I've also had good customer serivice. My husband is hard of hearing and has a very hard time understanding the Indian accents but he likes that they are willing to talk him through repairs b/c he feels he has learned a lot. They are usually willing to send the guy or talk through and let us decide.

 

On our waranty, it covers e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g! Once my daughter got in the car with it and accidentally left the cord dangling out the car door. For about a 2 blocks we slowed down, sped up trying to figure out what in the world that sound was. The end of the cord that goes into the computer was all chewed up. Replaced no questions asked.

 

Well, the battery isn't covered. It's covered if anything happens to it but not if it runs down. Alas, b/c that's the only thing it ever does.

[pqr]

Given our experience with some of then....somewhere between 3 and 5 minutes.

[RamonaQ]

I had my last one, a re-furbished one, for about 7 years.