I have had some experience with Dell Laptops, in my case the Inspiron 1501 & 1526.

Almost all the problems of these Laptops were heat related. (burned mobos, hot Hdds,

brittle or too much cpu thermal grease (which caused one laptop not to start up).

The heat sink can collect an amazing amount of lint lodged across the vent fins,

which, of course, blocks airflow & makes the Laptop hotter, even though the fan spins.

To me the Dells are not airy enough, access & placement of heat sink & fan is unfortunate.

To remove the lint, clean heat sink & fan, & replace thermal grease one must take the laptop

completely apart. - A service panel over the trouble area would make it a lot easier.-

Also, two fans, as a default for every Dell Laptop, would be much better ( for the cpu & video card/mobo).

I would have to convince Dell to change their design.

To tell you the truth, I could not recommend Dell Laptops, unless they had

improved the heat problems.

If one can find the lint, & is able to remove it with tweezers, perhaps a 25%-50%

heat reduction would result. - Just replacing the thermal grease between cpu & heat

sink fixed the Inspiron 1526 to be able to boot again, & back to normal running condition.-

Yes Dell should do preventative maintenance, it is certainly cheaper then replacing a

cpu or video card/motherboard.

It they will, I do not know, but one can try!

Send them this e-mail, if you want.

BavarianPH,

Ubuntu forever!

(P.S.:  Ubuntu (Linux) is, in my humble opinion, the best OS out there,

definitely the least expensive, since it is free, open software.)

• Even better would be a design that could be positioned in multiple orientations.  For example an office supplies binder clip secures large groups of paper by securing two sides.  The idea that the computer could  sit in the dock and be supported on both sides by a plastic bracket which would allow for horizontal or vertical positioning.  Even if the current E-Series Laptop connection point was kept, one of the supports could open like a folder and allow the laptop to slide in and when the folder is closed it would then create the connection between the two devices.  The CURRENT REPLICATOR DOESN'T NEED TO CHANGE BUT THE PLASTIC CASING COULD BE CHANGED TO ACCOMPLISH THIS FEAT.
  

• Add in a few features like automatic hard drive backup made with a two partition setup where one partition is dedicated for the user to instigate backups and the other partition set up to automatically sync with the computer during each usage and you have a great draw for college age+.  If a few hundred MBytes dedicated to storage folders of only documents (non-multimedia) could be provided as a $50-100 add-on, every college kid would purchase a dock to protect their schoolwork and essential documents.  A separate hard drive would be needed for multimedia and those already exist from what I've seen.

• One line states '

• There is also a line that states 'Choose WINDOWS if: You are new to using computers'.  At home, Ubuntu is the main OS that is used on our computers.  We have had trouble-free computing for the past 3 years since we've adopted Ubuntu.

My suggestion to Dell would be to provide the level of customer service that you promote your company to have. My personal experience has been 8 consecutive hours on the phone and a loop of ambiguous responses by representatives from India to the Philippines, with no one department in direct contact with another.  I would suggest that this global office be in better communication with one another so that consumer information can be readily available to these representatives when speaking with a consumer. I would also suggest that proprietary parts, made by Dell, be available to Dell consumers when ordered.

In this economic climate and Dell currently at a 2 year low sales mark, I would imagine that customer satisfaction and retention would play a vital role in your business model. I suggest that Dell make an aggressive effort to retain consumers and entice new consumers with better customer care.

• ATOM N470 processor (or a N475 which might have DDR3 support &/or a dual core version like D510)
• NEXT GENERATION NVIDIA  ION (the 12 inch version which has 16 GPU cores)
• 4GB of RAM for memory 
• Intel Centrino Advanced-N + WiMAX 6250 (for Clear Wimax Service)
• Solid State Drive (64GB or higher if possible)
• Accelerometer for tablet mode
• & a built-in TV Tuner