Martin @ Blog

It is defintive now: NEC laptops are the worst in the world. Yesterday, my laptop, a NEC Versa P520, broke down again. This is the second time within a month, and about the fifth time in three years. The f*cking thing doesn’t do anything at all. When I try to start is using the powerbutton (a rather normal way to start a computer) nothing happens. The powersupply seems to be fine and when the accu is removed, the laptop also doesn’t work.
About three weeks ago, my laptop was also in repair, becaus the screen was broken. The guy from the Notebook Service Center told me that this problem occured quite often which even confirmed my opinion that NEC-laptops suck. They replaced some cable which connects the screen with the rest of the system which solved the problem for now. However, I think it will always be a weak spot and will break again eventually.
About a year ago, my laptop was also in repair for about two months. That time, my laptop sometimes suddenly stops working at all and won’t start again. Shaking or turning it upside down made it work again, but it wasn’t a very comfortable situation. They first thought it was a problem with my memory modules (the went loose or something… a bit strange when memory modules just fall out of their sockets I think, but ok..). That solved the problem for a day. About four repair sessions later, they decided that my motherboard was broken, and replaced it, which solves the problem.
When I got the laptop, about three years ago, the hardisk broke down after two days. Also the modem was broken (I didn’t notice that, but they discovered it while reparing my monitor) and there are dark spots on the monitor, which is appearently caused by the mousepad which isn’t entirely flat. According to the Notebook Service Center, this problem is caused by transporting your laptop in the provided backpack and putting additional stuff in the same backpack. When I bought the laptop, they advertised with the robousness of it, which was exensively tested… oh, and the thing was hardly supported by Linux three years ago.. while for some students it was required to work with Linux… (now, almost all components are supported, exept for the modem.. but who needs a modem anyway).

Newer students got a IBM Thinkpad T42. At least, that is a laptop which can survive the handling of a normal student… but probably they had not enough work at the Notebook Service Center, so they decided to give students again a NEC the year after the IBM… that thing had the same problems. Last year, they decided again to provide new students with a Lenovo (former IBM) Thinkpad. There are two possibilities: the persons who selected NEC laptops are just stupid, or NEC paid a large amount of money to get selected (I wonder why, because it is certainly no ‘free advertisement’).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 at 10:29 and is filed under Computers, Opinion, Personal Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.