Dell Inspiron 1440 Black PDC 2.0GHz/4GB/500GB/DVDRW/14.1"/WiFi/Vista Premium

My wife and I have been saving up for a laptop for quite some time. My wife is a teacher and wanted a personal laptop that she could use to work on lesson plans and report cards at home and at work.

I could write a lengthy story about everything that went wrong with this laptop, but I'll just cover the main points.

The laptop we purchased was a refurb, and although we had our reservations, we were told the 1 yr warranty would cover all issues.

2 months after purchasing the laptop, the OS began to crash on a regular basis. We contacted support and they sent a new Hard drive to replace the faulty one. We were directed to a website with step-by-step instructions on how to replace the hard drive. We were not given an option to send in the laptop to have them replace the hard drive, we had to do it ourself. I was lucky that I had some computer building experience. I really couldn't see the average adult taking apart their laptop to fix this issue.

Less that 2 weeks after replacing the hard drive, the monitor started messing up. We contacted support again and were asked if we dropped or spilled anything on the monitor. The answer was no. My wife had finished school at this point, and the laptop had been sitting on our computer desk since the hard drive had been replaced. The only "wear and tear" came from opening the laptop and closing it back.

Our only options now are to send in the laptop to Dell and pay for PARTS + LABOR, or fix it myself. We were told "accidental damage" is not covered, despite the fact this is NOT accidental damage. This is a crappy, faulty laptop failing for the SECOND time in UNDER THREE MONTHS.

NEVER BUY FROM DELL!

This laptop is incredibly disappointing. I would caution anyone to beware of it. At the least, try it out in person prior to purchase.

The problem is fundamental: the design. The basic hardware and software is excellent. Unfortunately, the case is so low-quality that it's impossible to use effectively.

It's such a problem to type on that I'm actually writing this revew on another computer.

The light plastic of the case bends far too readily to even the slightest pressure, even when on a flat, hard surface. The result: the cursor goes off course, wrong letters and spaces are added, and immense time is lost getting to a good written product.

Regrettably, Dell's customer service is notoriously poor as well. So this computer will soon be replaced, far earlier than it should have been. I've got a lot of sunk costs in the Inspiron and it's time to bring them to an end. This has been a very expensive mistake, and prolonging it by using it longer would be a mistake (really, if the expense weren't so great, I'd have been wise to have junked it much, much earlier).

I'm inclined to go with an Apple. There are trade-offs with any computer, but their products are tremendously well-designed and assembled in my experience, and their service is much better.

What's more, having used an iPhone and studied Apple, my expectation is that they would not risk their reputation and brand by putting out a flawed product such as the Inspiron 1440. Frankly, I don't know what Dell was thinking on this one; big, big mistake that must be bringing harm daily to their reputation and brand value. The only other experience like this I've endured was a Compaq laptop, some years ago, that ended up in the trash bin after a few months.

Almost any computer will be such a relief after trying everything to make this Dell work, that I'll surely fall in love with it and be thankful for the productivity.

Buy Dell Inspiron 1440 Black PDC 2.0GHz/4GB/500GB/DVDRW/14.1"/WiFi/Vista Premium Now

I have used this computer for about 3 and half years now, and I have to say that it is still holding up quite well. The tasks I use for this computer are: typing essays and notes, running programs, such as STATA, for my classes, streaming movies, and going on line. I use this laptop every day, almost 5 to 8 hours a day, and I haven't had any problems yet. Yes, the design could be better, but it truly doesn't hinder the performance. So, I don't really agree with the reviews below. This is a useful and effective laptop.

Read Best Reviews of Dell Inspiron 1440 Black PDC 2.0GHz/4GB/500GB/DVDRW/14.1"/WiFi/Vista Premium Here

This was the second computer I purchased for college. (First one was an acer and just as bad). About 6 months after I got it, it wouldn't charge when it was plugged it. It took hours on the phone with dell customer service, but eventually (about a week of phone calls later) they decided to send someone out to fix it. The entire motherboard had to be replaced. A few months later, after I had allowed my warranty to expire, the hard drive broke! It refused to boot at all and I had to buy a new one. Now, almost a week after fixing that, the battery says it may be broken and is only holding about one hour of charge! I'm thinking dell manufactures these things so you have to keep repairing them one thing after another. WORST COMPUTER EVER!!

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I refuse to even give this POS a star. I bought this BRAND NEW last year for school. About 2 months after I got it, the screen would stay completely black after startup. NOTHING could get it to come on, no kind of booting or anything. So the first two times Dell had us uninstall and reinstall everything. It would never work. Then they sent us a hard drive. It continued to do the same crap. They proceeded to have us reinstall everything yet again. The only thing they offered to do was send a refurbished computer, which was BS because I paid for a BRAND NEW one and that one never worked to begin with. We had to take it to a place in town just to figure out what was wrong. The factory image settings on the computer was corrupted. So everytime we were reinstalling everything, it never fixed the problem. So about 10 months into this, we just settled with the refurbished computer since they refused to send a new one. Well guess what? Now I am having hard drive errors that I can't figure out. I am using a friend's computer, because mine can barely type a sentence without a huge 10 second lag. The customer service is awful. I will NEVER buy a Dell again. JUNK!