Accidental drop/spill warranty to the rescue!?

I lost my beloved D610 on New Years Eve to an accidental spill.

I was at a party doing duty as the DJ/KJ. At the stroke of midnight I knocked over the champagne flute I had for the New Years toast. It was a dead on tidal wave of champagne right over the keyboard. The system shut down with a thud coming through the sound system speakers as the screen went black. I quickly pulled the power and battery. I set the machine on its side to drain. Good thing we had a backup IBM notebook to continue the party.

The next day I started to disassemble the thing. The keyboard had a stale champagne smell and was obviously going to need replacing or thorough cleaning. Some of the parts were a bit moist and sticky but probably still worked. I never powered it up again to try though.

I wasn't too concerned about fixing it as I had bumped the standard 3-year Latitude warranty to the Accidental Drop/Spill warranty when I bought it in December 2005. It was well worth the $119 to upgrade the warranty as they sent me a new D630 with similar specs.

I didn't get dedicated video or a wireless card even though those were in my original build. I didn't bother to hassle Dell about it as my primary concern was getting the high-res screen. I figure the Intel 3100 will work as well for me as the ATI I had on my D610. Having a Core 2 Duo chip as a consolation makes up for that.

While I am happy to have the D630 I'm a bit bummed I couldn't get a D610 as I prefer the non-widescreen display. I kinda wish the system were not under warranty. I would have done a complete disassembly to clean it and replace whatever wasn't working. I figure at most it would have been a keyboard for $25 and a motherboard for $99 based on eBay listings.

Dell did give me the option of a swap out or a repair. There was a risk of a repair working for a while and then dying. Not knowing what long term effects it was better to swap it out.

One potential issue with the swap out is that you need to send them the laptop with the original configuration parts. Having upgraded the RAM and HD, along with adding Bluetooth, I was fortunate to have those parts. I gave the 1GB memory to my brother for his D510 when I upgraded my D610 to 2GB, so I pulled that and bumped him up to 2GB. The 80GB drive I swapped for a 120GB was in an external enclosure so I wiped it and put it back in the D610.

The good thing is that all the extras I purchased for my D610 work on the D630. So I got to keep my spare AC adapter, media bay battery, media bay hd enclosure, and docking station. It was also nice to find out I could put in a miniPCI Verizon card I had into the D630 as the antenna wires are inside the screen even if you don't order internal broadband with the laptop.

As much as technology keeps marching on I think Dell got it right by keeping their business line accessories compatible for going on 5+ years. We have about 8 Latitude laptops in the office and it is nice to be able to swap and cycle things around as needed.

I'm not sure what type of warranty I have on the D630. It was pretty obvious to tell it was a new laptop and not a refurb. I suppose I should call Dell and find out if I have until December 2008 (my original D610 3 year warranty expiration) or if the clock starts new.

So 1/1/08 came and went with a minor laptop issue. Even better on 1/2/08 I whacked a 500GB WD MyBook to the floor with my knee as I was checking out the D610. It was dead as I was copying file to it at the time and the heads must have went down in a flaming crash. I hope this isn't a sign of how 2008 will be for me as far as technology goes.

 

Ouch.. does your MyBook have warranty?

 

KJ?

 

Thankfully it was.

The drive was spinning with the addition of a high pitched whine. I did an express exchange through the WDC website. I thought it was dead since Windows XP didnt' recognize a file system. I ran GetDataBack for NTFS and was able to recover everything on the drive. I think the FAT got hosed while writing data when it got whacked.

I'm still going to send back the dropped drive and keep the new drive. I don't trust the dropped drive will keep working long term. I'm not sure what the WDC warranty policy would be in this case.

I'm a pretty honest person but I don't feel too bad as I look at this dead 200GB WDC SATA sitting in front of me that out of the blue took a sh*at and died one day without warning. All I get from that is click-click_fail. No chance of getting over a years worth of photos off of it, even after the freezer trick. My bad for not keeping a strict backup plan for my data.

Some people took the familar Disc Jockey (DJ) moniker and came up with KJ to refer to a person who hosts karaoke gigs.

 

Sounds like everything worked out good for you. Did you say that your new laptop does not have a wireless card while your old one did? If this is the case, dell should be able to send you one for free.

 

That is correct. My D610 came with an Intel miniPCI Wireless LAN (2200?). The D630 they sent has the newer miniPCI Express but that shouldn't make a difference. Since I had a Dell 1390 Wireless card I got from eBay for $5 and put that in for now.

I'll give Dell a call and have them send me one.

Thanks.