Laptop Question Again..

[ChrisP]

Hi..

I've read the recent post on buying a Lap-Top here.. very helpful thanks!

My specifics are:

1. I travel from the US to LOS many times per year.. am I better off (prices or reliability) buying one from the US and carrying it in with me..?

2. IF I decide to buy in LOS, are there a range of manufacturers who WELL-support their products in Thailand..? conversely are there those who I should avoid..?

(Btw, I have always used Dell in the USA)..

Cheers for your patient answers..

ChrisP

[Richard-BKK]

Acer, and only Acer has international warranty and insurance on there notebooks..also the low-cost 29.900 Baht notebooks

[autonomous_unit]

IBM Thinkpads also get international service. I don't think this has changed with the Lenova purchase of the IBM PC business.

I had my Thinkpad, which I bought in the US, serviced in Bangkok for free under warranty. Dropped it off with them and picked it up about 1.5 weeks later (they had to have parts shipped from another country).

[astral]

So do HP!!

[stumonster]

I just purchased at the beginning of september a new dell inspiron 510m in malaysia.

the specs of my machine are

centrino 1.83 Ghz

1 gig ram

80 gig hard drive 5400rpm

15" svga

dvd writer

wifi , lan , modem , bluetooth built in

6 cell battery

win XP pro

it cost me 4900 MYR approx 50k baht

it comes with a 1 year asia pacific warranty

you could say I was happy with the deal

[ChrisP]

Astral - I just talked to HP in the USA.

They tell me their "home consumer" laptops are only covered in the US.. because the parts used in the US are not necessarily the same as parts used for HP's elsewhere.

That means that IF my laptop needed to be sent to HP, I would have to ship it to HP-USA.

The guy thought that a Business machine might be different. I have a call into the Biz dept on Monday.

ChrisP

[justwilliam]

You might consider sticking with Dell, and purchasing in the US to take advantage of the much lower prices.

I bought a Dell 5100 Inspiron in the US in September 2003, with the standard three-year warranty. When I relocated to LOS in December 2003 I transferred the warranty to Thailand -- Dell allows you to do this (or at least, they did then).

About six months later I had a catastrophic (Hitachi) hard drive failure. I called Dell Thailand, who had all my registration details (Service tag, etc), but said they could not help me because the Inspiron is not sold in Thailand. They patched me through to Dell US service, who despatched the new drive the same day. I received it by FedEx three days later, complete with the return packaging for the broken drive, no problems, no charges.

I suggest you might check the Dell Thailand website for those products that are sold in Thailand (the last time I checked it was the Latitude range), and then buy the same computer in the US at US prices.

The only downside I have experienced here is with Dell's online technical support, which is simply terrible. It's not from Thailand, it's outsourced to the-place-that-shall-be-nameless. You need to be somewhat computer-literate to survive their tech support.