Bill and I went across the boarder to Portland, Oregon recently.  It’s only a 5 hour drive with an hour stop for lunch in Seattle, Washington.  It’s a trip we usually make 3 times per year.

While we were their, we decided to go to Frys Electonics so I could look for a new lap top.  I picked up a Dell Inspriation, on sale for $288 with 500 GB HDD and 4 GB Ram.  I figured it would be good enough for what I need it for.  Basically my office away from home.  So, basically just Office, email, and internet.

After I got it home and went through the registration, the first thing I did was load Notron Antivirus on it and uninstalled the antivirus that came with it.  The I went on the internet.  Pages were very slow to load, I mean, slower than molasses in January!  Now you can’t blame it on our internet connection, we have the highest speed internet possible.  After all, Bill and I both work from home, so the extra cost is worth it.  No, it was definitely the computer.

Then, I tried to watch a You Tube Video.  It took 5 minutes for the video to even start and when it did, both the picture and sound kept stalling.  However, sometimes a video on YouTube does that, so I tried several more and none of them worked.  I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t a problem with You Tube so I logged on to my PC and tried to watch 3 of the same videos I tried on the new lapTop.  All 3 loaded in seconds and worked fine.

I phoned Dell’s technical support and they took remote access to try to fix it.  They updated drivers and when that didn’t work, they did a factory reset.  They told me it could take up to 2 hours to finish.  When Bill got up in the morning, it was at 80%.  It took 14.75 hours to complete.

Then it was time to start all over.  However, this time I didn’t even bother installing Norton first.  I went straight to the internet and experienced that same problems.  That was it.  I told Bill that there is a Frys in Renton, Washington, about a 2.5 drive away. The return policy was 30 days and I took advance of that.

At least we picked a beautiful day for a drive!  In the mid 60’s and sunny.  We even popped open the sunroof for part of the drive.  The return was fairly quick and then we stopped at one of our favorite vegan restaurants in Seattle after making the return.

The best part about the Dell Inspiration computer?  It inspired me to take a road trip and return it.

What I learned? Sometimes you relly do get what you pay for.  It turns out the laptop had a cheap Celeron Processor.  They are known for being cheap and slow.  I won’t be making that mistake again.  Also, make purchases like this closer to home for easier returning.

My advice? Look for a laptop with a Pentium processor or possibly AMD.  Today, we went to Best Buy, 15 minutes drive away.  It’s a HP 15-F118CA and was on sale for $399.  It has a Pentium processor with 750 GB HDD.  I will be trying it out and then let you know my verdict on it but I am pretty confident it will be a much improved option.