Problem with Dell D 600 laptop

[catgate]

A friend of management's asked me to have a look at her laptop, because "it would not work unless the power jack was held in, manually, at funny angle".

So I did.

It looked to me as though the entire outfit had been bounced on its rear left corner, at some time, and something untoward had occured. The plastic of the jack socket had been cracked and the jack plug "waved about" a little.

I checked the charger, and it was putting out about 20v. , but, which ever angle I moved the sloppy jack plug in socket, there was no sign of any charging going on and I could not switch the machine on.

I then decided a look inside was needed and thus a trip to http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cat=sup&k=Latitude%20D600%20Service%20Manual was under taken, looking for the instructions on "How to Peel a D600".

This resulted in more online "research" and I ended up with this:- http://www.howtomendit.com/answers.php?id=62343 .

A post on this site dated Sept 2009 (about the 20th from last) was most interesting. It sounded so outrageous that it almost had to be true. The claim was being made that there was, built into these Dell machines, a programmed End of Life fault/flaw/gimmick. The number of reported instances of similar problems may have been coincidence, but remembering the problems I encountered with a Canon printer a few years ago, and which too turned out to be a programmed-in trap, I wondered how true this Dell claim was.

Has anyone on WF come accross this?

[Boris]

More likely to be caused by aging ?

[AlanHo]

It reminds me of my days at University - studying for an Engineering degree.

From time to time we students were taken to visit leading manufacturers to study engineering and manufacturing techniques. I recall going to Austin at Longbridge where they had a development section tasked with testing to destruction and honing the design of car components so that they had a defined life.

I cannot recall the exact parameter - but the idea was that in exactly "X" years time you would be driving happily along and suddenly the whole car would disintegrate - all components failing at the same time in theory.

In practice - as I recall - Austin cars of that era struggled to make it to anywhere near the theoretical design life.

I imagine Dell have a similar policy - trim the component quality down so that they last for no longer than a set design life and thus keep costs to a minimum.