Laptop Advice

What a good looking little laptop. However this laptop is at the moment causing many customers a lot of grief. The problem is that this georgious looking laptop just overheats way to easilly. The graphics card is a BGA chipset and is moulded into the motherboard. You CANNOT remove it and replace it. ( You can on the xps 1770) If under warranty the laptop motherboard will have to be replaced. Dell has good technical support and will send an engineer who will replace the board for you free of charge. The headaches occur when you are out of warranty. Then you will need to take your laptop to a respected company like www.DellLaptopRepairs.com to have it repaired. This company is based in London and have seen this problem many times.

The way to repair this is to have the graphics card re-fluxed. This means using a machine or hot air gun to push flux under the graphics card chipset and make it sit properly. This needs to be done by qualified Engineers who know how to cool your board to stop warping and overheating as some novices have been known to blow the chipset. This reflow work however is not an exact science and even skilled engineers can some times overheat the chipset. This laptop is not for games. I know you will probably read that it is, but when you have seen so many of these graphics cards overheating like i have i would not reccommend a laptop for games.The overheating problem often occurs becuase of using this laptop for high end games or for using programs like autocad that push the graphics card hard.  Never use this laptop on the bed as covers often block the fan causing overheating. Some engineers will force the fan to stay on permanently in order to make it work like a desktop computer and have the fan spin constantly. This is often a good idea as it cools the laptop down well and on the dell website you can even download some software that controls the fan. This problem can be fixed you just need to take it to a well respected company for an efficient repair.

A couple of years ago I typed the words ” Best laptop to buy ” In Google.  The laptop that came up top was the Toshiba Qosmio. I was horrified becuase these laptops suffer with graphics card problems. So i decided to try to understand why so many companies were trying to push this laptop as a good laptop to buy. The screen was the major selling point as it has a very high resolution good quality x black screen. Then i found other companies saying it was great just so that they could make a sale. Laptop repair companies have seen this laptop in thier workshops many many times. The sad thing is that often it cannot be repaired as the graphics bga chipset is moulded into the board and cannot be changed. Even Toshibs laptop repair companies like www.ToshibaLaptopRepairs.co.uk are refusing to fix this laptop as thier is only a 1 in 10 chance of repair by trying a re-flow on the chipset.  The best thing to do is buy a new motherboard however it seems this is a very common problem and you may as well just purchase a new laptop. The sad part about all this is that many poor customers have paid well over £1000.00 for this laptop and havent seen great returns.

The good looking laptops that Hewlett Packard make have been found to have many faults with thier graphics cards. The DV 2000 models are the main culprits. Many laptop repair companies cannot repair this fault. This is because unlike most motherboard circuit chips which have legs that can be un soldered, these graphics card chips cannot be removed from the motherboard. Companies like Laptop Repair Uk www.LaptopRepair.co.uk can repair this problem, However One of the engineers assures me that the problem often occurs again. An engineer can heat up this graphics card and try to get the chipset to sit properley and may force the fan to spin continually. This however usually lasts around 5 months by then the warranty has run out. If you live in America and you have a graphics card fault HP are now fixing this problem free of charge. This fault has caused a lot of loss of respect for HP. Many Engineers will not reccommend HP as a laptop to buy. The sad thing is Many of the HP NX and NC models are really very very good strong laptops. The DV models are just pants. The problem occurs with the dv2000 dv 6000 and dv 9000. If you have a problem with your hp graphics card and you need to get the data back, take out the battery take out the memory then take out the onboard battery, leave the laptop for 1 hour and then put them back into the laptop. You will find that the laptop will most probably boot up and work fine for a while. A good idea is also to blow some compressed air into the air vent at the back of the laptop. We just hope HP can hold onto some respect regarding thier laptops as the word on the streets is not good at this time..