Posted by Vince Wadhwani on Feb 15, 2008

For the second time in as many months, I've put my Dell XPS 1330 in a non-usuable condition. The first time it happened, it was due to the power connector coming loose from the MLB (main logic board or motherboard). At first I'd have to wiggle my AC adapter to get a charge, but eventually my laptop refused to accept any juice at all and I was faced with the dreaded 2 hours of battery life. (on a side note, I'm glad everything is backed up w/ rsync!)

A few days ago, after a late night coding on the couch, I got up and accidentally snagged the cord which brought the laptop crashing down about 2 feet from the coffee table to the floor. This time the screen and AC are toast again.

Dell has *great* customer support for the XPS line of notebooks. You get pushed to the front of the line and somebody actually comes over to your house/office to install the replacement parts. It's fantastic. But it's of my opinion that the best customer service is the one you never have to call. It's great that they respond so well to my being a klutz, but it would have been even better if they'd designed the product to avoid idiots like me. Apple did.

My Macbook Pro (which I am happily typing on since my Dell isn't working) has a Magnetic connector which allows the laptop to receive power while still ready to come loose at a moments notice so that the two incidents I described above never occur. Now this power adapter isn't perfect (pic) but a $79 adapter is a lot easier to replace than a MLB and LED screen. My guess is that Apple has a patent on this technology. Kudos to them for it! Anyone familiar with EMI shielding knows this tech isn't as easy as it looks. Still, Dell, Lenovo, HP, and all the rest should be lining up to license this from Apple as quickly as they possibly can. Why? Simple:

  1. It's a cool piece of technology that saves the user frustration from incidents like mine
  2. The cost of licensing this tech would be far cheaper than the cost of replacing parts under warranty

Hey great, so it makes business sense both from a customer satisfaction standpoint and presumably an economic standpoint. What's not to love?