[BC] notebook suggestions

[gRAdy Moates]

    I've not seen any mention of the "dy" notebooks in this 
thread. . . (that's hp upside down, which is the what happened 
with early models when you opened the lid, and viewed the laptop 
from across the room).  

    I bought a laptop that was at the top of the HP line 
2-years, 5-months ago. . . it has serial, parallel, USB 2.0 and 
firewire, it has simultaneous floppy and DVD drives, it has 
built-in bluetooth and WiFi, and it has two PCM-CIA slots, one 
of which holds my Cingular wireless card.  

    And it has been flawless.  Absolutely no problems at all.  
I cannot believe this, after five (5) Dell laptops in 8 years.  
It IS true that Dell Support was good back in the '90's and 
early '00's, but that is just no longer the case.  I've heard 
some horror stories about HP support, but "hey, I haven't ever 
needed them" so I have no first-hand knowledge.  

    I stopped dealing with Dell when they got too big to serve 
my needs.  I had ordered a desktop to be a gift.  The next day, 
they sent me an email with a ship date.  I realized that it was 
going to arrive on my back porch on the day after I was leaving 
for 3 days, and just sit there 'til someone dropped by to steal 
it.  So, I called Dell and asked them to "hold it for three days 
after it's built and then ship it."  They said that they 
could not do it.  They classified my request as "shipping on a 
certain day", and their policies did not allow such.  

    I cancelled the order, and have not ordered anything from 
them since.  

Grady