aldenhg
October 2nd, 2008, 02:37 AM
If you have a Dell laptop with the nVidia 8400M GS graphics chip, you might be sweating about now. There a a number of rumors swirling around the intertubes about the short life of the chip and you may not have picked up that extended warranty. Well, dear reader, I was in your shoes not too long ago. My Vostro 1400 with said chip-o-death went belly up in the graphics department not a month after my warranty ran out. I called Dell and their CSRs told me I was out of luck and that a new (read: refurb) motherboard (because the damn thing is soldered in) would be $300. I told them about the likelyhood that the chip was faulty and that it really should be covered by the warranty, but they wouldn't help me out. I ran a quick executive email carpet bombing and boy did it ever pay off. It turns out that Dell quietly gave everyone with an 8400M GS a year "enhancement" to their warranty for graphics related issues. Obviously the news hadn't got to India yet. Anyhow, here's the upshot: My laptop is being replaced (for some reason they couldn't fix it by replacing the motherboard) with a newer model (I think I'm going for the 1510) and you can, too! Here's the link to the page that will get you your free fixin':
http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/08/18/nvidia-gpu-update-dell-to-offer-warranty-enhancement-to-all-affected-customers-worldwide.aspx
Hopefully you won't have to take advantage of this, but if the day comes when you boot up and you see funny colors and repeated images you'll know where to go.
http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/08/18/nvidia-gpu-update-dell-to-offer-warranty-enhancement-to-all-affected-customers-worldwide.aspx
Hopefully you won't have to take advantage of this, but if the day comes when you boot up and you see funny colors and repeated images you'll know where to go.