Back in March, the Department of Homeland Security announced a new policy, which banned passengers from 10 airports in eight countries in the Middle East and Africa from having computers and some other electronics with them in the plane cabin on direct flights into the United States. Now DHS may expand the ban to flights from Europe as well, and airlines are freaking out about it. [More]
laptops
Best Buy Swaps Intel Mini Stores For Alienware Displays
By 3.7.17
Best Buy offers customers a range of “experiences” through an array of mini-stores, including those from AT&T, Verizon, Oculus, Samsung, and Intel. Now, the company is revamping one of those concepts, swapping out dozens of Intel store-within-a-store showcases to feature products from Alienware instead. [More]
Apple Might Be Planning First Big Update To MacBook Pro Laptops In 4 Years
By 8.10.16
It’s been more than four years since Apple last announced updates to its line of MacBook Pro laptops, but there could be changes coming down the line, according to a new report. [More]
Smartphones Leapfrog Over Laptops, Now In Nearly 3 Out Of 4 U.S. Households
By 5.11.15
All one needs to do to get a grasp on the near-ubiquity of smartphones is to go out to a bar any night of the week. Anyone who is not actively involved in conversation (and plenty of people who are supposed to be conversing), can likely be spotted looking down at their screens, scrolling, pinching, and tapping the glass. And a new report confirms that the devices are not only as widely used as you’d suspect, but are approaching TV levels of popularity. [More]
Having Your Laptop Picked Up By Someone Else At The Airport Is No Fun — Unless That Person Is An NFL Player
By 3.9.15
There are many bad or just plain annoying things that can happen when your belongings are mixed up with someone else’s in the airport security line — someone else could be going through your private information, or trying to sell your electronic equipment. But when is it kind of cool that a total stranger has your stuff? When that stranger happens to be a professional football player. [More]
3 Years Is The Warranty Length, Not How Long It Should Take To Get Your Computer Back
By 10.23.13
The state of California has pretty good consumer protections, but not when it comes to extended warranties. That’s what a family who bought a laptop computer at Fry’s learned after a planned five-week repair of an HP laptop ended up taking three months. Three months? [More]
Hey Best Buy, If You Want Us To Shop There, Try Selling People Stuff
By 5.7.13
Michael is buying his mother a new computer for Mother’s Day, because he’s a good son and she’s moving away soon. As long as he was buying a computer, he wanted to get some reward points from Best Buy on his credit card. Only he couldn’t. While the product page bragged of “free shipping,” Best Buy was not willing to ship the item. At all. [More]
Computer That Touches Itself Comes Back From Dell In Worse Shape, Michael Dell Swoops In
By 8.9.12
Remember Travis, the college-bound student whose touchscreen Dell laptop keeps moving the mouse pointer around on the screen, among other problems? When we last heard from him a week ago, he was waiting for the computer to return to him from Dell’s repair depot after two in-home tech visits, and he hoped the problems would be fixed. They weren’t. All Dell did was replace the wireless card. So he turned to the advice we gave in the post, and wrote to Michael Dell. This got him a new laptop for his trouble. [More]
Five Months With A New HP Laptop, But Not A Functional One
By 7.11.12
Skurk32 bought a new HP laptop in February. So he’s been spending five months enthralled with his new computer, right? Um, not exactly. He’s experienced a series of problems, large and small, with the new computer, that range from the color red displaying as orange (weird) to the machine overheating while idling (dangerous.) HP chooses to acknowledge some of these as problems, but not the ones that are actually important. [More]
Lenovo Reads Consumerist, Lets Customer Buy Laptop
By 6.20.12
A couple of weeks ago, we shared the story of Devotee, who tried to buy a computer directly from Lenovo’s site, only to have the order canceled out from under him with no explanation why. You may remember reading this story, and so did Lenovo employees. They wondered what happened, too, and reached out to Consumerist to help Devotee and figure out why they weren’t able to sell him anything and what went wrong. [More]
Free WiFi Continues To Pop Up In Odd Places
By 3.30.12
These are boom times for heavy WiFi users. Free WiFi is so ubiquitous that it’s gotten to the point that it’s almost shocking to sit down in public and not be able to pick up a signal. [More]
Upgrade Your Laptop's Hard Drive In 3 Easy Steps
By 1.16.12
If your laptop goes kablooie, or you just run out of space by filling it from totally legal downloads, it’s probably time to swap it out. The operation may sound difficult, but it’s deceptively easy. If you can handle a screwdriver, you’re more than capable. [More]
Dell Outlet Sent Me A Barf-Covered, Gum-Filled Refurb Laptop
By 1.6.12
Frank ordered a refurbished laptop from Dell Outlet last week, and got a great deal. He hadn’t anticipated that the machine would come with extras: some gum in the CD drive and an unidentified substance that we can only hope is soup, but looks more like vomit.
[More]
Staples Recycles Laptop By Cracking Its Screen
By 12.30.11
When you trade in your old electronic device for “recycling” while buying a new one, does that device have to work? Staples offered a $100 rebate this holiday season to customers who sent in their old computers after purchasing a new one. “Recycling” is in quotes because computers traded in had to be running, and include the charger, so they were bound for re-use rather than recycling. That was no problem for George, though — he traded in a working computer. Only the screen was cracked when it reached the center, and he didn’t get the full rebate. [More]
Consumerist Post About Broken Laptop Gets Reader Full Refund Within 3 Hours
By 12.15.11
Once again, Costco saves the day. Last week, we posted the story of Tom, who bought a Sony Vaio laptop from Costco only to have it malfunction a little more than a year after purchase. Sony didn’t seem to want to fix the problem at all, and Costco employees were very kind but couldn’t intervene. Only a few hours after that post went up, Costco contacted Tom, and gave him a full refund for the computer’s purchase price. [More]
Buying Laptop From Costco Extends Your Warranty And Your Aggravation
By 12.8.11
Last year, Tom bought a Sony laptop from Costco. Part of the reason why he chose Costco to purchase a computer was the warehouse club’s famed extension of manufacturers’ warranties: more warranty protection on a portable computer can’t be a bad thing. Except when it is. In Tom’s case, having another company involved just means that he can always get a very nice person on the phone at Costco who isn’t able to help him at all. [More]
Laptops May Slaughter Sperm In More Ways Than One
By 12.1.11
As we’ve previously pointed out, research has shown the heat from laptop use can raise the temperature of the testes and damage sperm of users who place the machines on their lap. Now researchers have found that a laptop’s WiFi signal is also a member of the sperm assassination squad. [More]
If ASUS Installs Your Hard Drive Backwards, Your Computer Can't Overheat
By 11.30.11
Perhaps it was naive of reader A. to think that sending his overheating computer back to ASUS would end with him receiving a functional computer back. He did expect them to at least put the hard drive back facing in the right direction, though. Or maybe that was the outsourced repair depot’s idea of a fix for his problem. A computer that can’t boot can’t overheat. [More]
