I have owned four Dell laptops (must be a masochist) since the 1990's. Each one has been protected by Norton or other security software. Each one starts its life doing everything as advertised. But as soon as the hardware and OS warranties expire the system begins to do strange things which, despite workarounds and other attempts at resolution, finally render the system useless.
The current Dell computer, an Inspiron 5537, OS Win7, first flaw manifested itself as a failure to boot automatically from the HD. Had to manually boot it from F12 menu. This ran w/o problem for awhile until the internet wireless gateway shut it self down and had to be repaired each time it occurred from the Control Panel. Dell customer service sent an OS repair dvd. This worked for awhile until on cold boot I started getting a loading updates, do not turn off computer message followed by up dates failed messages warning not to turn off computer while up dates were being removed. This seemed to send the system into an infinite loop displaying the message and the busy circle rotating continuously.
Customer Services are no help unless you send them $300 to $400 and let them into your computer. I see my options as:
= pay the ransom
=go to the nerds at Best Buy, at least I know who's in my computer
=use the money to buy an HP laptop but will that solve the OS part of the problem
=switch Apple but will my software and files work w/Apple? Are their conversion Programs that actually work?
Discuss...