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From: alex@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Alex Quilici)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.laptops,comp.sys.zenith
Subject: Re: zenith 386 laptop closeout - is it a good deal?
Message-ID: <30731@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 11 Jan 90 19:22:03 GMT
References: <1990Jan11.004443.8795@chinet.chi.il.us> <7946@nigel.udel.EDU>
Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU
Reply-To: alex@cs.ucla.edu (Alex Quilici)
Organization: UCLA Artificial Intelligence Lab
Lines: 50

gmiller@udel.edu (Gregory Miller) writes:
   "I rushed out and bought the Zenith supersport 286 when
    it first came out (I got serial number 93!), and I've been thrilled
    with it since I've had it."

Well, here's a different opinion: stay away from Zenith laptops.  I
bought a supersport 286 with a 40mb hard disk and an internal 2400 baud
modem for around $3500 just over a year ago.  And, since then, it has
been in the shop over half of the time.

Why?  The CPU failed once and needed to be replaced.  That wasn't
bad; only a week in the shop once they figured out what was wrong.
The power supply failed once and needed to be replaced.  That was
a little worse; it took about two weeks to get the parts.  And
then things started to fall apart.   In late August, the machine
suddenly started hanging at odd times.  Then a few days later it
wouldn't boot anymore.  I took it to Zenith's authorized repair shop
who ended up reseating most of its chips.  That took a week or so,
and everything worked fine -- for all of another week.  I took it
back and had the chips reseated again, and it worked again -- for
all of two weeks, this time.  So I took it back and the shop said
the main board needed to be replaced.  This was toward the middle
of October.  The new board came in right around Thanksgiving and
I got my laptop back a few days later.  And I was happy -- for
less than three days, before the board quit again.  Since then
I've been waiting for a replacement board and my latest call
to Zenith has confirmed that they're backordered until the end of
this month.  Sure, all this service has been performed with a smile
and for free, but since August I've had the use of the machine
for a little under a month.

And I haven't even gotten into the more minor irritations like
problems with screen adjustment and the exceedingly short life
of the battery pack.

I've written to Zenith complaining about the poor quality of
their product, asking for an extended warranty or a replacement
machine, and they haven't even bothered to respond.  I'm not
planning on buying any more Zenith machines.  There's no reason
to anymore anyways, since other manufacturers have considerably
better machines out for about the same price.  Check out NEC's new
286 laptops--they're lighter, have a faster hard-disk, and
have VGA graphics.

Has anyone else had problems with Zenith?  Especially with
their 286 supersports?  The shop I've been taking it to has
seven other supersport 286's with the same set of problems,
so I imagine there must be others out there in the same boat.

Alex