Consumer _anything_ is going to be hit or miss. This is known. Buying Dell's consumer line and having a hard time trying to cash in on the consumer warranty doesn't mean Dell is shit, just means their priorities are elsewhere. XPS in particular I see lots of complaints about so I don't know why one would willingly buy what one _knows_ is their lowend (yes, it's lowend crap - we know this because they advertise it as "consumer highend"). It probably still gets the job done for most people who own one.
Buy a recent, used Latitude next time and quit worrying - they are great.
I'm not sympathetic to someone dropping $1,400 USD on a new laptop, and gets written off because "consumer _anything_ is hit or miss".
Like, half of the complaints come from devices like the XPS 13, which isn't some $300 cheap-o WallMart special, that's supposed to be their flagship top-of-the-line device. If Apple did the same to like, the MacBook Air or whatever, there would be months-long complaint threads all over HN about it.
Or my friend who went to 3 different Apple stores to ask about her issues using Final Cut and all of them telling her she needed a new laptop to the point that she bought a brand new 16" MacBook Pro she couldn't afford... when all she needed was a USB-C external SSD and to work on her larger projects from there. Luckily I talked to her about it and loaned her mine before she'd opened the new laptop so she returned it.
This is the whole point of the site: don't buy products from companies whose priorities are elsewhere.
HP: Pavilions are bad, Pro/Elite/Z series are awesome. Servers are good too.
Lenovo: Ideapads are eh, Thinkpads and servers, completely different.
The only company which builds all their hardware with comparable quality to other manufacturers' pro lines is Apple.
I'm glad their priorities are elsewhere, because otherwise I would have bought it first and noticed later. The enterprises that I met, don't actually buy directly from dell. They almost always buy through a third party partnership of some sort.
It would be good to know.
After about 1.5 to 2 years the battery started swelling up, and became essentially unusable. Turns out they even had a recall for this model, but who keeps track of that so he never knew. Tried to order a new battery from Dell: they don't deliver them any more, no way to buy it from Dell. Tried to order one from 3rd party: that one won't work because "not a genuine battery detected kthxfuckyoulol".
I don't care if it's "consumer" or "low end" or whatever, this is just ridiculous and in my opinion should quite literally be illegal (and perhaps it already is). If Dell doesn't want to manufacture batteries: fine. But let someone else do it so we don't have to throw away our laptops after 2 years.
The Inspiron line is a "cheap is expensive" trap for consumers, you can't blame people if they judge the whole company for their mass-consumption offering when its cheap build breaks at the hinges for everybody.
Too bad because the size is great !
For smaller electronic devices (e.g. my wireless headphones for my PC) that means that device manufacturer will have to make design changes to enable this sort of changing (I have actually changed the headphone battery, but I'm an electronic engineer and needed the soldering station at work). For larger devices like laptops, its going to affect battery supply chains.
Today I have a 5490 (4 years old) which is a beast and puts up with tons of abuse, including drops. I've run linux on it since day 1 and never had a driver issue and is a solid workhorse.
I've always had dell latitudes, and will continue buying them as long as they last me 8 years each and run linux.
Probably its replacement when it dies will be a used thinkpad though, will see.
Also their WD19TB docks have been terrible. The display ports randomly crap out, the power supply randomly craps out, the ethernet ports randomly crap out. Sometimes it requires driver updates, sometimes a dock firmware update, sometimes it actually is just the hardware. Such a bitch to troubleshoot.
I get the appeal of Dell for business use, but I would never tell anyone that they are “great” for any kind of customer. They are the Sears of laptops.
And the Precisions have bad heat management. All it takes is a little dust and the temps go nuts. I have engineers using them on shop floors and they have to clean them constantly so AutoCAD doesn't overheat (especially when they're on the dock running full tilt with a couple of external monitors)
They gave up, we were stuck with lemons.
I kind of agree with that philosophy.
I have friends who had bad customer experience with Bell for their cell, have switched to Rogers, and for the rest of their lives will yell that Bell is horrible and Rogers is awesome. But I also have friends who did exactly the opposite thing from Rogers to Bell.
I have friends who have had bad personal experience with TD Canada bank teller / customer service, and switched to CIBC, and will spend the rest of their lives telling everybody how TD is awful and CIBC is awesome. And I also have friends with exact opposite experience.
One of my friendships completely deteriorated when they warned me to NEVER EVER shop at Canadian Tire. Why? In 1978 her dad had a bad experience with a Canadian Tire car shop in Regina. I made a mistake of engaging and discussing there are over 500 stores with tens of thousands of employees and millions of different experiences, EVERY company will have statistical error rate, and "This one time at a bandcamp something bad happened" might not form the pinnacle of my decision making process (not that bluntly of course:), I got a look like I'm an alien being and what KIND of friend doesn't immediately take another person's word to not shop somehwere, no follow-up questions asked???!?!!!11
Anyway :).
Every company will have some percentage of bad customer experiences.
Stories, even reviews, are a poor and maybe even deceptive way for a person to decide how to weigh their risks.
I don't know of a perfect way because we don't have perfect information - what is Dell error rate compared to Lenovo compared to HP? I do agree that every company will have an error rate especially in their consumer stuff where we are explicitly not willing to pay for quality, and only pay, at best, for superficial specs or attributes.
Nothing on that website has shown me any statistics or argument that Dell is special. Like others, I've had good experience with Dell business models, just like with Lenovo business models and HP business models. And I've tended to have bad experience with plasticky crap of consumer models.
Their markups are also a little nuts. If you can regularly discount items 90%, then you've been regularly overcharging.
They have the moniker "crappy tire" for a reason.
This is true for many generations we have. We also have servers from other usual big manufacturers, and while some are close, Dells are much better.
Ah, also they're much more silent w.r.t. other servers even when you don't enable acoustic management.
I discussed with the last contractor that came to repair my machine and he told me that a) he would never buy from Dell, b) that the pieces use for repair were often refurbished, c) they knew that there was an issue with my particular laptop model but was running the warranty expiring game.
With that being said, their onsite servicing is outstanding.
Dell XPS support is also fantastic, if you go though the business channel and pay for support.
That said, Dell XPS is no longer my recommendation as the "New" line is a serious downgrade. They removed the headphone jack and added a touch bar. The amount of disappointment I have is immense. They took their best line and decided to make it horrible.
1 month later, no replacement arrived. Many calls to support yielded no answers. I finally got them to refund my order and cancel the replacement.
A very bad experience for me and I will never buy a Dell again.
The broken hinge is also next to the power button, so when the screen is opened, the detached hinge section pushes the plastic of the chassis upwards. This has both cracked the plastic, and made it impossible to press the power button normally.
I fixed it by using some really strong adhesive I found (called “plastic cement” or something like that). The power button is permanently wobbly, but you can at least press it now.
But exactly a week later the other hinge broke in exactly the same way. So more hours of my life and more adhesive later, it’s somewhat salvageable, but I am very gentle when opening and closing the lid.
Maybe I got unlucky with a shitty unit, or you got lucky with a non-shitty unit. Either way, I think our anecdotes cancel each other out.
Even with that fix, it can and will re-break, just in a different location so you have to be forever careful with this $1,200 laptop.
I fixed mine by gluing it with epoxy, and filled another part that was broken off with epoxy paste (it has a consistency like playdough).
Pretty paperweight after nine months of torture.
That said, there's plenty of customer complaints that appear to point towards poor QA/QC by Dell. In particular, there's a very specific hardware defect with keyboards in the XPS line.
Just search for "XPS tilde (~), F1, F2 not working". You'll quickly see this is an issue plaguing various models of XPS.
What are good alternatives for non-Apple slim 13' laptops with good screen real estate, low weight, loads of RAM and a decent price range?
Good experience for me as well, although the point about not great Linux compatibility is correct (it seems that some hw fixes were not upstreamed in the kernel).
> What are good alternatives for non-Apple slim 13' laptops with good screen real estate, low weight, loads of RAM and a decent price range?
Thinkpad X/Z/T likely fits the bill (of course, within the limits of YMMV). They optionally ship with 32 GB RAM, and Ryzen 6000 series.
Same! I'd love a laptop with a P or even U series processor that can handle 64 GB of ram.
The H series processors that you typically need to step up to generate more heat than small computers can dissipate and are thus frequently throttled.
* Dell European consumer division was centralized and controlled from Ireland (IIRC).
* Consumer models like Inspiron and Dimension had a noticable drop in build quality.
* Support agents were forced to adhere to strict scripts during support calls, rather than use their own brains.
* Support agents had to convince a certain percentage of customers to replace parts themselves, rather than getting the on-site service they paid for. Agents not fillin their daily quotas were disciplined.
* Exceptions to the scripts had to be escalated. In many cases, Dell would outright ignore local consumer laws when handling complaints.
I'm sure things might have changed since then. Personally, I'm not taking the chance and will never buy a Dell product again, if I'm given a choice.
This was circa 2005-2007. I was in the pilot program for chat support in America.
Dell did not directly manage agents. They give a call center average metrics and it's up to the call center to hit them. Call centers are terrible places and want to cut corners and make money. 1 in 10 agents on our floor could actually fix your computer without help. Level 2 agents walk the floor to help the level 1 agents.
We did not have scripts past a greeting and maybe a closing. I don't think it was required, but you just start doing it.
There's an internal support decision tree from Dell. Once you follow it enough, you learn the shortcuts. For example, if a customer says they swapped a part to a new system and the problem follows the part, we can skip troubleshooting and replace.
Parts are split into cru and fru (customer vs field replaceable units). We tried to get customers to work with crus. Crus wouldn't get on site service. It can happen but takes approval. I never heard of a quota around this.
Second tier escalations were handled in house. That was me for technical and sometimes the customers bad day. I don't remember if there was a third level of escalation that got you to dell if you were out of technical options. If you were out of warranty by more than a grace period, I was your last stop.
Consumer systems are not as good as business grade. That's why their standard warranty is shorter. Business systems are easier to work on.
There is a level of support above business if you spend enough money where we will have a part leave the warehouse in 4 hours (maybe less). Usually, these companies have their own company numbers and presumably better agents.
I only buy Dell Latitude and above, though would consider business products from other companies. I buy them for my "business" which doesn't need any kind of proof.
Call centres taking contracts with the lowest bid is definitely a part of the overall problem.
> Second tier escalations were handled in house.
We even had a third in-house. Dell had an in-house team handling things like replacing entire systems due to legal requirements (usually due to on-site techs being unable to solve issues despite multiple visits).
> Crus wouldn't get on site service.
One of the chief complaints back in the day. Sure, you and I can replace a faulty stick of RAM, but many customers didn't agree.
> Consumer systems are not as good as business grade.
Earler Inspirons were really good systems. They were pretty much identical to Latitudes and Precisions, but with lower specs. The Build quality was on par with the higer end systems.
Except older hardware is terrible from a price/performance/power point of view. The minute you actually start to use the computer for something intensive, you'd rather have a more modern, faster, lower power-consumption laptop.
It shouldn't be too hard to find 8+ hours of battery life from a typical $700 laptop these days. Add a few more hundreds of dollars to get 12th or 13th gen Intel and/or M1 Macbooks and you'll get to all-day designs.
There's virtually no good reason for me personally to replace this laptop. It would be like buying a new phone because 'scroll performance is sluggish' after 6 years of constant use. Yeah, I can live with that.
How about decent keyboard with not flat caps? Enough interfaces? Changeable battery, maybe RAM and CPU also?
The only exception to that rule is Dell. Don’t buy Dell at all, since it’s always going to be a piece of shit.
I buy them on ebay, so if they don’t work I get buyer protection. As long as it doesn’t die within the return window, I assume it’s fine. I’m sure there are more scientific methods than that, but this has worked for me.
> Another example is using a 4k screen ona a 13” laptop. Much better in terms of battery life and price to use a 2.5k screen. Humans can’t tell the difference. Why did they use a 4k?
What? Citation for sure needed. That's ~330 ppi, which is about where Apple's "retina" marketing ends up, so even with that optimistic view on things, it's still "just enough".
Regardless: humans can definitely tell the difference, because pixel density depends on how close your eye is to the display.
Again 285 models seems like way to many, but I also believe they'd turn away a number of businesses if they didn't have a fairly high number of models available.
Regarding the support, I have a theory: Don't f-ing use WhatsApp! I have a sneaky suspicion that it's much the same as the laptops. Someone complained about WhatsApp being available as a support channel, so Dell added it, rather than risking losing customers. The result is support channels spread out and somehow WhatsApp has either been outsource to the only company willing to provide that or a team of less professional supporters because of the low volume. Personally I've had only had positive experiences with Dells support, but via their website.
So by Apples standards 330ppi is FAR too high for laptop viewing distances.
But Retina is more of a marketing term than anything. I want higher DPI displays. They're good independent of the marketing. And to say that a human can't tell when it's dependent on viewing distance even for average eyesight is clearly wrong.
TL;DR: GPT-3 wrote this from looking at, I guess, various internet review sites and forums etc.
> The design of their machines is so bad I have come to the conclusion that no one is designing them. I know this sounds like a ridiculous claim, but I am quite certain it’s true. I happened to work on a laptop project with a Dell competitor and saw how their “design” process worked. They wanted to make a laptop with an outstanding webcam, that was the purpose of the laptop.
Would not be written by a human in a serious critique of one of top producers of business line laptops though.
Who thought it's a good idea to put a Intel power hungry heat generator in a laptop with no airflow or proper cooling for enterprise product ?
I had a coworker that nearly burn his leg when having the laptop on them and coding with Spotify in the background.
The thing would thermal throttle like crazy and turn into an helicopter because it has only one 50mm fan to try to cool down the machine...
We had to buy stands to help with the airflow because if you put it on a desk it would block the intake.
It cost the same price than a MacBook M1 Pro with worse performance, worse thermal and it's so loud.
I'll never want a Dell laptop ever again.
Also don't get me started on their power delivery circuit that overheat when the laptop is used while charging or the proprietary batteries.
I wanted to argue: this isn't a laptop, until I remebered how my XPS 15 almost burned off my finger tips, and not only once, but several times. If you pack a gaming gpu into a notebook, guess what will happen: people will use it to play games, and boom: the thing is at a constant ~90°C while doing so...
How is a product like this passing any QA and beeing rushed out of the door ?
Meh. Some people don't like the Apple "you can have any color you want, as long as it's black" product strategy. It's not a bad thing to not ape Apple.
I actually got a Dell recently, it it was solely because they offered an affordably-priced 16:10 model. If they did the Apple, "we offer 4 models, take it or leave it," I guarantee, none of them would have been affordably-priced 16:10 models.
> The design of their machines is so bad I have come to the conclusion that no one is designing them. I know this sounds like a ridiculous claim, but I am quite certain it’s true...
> Look at this camera positioning. Great for showing off your nose hairs!
Meh, again. I'm almost certain that camera placement is due to the economic decision to use a 16:9 screen on that machine, leaving a giant bezel that's just inviting someone to put something in it. 16:9 panels in laptops are a stupid fact of life, because people like cheap, but it's kind of dumb to jump to the conclusion that "no one is designing them" based on stuff like that and an experience with one of Dell's competitors.
> What is with the naming?
> There is a laptop named “New XPS 15”. Who the fuck names a laptop “New XPS 15? How am I supposed to talk about it in a year when Dell creates another XPS 15?
Is this guy even paying attention? The literal answer is in the screenshot with the broken image link right below this passage. That reveals that the "New XPS 17" has proper model number, and they offer both the old and the new model in their store (which is not a bad thing). It's obviously a just a good temporary label to make that situation clear to a user of their store. This guy obviously lionizes Apple (in comparison, at least), but they're worse in this regard: they've marketed literally dozens of models as "MacBook Pro 15," and the best they do to differentiate them is tack on a year, which doesn't tell you which is the new one unless you know thier whole product lineup.
Why not do the same thing? Have a few main models and allow customization (I haven’t checked if that’s actually possible on Dell)
You mean: "you can still configure them however you like," as long as long as the only things you want to change RAM and disk space and nothing else.
> Why not do the same thing? Have a few main models and allow customization (I haven’t checked if that’s actually possible on Dell)
Didn't I already address that? "If they did the Apple, 'we offer 4 models, take it or leave it,' I guarantee, none of them would have been affordably-priced 16:10 models."
Having more models increases the likelihood a customer can get what they want. Apple offers zero models with a 16:10 screen and a number pad, for instance. If that's what you want in a Mac, you're SOL.
The last 2 laptops I’ve had. In 2020 work provided a brand new dell XPS 15.
I opened it up. Logged in. The fans sat at 100% while idle in windows desktop. I ended up just giving it back.
Current job I got a 2022 dell XPS 15. It has an annoying whine when the fans spin up. It gets HOT! And it’s the first time ive experienced audio issues. And I’m not alone on the audio issues. Everyone at work with the same laptop has audio issues which is always resolved by restarting the laptop… for example today I connected my Bluetooth headphones. It connected but didn’t appear as an audio device so I couldn’t hear anything. This also caused the speakers on the laptop to stop working.
Lenovo is my laptop manufacturer of choice, but only the T, X and P Thinkpads.
They are doing their best to water down and trash the lineup. Along with the Thinkpad, there's the Thinkbook, Ideapad, Yoga, Legion, Lenovo Slim, and just the plain Lenovo.
But buying a 'Thinkpad' isn't a guarantee of quality. It used to be the T series was the standard laptop, X was thin and light, and the P series was a workstation.
Now they have the E series which is "affordable and stylish". The L series in "entry-level". Why do you need two lines of cheap junk? The Z is "is engineered sustainably from recycled vegan leather and recycled aluminum, then boxed in rapid-renewable, compostable packaging".
This is not the first time I've had this experience with Lenovo.
I have never bought a Mac before, but my next computer purchase will be one unless Framework fixes their battery issues first.
linux isn't linux isn't linux. distribution and wm/de matter a lot with regards to power management, and many distributions/DEs have strong opinions about defaults in many different directions.
I wouldn't expect a lot of laptop specific tweaks in a performance or desktop-flavored distribution, just as I wouldn't expect a high performance/risk file-system or IO scheduler on a user-friendly consumer-centric laptop-oriented distribution -- thus I think it's an unfair assessment when someone judges the other end of the field from the wrong side.
All that said, I own a current gen XPS15, i've ran just about every major flavor of OS on the thing. The compatibility is exactly what i'd expect out of a generic Intel 'ultrabook', ubiquitous.
Did you miss the detail that having Linux pre-installed by Dell was one of the primary selling points of the laptop model in question?
I generally disagree with the opinions of the article, which is to say, my experience is different. I have used XPS 15s exclusively as my dev laptops since 2016. None of the 3 I've used since then ever let me down. My oldest still works marvelously and I use as my primary dev platform with Linux, and my newest from 2021 as my backup/gaming machine with Windows 10. They do require opening and cleaning occasionally.
That said,
1) the Dell website experience when accessed from outside the US is so terrible that it's clear Dell does not feel that they actually need it to generate revenue
2) my experience with 3 laptops is a lot, but still anecdotal. I'll keep my eyes open for another dev-friendly option.
Dell is far from perfect from a QC standpoint but not nearly as bad as what's been described here. I have a $500 Dell Vostro from 2011 that is still running fine. It only needed a heat sink replacement that was covered by the Next Business Day in-home service warranty.
My experience with Dell was great. I have a Dell Latitude (business line) that works without issue for more than 10 years (ofc, now it's only for browsing). And I also have a more recent Dell XPS 15 that got a full glass of water on it, and still keeps working - with the exception of the GPU - but considering it was soaked and out of warranty I am still happy with that.
Not sure what I would buy next, but would definitely consider Dell. In fact the most annoying thing for me is the pattern below the keyboard on the XPS, but esthetics is a personal choice anyhow.
Definitely. I expect that, were they to try the same experiment with other manufacturer brands, the resulting text would be roughly the same.
Imagine that in near future we might get an AI powered service that let's you ask for opinion on any product on the market and then have a conversation about it. Manufacturers will then produce special ads just to target the recommendation engine of those AI's.
Inb4 we already have google - sure, but having an AI write you personalized opinion with concrete arguments is whole new level of market influence.
Can't wait for apple's powered AI to argue with amazon's one about whether or not samsung's Bixby is better or worse then Microsoft's Cortana
Dell won't fix it https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-13-9310-Ubuntu-deep-s...
Which takes us to the main issue, the preinstalled Linux on all Dell machines I had is garbage, premium support only helpful for Windows customers. Why do they then even offer this option? Sadly, when Lenovo started offering Linux preinstalled, they claimed it's a feature that they only ship open source drivers, even on nivida machines. Don't know much about the HP dev one, but partnering with System76 is hopefully making this a better OOTB experience.
The newer generation XPS uses a USB-C charger. I wonder if that would hold up any better with kids. At least a USB brick is cheaper to replace than a proprietary Dell one.
Burn in takes about an hour and it fades after 10-15 min.
Either I notice it more than them, or I got a bad batch. I'm pleased with the purchase despite that.
Apple by comparison is like a Tesla. Nothing is upgrade-able and they do their best to prevent you from serving it anywhere other than their own service centers.
So we did fix it (with no warranty coverage), but it was a painful and unnecessary experience. So count us in the 'Dell is junk' column. We've never had a problem like that with an Apple product (and I've been using Apple products since 1979).
Are there any details about how this text was generated? Or are we sure that there was no bias and no leading questions involved?
Most people go online to complain, not praise their computers. That is what the GPT model is being trained to summarize.
It would be funny to have GPT-3 create a website like "elonmusksucks.com" and then do a summary of the comments on HN.
She called Dell and they sent a new one so she could transfer her work over to the new machine and picked up the other one a few days after. All and all it was a good customer experience.
In my view, it seems like it has good build quality (in general, stuff can happen) and good customer support. Although she will never run linux on it. This website reads like a frustrated developer who decided to take matters into his own hands. I am very doubtful that this is the common experience, at least if you order directly from them. Sure it may have driver issues but at least they have an option to ship it with linux and without paying the windows tax, most companies don't even do that.
I personally use a Thinkpad t460p from 2013 that runs Ubuntu and still works great honestly, even the battery life. I will soon upgrade to a desktop instead of a laptop so that I can run more heavy duty stuff like training models.
2 XPS-13’s in the past few years. 1 with camera’s positioned at the bottom of the screen, which was the absolute worst design ever, unless you enjoyed showing off your nose hairs.
1 with the screen flicker and an issue with an internal fan that failed to start consistently which resulted an a blaring alarm. It would go off in the middle of the night.
The last one was replaced by a Dell XPS-15 (by my employer) which has worked fine.
I also own a personal XPS-15 that was my first Dell purchase ~3-4 years ago. It’s never had an issue and I do some heavy compute and web scraping.
I have a refurbished Dell Precision T-5600 with 128GB of RAM and 16 core processor 4TB SSD + 2TB SSD. It’s a beast, I’ve had it for 3 years. Run it daily for large scrape jobs, store and process a lot of data. It has never let me down.
DELL wanted me to do an insurance claim with the shipper. The shipper wanted me to do the insurance claim with DELL. Took two months to figure out. In the meantime, I just went to a brick-and-mortar place and bought a monitor.
In the end DELL credited me the money for the missing monitor and would not provide a cash refund. I ended up selling the DELL credits to the next person who had an equally horrible experience with them.
Don't buy DELL
Audio driver stops working randomly, I have a bookmark named "fix driver" on my bookmarks bar. Its update crapware interrupts me constantly, it rejects sleeping often, external display working is a lottery, sometimes the battery doesn't charge and sometimes windows gives warnings on low voltage adapter while I'm using the one it came with, screen backlight has weird gradients and bright points, the hinge makes weird sounds so I think it won't live too long, the fans are noisy, keyboard lighting leaks through key edges like a 10$ keyboard from AliExpress, fans are too noisy (yes I know I already mentioned this but seriously, they are noisy), battery optimized mode makes this laptop a slug and it sometimes takes a couple of minutes to wake up from sleep if you managed to make it sleep by luck.
But yeah, other than that it's a great business laptop.
1. When I was a computer technician back in the mid 00s, I hated working on Dells most. Their internal architecture was very dense. I often marveled at how little airflow there was.
2. I have an Alienware R11 that I bought a couple years ago. It's still doing fine. The only oddity is the result of a brief power outage a couple months ago; now it always tries to PXE boot on startup for some reason.
While everything is lighter and cheaper in terms of build quality, stability is still rock solid overall unless you get cursed with a "known issue". I have had Dell replace almost every part of one system over weeks even after I proved the issue was their driver.
When I have needed support in the last few years, I have found that the once-hallowed Dell Pro Support now is just "low-level offshore workers moved onshore", hence the creation of Dell Pro Support Plus, which once was Pro Support.
One of the bummers too is if you have a sales rep you don't like, you can't get rid of them (at least in the SMB sector). You have to just ignore them from 60 days at which point you can get a new one.
The way they name models now is baffling. We were buying OptiPlex 7090 towers but they were recently discontinued. So I figured that meant we'd be seeing OptiPlex 8000s. Nope, the replacement PC is the OptiPlex 7000.
I don't even know why they bother selling laptops to consumers at all (as opposed to to businesses) if it's so unimportant to them that their website doesn't even work.
My Dell G5 5515 gaming laptop has this weird issue where every 15 minutes or so, the trackpad will start lagging consistently for about 5 minutes, then switch back to working normally. Upgrading from Windows 11 to a fresh install of Windows 10 didn't even fix it. The power cable also falls out easily.
They really need to consolidate their laptop lineup.
Little did I know how shitty Dell laptops were afterwards. My excourse had gone through the 300/310 Touch Ultrabook series, the XPS13 and XPS15 series, and the Dell Precision series. Bought 5 laptops from Dell, all broken within under a year of lifetime.
It was so bad that in the Ultrabook the GPU literally melted, and they claimed this laptop is working totally fine by just using the internal display with more artifacts than actual pixels.
And now, here I am in 2022, using my Thinkpad from 2012...because it keeps working.
I don't even know what to buy after the Thinkpad dies, so I have one other as a spare parts donator.
2-in-1 functionality turned out to be useless and annoying in Ubuntu environment, so I almost never used it.
1 year after the purchase, WiFi signal on this laptop started to weaken rapidly. After disassembling the machine I discovered that the cable connecting WiFi module (behind the keyboard) and WiFi antenna (behind the screen) was torn apart as a result of lid movement. It was almost impossible to fix without complete disassembly of the laptop.
I was amazed how bad that design was. It was absolutely not suitable for frequent 360 degree movement of the lid.
It's ridiculous how easily they traded visual appearance (metal casing) for operational stability.
Build quality is very good, except for the standoffs, the silicon is getting loose 2 years later. This was much better on Precision devices I had before.
I think this website is a rant by a disappointed customer, but does have lots of valid criticism listed.
I guess they don’t do this anymore but a good few years ago a colleague at the time was able to attend some kind of training/cerification thing with dell and it meant all our hardware issues could be fast tracked. Rather than going through the normal support channels they trusted him to order replacement parts and/or directly book onsite visits for server mobo replacements without going through dell support first. I remember people using his relationship to get faster support for personal devices too and this was all above board / part of the deal.
But I had one Vostro, which was shit. And an XPS, which was also shit. So I can understand why someone who uses the consumer line would have quite a different opinion to me about Dell quality.
Nintendo!
Well, not a laptop but...
Eventually I bought new PCI Wi-Fi cards and installed them myself. So these machines now don’t have Bluetooth.
F Dell.
1. laptop switches on every night at 4:28 despite contrary BIOS settings. It took me 1 month of remote service and messages to get to some undocumented reset instructions
2. In high performance profile the laptop overheats. Service finally approved after I took video. Service changes the mainboard but forgets to insert the 2nd 16GB RAM stick!
3. Had to open/photograph the laptop to prove. Forgotten 16GB RAM gets delivered but doesn't work with the device - BSOD's on boot. Clear faul of the stick as it works with only the original RAM
4. Device gets picked up yet again (unannounced), UPS tracking says delivered and -- is lost since then.
5. Refund request issued (Sept 9) but denied.
Since early August I'm trying to get a refund or replacement - for several months now with endless chat messages and some phone calls where nobody helps but waits for the "internal team". The standard apology text snippet was issued dozens of times, I've heard at least 3 times "please give us another chance" - I should wait another 24,48 or 72h but no update.
Just off a phone call with them again today I am left with an infuriating customer support when something goes wrong on their side and no laptop I paid for. I hear from other that going after them with lawyers also takes many months.
edit: formatting
They install some audio-related bloatware from Waves which really doesn't like something about the way screen readers use the sound card. This is specifically a Dell issue, I've never seen it on a non-Dell device, and it occurs independently of what screen reader you use. The worst part is that, due to how the Windows 10/11 update mechanism works, this issue occurs even if you install a clean Windows image.
The issue causes the size of unpaged (kernel) memory to increase indefinitely, and when the memory consumption gets to over 90%, weird errors start showing up, sometimes the system hangs, sometimes it blue screens, sometimes it behaves as if a USB device was constantly being plugged and then quickly unplugged and so on. One way or another, the device becomes unusable. When trying to determine the source of the memory leak with poolmon, it's attributed to the Windows event logging system, out of all things.
There are workarounds, but they're less than ideal, one requires admin privileges and doesn't work on some models, the other disables the ability to handle headphone-port events, so, when you unplug your headphones, the audio doesn't switch back to the internal speaker.
I've personally started seeing this issue on my laptop around the middle of 2020, but other users report seeing it as early as 2019. It has been reported to Dell multiple times, including by the screen reader developers themselves, and nothing has been done. A couple months ago, a fix has finally been promised, probably to stop the hordes of blind people from complaining, but the issue hasn't actually been fixed yet, and nobody knows if it ever will be.
Perhaps more of us can chime in with anecdotes about good experiences we had with certain lines/models of laptops that we can recommend?
My recent experiences have been with Lenovo Legion gaming laptops.
One is a bit over 3 years old, the other is coming up on 2 years. My wife and I use them (almost) daily. They get picked up, moved around, run mostly plugged in but with CPU/GPU getting a solid work out as we play games. Other than needing a good wipedown (and mildly decreased battery life), both are indistinguishable from brand new in how they work after 2-3 years.
I did build 23° riser stands for each out of pine, so we often use them on the stands, with a board under the stand, sitting on our laps. This isn't due to heat, but because it raises the screen closer to eye level, decreasing neck strain, and works reasonably well with our arm/wrist angle, reducing wrist strain. Of course, it does open them up quite a bit underneath, so it no doubt does help with cooling as well.
This is the computer my company gave me after they went out of business in 2010. It was a two year old computer then.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Latitude-E6500-Not...
I had 8GB of RAM in mine. I put Windows 10 on it and used it as a Plex server until 2016. I recently cleaned it up and gave it to my parents mostly for Chrome and to use one of my Office 365 licenses. It runs amazingly well and the 15 inch 1920x1200 (not a typo) is beautiful.
I’ve probably had 5 Dell laptops since 2010 for various reasons and they have all been cleaned up, and given to someone who is still using them for basic Office + browsing.
I recommend Dells wholeheartedly to people on a budget. I also recommend Backblaze. You can get a cheap good enough Dell for $400.
My personal take is using any x86 computer after the M1 Macs came out is like using a flip phone after the iPhone was introduced. I really encourage people to buy at least an M1 MacBook Air now.
It's been over 4 months now since I ordered it. The enterprise support contract is "good" though; there is a guy who emails me every few days updating me on the ETA for the parts, etc. But it seems to just be information, the whole logistics setup is messed up.
My current one is a Latitude and I have it since 2018. Still works great.
A long time ago, one of them had a problem with the monitor. They came to my office and fixed it on the spot!
On the other hand, my macbook experience was never good. I guess it's luck
Every other Laptop brand I tried sucked in comparison (Lenovo, Acer, Apple all > 2000$).
They repeatedly try to sell a warranty which they’re told isn’t wanted. Then they tack it on anyway.
It all started by the CPU dying on the first motherboard a few months after first use. After 2-3 hours of back and forward with the support agent and diagnostics (machine was dead dead, blinking orange led indicator), they sent a tech relatively soon (within a week) and replaced the mobo.
A few months go by, a year - throughout this period of time after the first repair, the CPU has been sitting at 99 and thermal throttling like hot shit. Fans screaming all the time, finally I got fed up and launched another ticket. Let me tell you, I wasted a combined whole work day over two days going through diagnostics to no end. Getting messages from support at 2, 3 in the morning with massive delay between WhatsApp messages. Finally I got impatient with them so they sent a tech out (again, within a week).
Tech says temp sensor on the cpu is faulty, changes the board over again. The bloke literally remembers me from last time. TO give credit where credit is due, the tech was a top lad. He tells me that they are a 3rd party hired by Dell - they get penalised if the repair is unsuccessful - while often relying on misleading diagnosis from the first line support teams (chat).
Immediately after the repair I started noticing another issue - when you wake the machine from sleep or launch it after shutdown, without having the DC charged plugged in - CPU is throttled at 1 GHz and the machine takes minutes to even boot. No setting fixes that, I have tried resetting, running live Linux, the same. Once you plug the charger in it springs back to life.
After a few months, today, I get a BIOS warning that the machine can no longer verify the power of the charging adapter - the machine was so slow yesterday that the mouse was lagging on the screen after waking it from sleep.
I really do not like Dell. I will never buy Dell for myself or recommend it to anyone else. Oh and around 40 percent of us at work (we all use Dell laptops for remote work in the better part of the last 3 years) have experienced some sort of hardware failure / issues.
>Shows the add/remove dialog from M$Windows
There's your problem
> the laptop does not sleep when closing the lid and thus the battery dies very fast
is actually an understatement of the problem. Apparently Dell changed the system for suspending laptops to something that does not work with Linux
https://www.dell.com/community/Linux-General/Dell-XPS-15-759...
That would make it difficult for me to ever buy a Dell laptop again. I don't see how it would be possible to use a laptop without suspend.
I find their products to be garbage as well, but honestly so is every PC manufacturer. Lenovo is maybe slightly better with their Thinkpad line as long as you don't mind the legacy Lenovo design quirks and layout (I know a lot of people here like it).
I would love to hear if anyone can firmly recommend a PC laptop manufacturer at this point. Are Razer laptops any good? Is the Framework actually good or just not actively bad? What are HP laptops like these days? I feel like when people say a PC laptop is good they just mean not actively bad.
Their server and laptop hardware is often garbage, so if you need to buy it, structure in SLA penalties so that people get fired when the company screws up. That will incentivize the salespeople to make sure you get the better models. That will cost you money though.
If you are small or don’t have the budget, shop for the better gear or treat them as disposable. The upside of the sprawling product line is that they have product in every possible segment, from HDMI stock thin clients to high end workstations.
For some reason Dell kept saying that I was a business and refused to accept the returned package (apparently business doesn't have the 14 days return policy?), I had to waste 5+ hours in the phone talking with multiple people, trying to prove that I'm a normal costumer, at the end I literally had to send a picture of the delivery address showing that it was my house and not an office, after that they decided to accept the return.
I'll never get any product from Dell again.
The main problem was it was absolute crap in terms of CPU perfs. Totally impossible to run even one VM despite a price tag of more than 2000€. Who would know that the beautifully named i7-7Y75 Processor (up to 3.6 Ghz!!!) is the modern equivalent of a Celeron processor? I should have.
I then bought a Thinkpad with works OKish, but for the same price and same specs (except processor), allows me to run 3 or 4 VMs w/o a problem.
Before version control
I just purchased my first MacBook Pro (M2) a few months back and I absolutely love it! Now that I no longer work out in the field, I always have both laptops at my desk mounted on two Twelve South Curve Stands with an extra monitor in between. I have a magic keyboard (Touch ID) and an MX Master 3S. Can’t complain!
During those years we only upgrade it's ram from 4 to 8 GB and changed once the battery.
I use to have open at least 10 chrome tabs in any point of time, open very heavy excel files, and never complain about anything.
Looking to replace it with a 17" looks like the Precision range is the way to go... hopefully the business lines have kept up standards. Any other 17" laptops that are recommended? Not sure how anyone codes on a 13" (without an external screen)
On the other hand, I've always utterly disliked the 2008-ish Vostro 1015 we still have, though. Noisy fan from day one, bad keyboard and general ergonomics.
I had pretty bad experience with HP Envy where battery and charging were inconsistent but Dell just works.
You can pretty much tell bad things about any laptop brand.
I am sorry for the actual 1-handed users but this limitation was a blessing for me, toddlers wouldn't be able to open it in the disastrous case when they could reach it.
I know Huawei is kind of taboo in the US, but for the price I paid (900$), I got a 16", 3:2, 2,5k, glass screen (not "anti-flare", which in compunter screen business, is a marketing code name for "plastic"), ryzen 7 5800H, 16gb, 512gb, usb-c & usb-a, hdmi, ceramic body, precision touch and large hyper-responsible trackpad.
"It is impossible for them to properly design, test and support such a large number of different models. This is one of the reasons that their machines and support are such low quality. They don’t try to get it right, their business model is to produce a large quantity of models and obtain sales through bruteforce rather than quality."
Even seen one person getting issues as bizarre as if a Adobe app is open the computer plays the alert sound for every keypress, now Adobe might take a little blame there but still...
I was about to type "Dell is a horrible brand", but GPT-3 was faster.
Until one day the laptop caught fire. Not metaphorically, it just sat on my desk and burned. Good thing I was next to it when this happened.
Well how am I gonna know if I'm getting a good computer or not?
Kidding, obviously. HP's gone a similar route. I don't think I'll be purchasing a Dell or HP again in the future if simply for the decline in build quality.
The only reason I moved to a Mac recently is the improved performance and efficiency on Apple silicon.
I’m also skeptical of advice that there are better products out there, but they don’t tell you which ones they are. There’s a lot of nuance to that it is easy to just say.
I would say that Dell hasn't really been something I've found to be competitive lately. I recently bought a refurbished HP for a family member.
I had charging problems since the beginning, the infamous coil wine issues, then my screen started showing bubble!
Don't buy dell!
I’d never buy their general consumer stuff though, it’s stack high, sell cheap.
Poor linux support on Developer Edition
My dell 5567 (2017) had its battery swollen. And now, even though its fans works all the time very loudly and CPU doesn't cool down properly and get throttled, making the laptop usable.
Does not recommend dell laptops to anyone.
E.g. if you buy a Dell monitor from Amazon, warranty is handled by Amazon, not Dell. This means that Dell will refuse to give you firmware updates (and they are not freely redistributable), and Amazon obviously can't update the firmware for you. Your only recourse is to keep returning to Amazon until they come back with one with the fixed firmware.
And Dell monitors are plenty buggy. I have seen systems that would fail to boot (VGA card's firmware would hang during POST) with an A0-revision monitor from Dell connected with DisplayPort. And don't get me started on the Thunderbolt docking stations... we had to send so many for replacement, my company practically hoards the working ones now.