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DontBuyDell.com

dontbuydell.com

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Re: DontBuyDell.com

#61

Post by rjzzleep »

bayindirh wrote: post #45
bastawhiz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This is the whole point of the site: don't buy products from companies whose priorities are elsewhere.

This is same for other manufacturers too. 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.

Then again Ideapads can be dirt cheap.

Re: DontBuyDell.com

#62

Post by sumtechguy »

dragontamer wrote: post #10
eimrine wrote: post #3

Don't buy any laptop except of an old Thinkpad because anything else is either proprietary crap or overpriced or even both.

> old Thinkpad 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 Macbo…

Laptop quality is wildly all over the place. From 'that thing is a tank' to 'the ink on the keys is coming off, and the trackpad does not work right'. QA is garbage for most of these laptops. They should be fairly dialed in at this point how to make decent ones. But not really. The ergonomics of most is junk. From poor flex on the screen and keyboard, junk keys, touchpads that are too big and impossible to not rest your palm on, to weird hot spots from poor thermal management. Most of the screens are decent though now. For a long time they were fairly crappy. But yeah if you are using a laptop older than 5-8 years. It is time to start thinking about a new one. I just recently updated my 10 year old one to something fairly new. It was night and day on performance.

Re: DontBuyDell.com

#63

Post by dragontamer »

eimrine wrote: post #40
dragontamer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> old Thinkpad 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 Macbo…

> It shouldn't be too hard to find How about decent keyboard with not flat caps? Enough interfaces? Changeable battery, maybe RAM and CPU also?

The better keyboards are a bit pricier, but...

> Enough interfaces?

USB-C Hubs are like $30 and have more than enough bandwidth for most needs.

I think HDMI is the one port I use the most after that, and yes, most of these laptops these days have an HDMI adapter?

But even when I setup 4-player games, I mostly use Bluetooth these days with wireless controllers. Which adapters do you need, and why isn't USB-C good enough for that? At work, I do have to use a wired Ethernet dongle (maybe even 2 or 3 of them) but home-use WiFi is all the internet connection I need in practice.

> Changeable battery

Before buying any laptop, check the service manual. This ensures:

1. The laptop was actually designed to be worked with.

2. You can see which parts are replaceable

For the battery: https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/xps-15-9560-lapto...

> maybe RAM

In my experience, most modern laptops (such as the Dell XPS under this topic's discussion) have replaceable RAM, M.2 drives, SATA-drives, and batteries. You may need to grab a screwdriver, but its not that hard.

Just check the service manual before buying.

Re: DontBuyDell.com

#64

Post by iknowSFR »

bayindirh wrote: post #45
bastawhiz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This is the whole point of the site: don't buy products from companies whose priorities are elsewhere.

This is same for other manufacturers too. 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.

Is there a website or directory where all tech companies strengths/priorities are listed out? Hardware, software, and services companies included?

Re: DontBuyDell.com

#65

Post by whywhywhywhy »

Every single person I've worked with who bought a Dell has had so many issues every one of them has had to return it, get replacements and eventually give up and switched to something else.

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...

Re: DontBuyDell.com

#66

Post by jamespo »

eimrine wrote: post #40
dragontamer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> old Thinkpad 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 Macbo…

> It shouldn't be too hard to find How about decent keyboard with not flat caps? Enough interfaces? Changeable battery, maybe RAM and CPU also?

Sounds like you want a desktop

Re: DontBuyDell.com

#67

Post by sanitycheck »

I swear by Dell Latitudes. Reliable, long next day on-site international warranty, and parts are easy to find and fit after the warranty expires. I've been using Latitudes for >20 years, and all my hardware issues have been solved within 24h by an on-site tech 6 times out of 6. I buy refurbished laptops from their outlet store, so they are also cheap.

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.

Re: DontBuyDell.com

#68

Post by velcrovan »

branon wrote: post #21

On the contrary I've had great experiences with Dell's business line (Latitude, Precision models). Likewise the business warranty is excellent - log into TechDirect and I can submit a ticket for any one of the machines in my fleet. Dell will either send a technician out to service it in the field, or they'll mail me an empty box so I can send the unit in for repair. Consumer _anything_ is going to be hit or miss. Thi…

We have had terrible problems with the Precision 3000 series overheating/blue-screening on our engineers while using SolidWorks and AutoCAD, and Dell’s response to us was that they couldn’t recommend that series for that purpose, after their rep had done exactly that.

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.

Re: DontBuyDell.com

#69

Post by kennydude »

0xAFFFF wrote: post #6

The XPS 13 I bought a few years ago ended up being a decent development machine, with a price point hard to match for the form factor and specs. And the Dell crapware on it was relatively low. 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?

Framework laptops look decent to me - Tempted to get one at some point

Re: DontBuyDell.com

#70

Post by patwolf »

I had an older XPS 13 developer edition. My main complaint was that it used a thin barrel-tip charger. After relegating it to the kid's Minecraft machine, the plug would get jostled around and short out the charger. After several charger replacements, I gave up and it sits unused on a shelf.

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.

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