I only buy Dell products. I bought an XPS 15 back in 2017 and while on a trip to a country with no UPS/FedEx and the screen broke. The warranty agent worked with me to get the replacement screen shipped to a different country where a friend picked it up and delivered it to me in person. That is the best customer service I have ever had and so far sticking with Dell has paid off. Although admittedly I haven't bought anything other than their monitors in the past couple of years.
DontBuyDell.com
101–110 of 252 posts
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#102I have been using the same Dell XPS 13 for about 6 years now, and I cannot say agree with most of that article. The Dell XPS line was my goto recommendation for people when they ask what laptop they should get. 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 head…
I have a XPS 13 with a broken hinge. The hinge broke after about ~3 years for apparently no reason.
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.
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#1035 year's ago I've bought a 2-in-1 Dell Inspiron laptop.
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.
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#104I have been using the same Dell XPS 13 for about 6 years now, and I cannot say agree with most of that article. The Dell XPS line was my goto recommendation for people when they ask what laptop they should get. 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 head…
The article mentions about 40% of users have issues. You must be part of the 60%. Such are the dangers of anecdotes.
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#105I have been using the same Dell XPS 13 for about 6 years now, and I cannot say agree with most of that article. The Dell XPS line was my goto recommendation for people when they ask what laptop they should get. 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 head…
I guess it really boils down to whether or not you specifically received a lemon or not. There's always going to be anecdotal evidence on either side of the ledger.
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.
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#106Earlier 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.
Funnily enough based off Lenovo's reputation for their higher end laptops, in April I bought a Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen10, pretty much as they came out. The machine is a nightmare, and has been through about 10 firmware updates over the last 6 months, but has barely improved.
From day one and still now... on Win11 that it shipped with it won't hibernate, just a black screen on resume, then pot luck over the next boots whether it starts or not. Sometimes from shutdown it does the same thing. Under little load, it gets hot as hell, you literally can't type on it, I use a bluetooth keyboard. If I'm doing light dev work, 3h battery life, tops. Audio drivers are broken, the internal 3.5mm just emits noise above around 10% volume and is distorted below that. Shipped with an underpowered 45W adapter... same SKU now ships with a 65W (an i7-1260p w/32GB).
I don't think it's faulty, there are plenty of people with the same story about Gen10s. Mine is in for repair now, so we'll see, if it comes back with the same issues, it's getting warranty returned.
I know the X1 Carbon Gen9 is a really good machine, maybe Lenovo got screwed by Intel's 12th Gen platform and Microsoft's support for the processor, but the machine should not be going out the door like that.
Come to think of it... my XPS15 9560 from 2017 is STILL a better machine, which is what I switched back to while it's in for service (and cost half as much!)
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#107Earlier 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.
> This is same for other manufacturers too.
So true. Consumer laptops are really meh, but the only way to satisfy the demand for laptops is to have a designed-for-price laptop. In a way, the market demands cheap laptops whatever sacrifices in quality will attain.
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#108On 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…
>>Consumer _anything_ is going to be hit or miss. 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…
For what it's worth, there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that suggests Canadian Tire is not a chain that prides itself on quality — from LED bulbs that last a month, to their auto department that makes it a priority to overcharge and over diagnose ignorant drivers.
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.
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#109> They produce far too many models of laptops and 2-in-1. There are currently 285 models, it takes 24 pages of store just to display them all! (Compare this to Apple which is a far larger company and has ~5 laptop models) 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 sole…
On Apple pcs you have maybe 4 main models, but you can still configure them however you like 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)
> On Apple pcs you have maybe 4 main models, but you can still configure them however you like
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.
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 enou…
> The better keyboards are a bit pricier
Nope, they are just nonexistent in modern laptops.
> USB-C Hubs are like $30 and have more than enough bandwidth for most needs.
> why isn't USB-C good enough for that?
I don't have any USB-C device (not everybody lives in a first-world countries) but at least once per year I actually need at least all 4 of my good old USB2 ports. External USB hub will suck in stability of connect and ability to charge several devices at once.
And I do not want to grab a screwdriver for changing battery which becomes common in modern razor-thin laptops, I love long outdoor sessions with a couple of spare batteries in my backpack.