Best laptop I ever owned was a maxed out Dell XPS M1530 (2008-2013). Wonderful hinge design, WUXGA screen, that thing was a workhorse. Unfortunately it died due to issues with the nvidia gpu warping off the solder joints. I fixed it temporarily by baking the motherboard and got 6 more months out of it.
DontBuyDell.com
201–210 of 252 posts
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#202I 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 got a 1200€ XPS 13 Developer Edition (with Linux) a few years ago. Sleep did not work well from the start and it would randomly drain battery while sleeping. About 9 months in, the battery swelled up and outright died, and was replaced under warranty with a week+ wait. 9 months after that, so just after the 1.5yrs warranty expired, the motherboard died. 500€ to replace. Got a ThinkPad X1 Carbon for about the same price instead and never looked back - will not buy Dell again.
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#203I bought a XPS 13 dev edition with Ubuntu 12.04 in 2014 and it still works like a charm. Instead of Ubuntu it is running Fedora 37 nowadays with a decent performance. All hardware is still original.
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Friend of mine had an XPS; I don't remember exactly how much it cost, but it was certainly not the cheapest, so ~$1000 USD at least. After about 1.5 to 2 years the battery started swelling up, and became essentially unusable. Turns out they even had a recall for this model, but who keeps track of that so he never knew. Tried to order a new battery from Dell: they don't deliver them any more, no way to buy it from Del…
The XPS was their higher end answer to the unibody Macbooks a few years back, and peer with Lenovo's Thinkpad X-series. The Inspiron line is a "cheap is expensive" trap for consumers, you can't blame people if they judge the whole company for their mass-consumption offering when its cheap build breaks at the hinges for everybody.
Frankly, if they're cutting corners on one product to the point it affects their brand image, they're probably cutting corners on all of them. This is one thing Apple gets right, their products are solid all the way down to the low end (iPhone SE et al).
(After reading further I see others have made the same point. Oops.)
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#205[deleted]
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#206I have a Dell Precision. It's the worst electronic device I've ever had, and not just among computers.
Audio driver stops working randomly, I have a bookmark named "fix driver" on my bookmarks bar. Its update crapware interrupts me constantly, it rejects sleeping often, external display working is a lottery, sometimes the battery doesn't charge and sometimes windows gives warnings on low voltage adapter while I'm using the one it came with, screen backlight has weird gradients and bright points, the hinge makes weird sounds so I think it won't live too long, the fans are noisy, keyboard lighting leaks through key edges like a 10$ 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.
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Apple has been rock solid for me for a decade. Their priorities aren’t fully aligned with mine, but they’re as close as any company I know of. I really want to try a System76 or Framework as my next machine. Aren't all those premium products? Many of the complaints here read like: "I usually BMWs, but I decided to buy a Honda Fit and hated it. It's small and under-powered, nothing like the BMWs I prefer: Honda suck…
I think it's more the case that the Honda Fit would come with engine problems that the service doesn't effectively repair under warranty, and also with a 5000 pound trailer full of unwanted junk that's hard to remove from the car.
> I think it's more the case that the Honda Fit would come with engine problems that the service doesn't effectively repair under warranty, and also with a 5000 pound trailer full of unwanted junk that's hard to remove from the car.
No. A lot of the complaints, including in the OP are about things like product-line complexity and design compromises likely from designing to a lower price.
Some people are venting anecdotes about horrible support and product quality experiences, but that's true for even Apple laptops. The literal worst laptop experience I've ever had was with a 2018 MacBook that would inscrutably and randomly freeze on wake for minutes on end. Apple replaced random parts but otherwise refused to help. The only thing that fixed the problem was a OS downgrade that Apple tried its hardest to make impossible.
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>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 tir…
>>Their markups are also a little nuts.
A store manager explained to me as a difference between "Every day low price" model and "High-Low Pricing" model, and it turns out different people have different preferences (and neither model alone guarantees high profitability - execution matters in either approach :). Apparently numerous retailers in USA tried to switch from High-Low pricing to Everyday low pricing model... and consumers HATED it and abandoned it in droves (look for JC Penney as the case study). Basically, we talk the good talk, but we want our juicy sales.
>>their auto department that makes it a priority to overcharge and over diagnose ignorant drivers
Agree, BUT, I have not yet found a chain that doesn't. Honestly. 20 years ago I became interested in Rallying as a motosport, learned a bit about cars, and have not had trust or faith in a car shop since. I've been to massive national chains, local franchises, mom and pop shops, and everything in between. They all talked the good talk, and they've all done horrible things in the background. I have STORIES :D . And if you tell me that you have found an honest guy... chances are, you just don't know you've been fooled yet.
Business model demands it. As above - we talk the good talk, but we'll actually go to the scammy guy that quotes us 3 days and $1000, not the honest guy who quotes us 7 days and $2000. We'll complain when scammy guy then actually takes 9 days and $2500... and then immediately switch to another guy who quotes us low time and low prices.
So it again comes down to - there's a lot of anecdotes and perceptions, but it's hard to get hard statistics that can guide a rational decision.
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. With 24+ hours per charge on a lot of these modern laptops, why do you need to carry spare batteries? Instead of spare batteries, you should probably be looking to use equipment more recent than a Thinkpad. You get far, far more…
> With 24-hours per charge on a lot of these modern laptops, why do you need to carry spare batteries? At least for ability to quickly poweroff my laptop, for example if OS is hanged down or maybe if some water spilled on the device. Also I do not want to carry laptop to a service just to change battery. Last but not least, internal batteries use to be unique per model while external batteries use to be a mass produc…
> Why not just to drill more holes in the side edges of device instead of making side edges empty?
Because people have largely stopped using physical connectors and instead use Bluetooth and/or WiFi ones today.
There are exceptions, but those exceptions are fixed with USB-C hubs, which again are just $30 in my experience and give you all the USB-A ports you need.
I personally still prefer wired mouse (no batteries is a big advantage), but even my active digitizer pen is bluetooth, as are my Gamepads (4 players+ support). I still use physical headset (mic/speaker), and so I still try to buy headset jacks. Then HDMI.
My Phone is mostly WiFi connections for most relevant tasks.
USB is enough for the errant DVD-drive, USB-drive, RJ45 Ethernet.
HDMI is all I use aside from that.
> Also I do not want to carry laptop to a service just to change battery.
If you have a screwdriver, then you can change the batteries yourself on most of these laptops, including the Dell XPS that is being discussed in this topic. See the guide manual I posted earlier, its really not that hard.
The key is reading the service manual _BEFORE_ buying a laptop. There's many hundreds of laptop models out there. Many suck, but many others have good service guides and good service design that can be done with just a screwdriver.
Re: DontBuyDell.com
#210I have bought/deployed Dell business Latitude and OptiPlex systems for 18+ years.
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.