I am done with Dell

[Bobert]

It used to be that when you bought a computer it was easy to get fixed.
I am learning that Dell seemz more interested in selling you a warrantee than they are in fixing your computer.
My 2 year old Dell is out of warranty and Dell has no US service centers.
Many places can get parts for an HP for example but when I asked they were unable to order .
Dell parts.
Getting my Dell fixed involves weeks instead of days if I had an HP
Anyone else have a similar experience?

[alfaniner]

I got caught by surprise when I bought a Dell printer and found I had to mail-order ink instead of being able to find it in a nearby store. This when running out of ink on April 15, to print my final copy of my tax form. I had to print it at work.

Oh, and my last Dell Computer? 3 hard drive crashes. Emphasis on "last".

[ugot2bekidding]

My, how things change. My first computer was a Dell (this was maybe 15 or so years ago). The hard drive eventually crapped out. Within 24 hrs of calling them, I had another (and bigger) HD delivered at my doorstep plus a new keyboard (even though I did not ask for one, but merely mentioned during the course of the conversation that the space bar on mine was a tad stuck).

[grmcdorman]

On the other hand, we have four Dell machines (three desktops, one laptop) of varying ages; the youngest is the laptop at about 2.5 years. Oldest is an XPS-T550, Pentium III, used as a server running Linux. No problems with any of them (except when I tried to upgrade the mobo in the XPS-T550 and discovered that generation uses proprietary power supplies; had to get a generic case and build a new system).

Mind you, the hard drives have been shuffled around a lot (and in many cases, upgraded).

Currently planning to get another Dell laptop for my son when he goes to university (college for you US types) in the fall.

We use Dell at work too; mostly pretty stable, from what I understand. Don't really know the work laptop reliability, though.

Bottom line, of course: anecdotes != data. From what I recall from Consumer Reports and other sources, the Dell systems are generally among the more reliable. Toshiba laptops at one point were more reliable, but not any more, apparently.

[Bobert]

My, how things change. My first computer was a Dell (this was maybe 15 or so years ago). The hard drive eventually crapped out. Within 24 hrs of calling them, I had another (and bigger) HD delivered at my doorstep plus a new keyboard (even though I did not ask for one, but merely mentioned during the course of the conversation that the space bar on mine was a tad stuck).

I am sure they take care of you if you prepurchase that good care by buying the warranty.
And if you don't all they do is try and sell you one whenever you call them.
Their India workers know that script well after they tell u to roboot your computer

[rhtufts]

If you can turn a screw driver and don't need a computer for video games just buy the cheapest PC at walmart for $300 to $500. They are just as reliable and if you do need to replace a part anything but the motherboard can be replaced in minutes for super cheap.

.02
Russell

[grmcdorman]

Just checked Consumer Reports (http://www.consumerreports.org); according to their information on laptop reliability, the four top brands are Sony, Lenovo, Compaq, and Toshiba (all tied for first), followed by Dell, Gateway, and Apple (tied for 2nd), with HP bringing up the rear. However, the difference between the best and worse was only 3%, which is the same as the margin of error in their poll. In other words: no significant difference for laptops among the big brands; take your pick.

On the other hand, for desktops there's a much bigger spread: number one is Apple, which is 4% ahead of the next brand, Compaq. Emachines is 3rd, and then Dell & HP fourth (although again, the spread between Compaq and Dell/HP is the same as the margin of error in the poll). Sony is next, and Gateway brings up the rear at a whole 8% less reliable than Apple.

rhtufts: If you do that, you might as well build from scratch - you can generally get a system for the same price as the brands with, usually, superior components. The margin isn't much, though, as I recall. You can do better if you can reuse components, as I did in our latest machine - the case, hard drive, CD drive and power supply were all reused, and just the motherboard, video and memory were replaced (best video card we could get that the PSU supported, actually).

[Bobert]

Thanks for all the responses.
I went with the HP p6140f it has a good processor and plenty of RAM.
I saved money to because I already have a monitor and decent video card.

[moopet]

I got caught by surprise when I bought a Dell printer and found I had to mail-order ink instead of being able to find it in a nearby store. This when running out of ink on April 15, to print my final copy of my tax form. I had to print it at work.

Oh, and my last Dell Computer? 3 hard drive crashes. Emphasis on "last".

Most Dell printers I've seen are rebadged Lexmark - undoubtedly the worst manufacturer of printers in the world. Actual Dell stuff, stuff that's not made by others and rebadged, is pretty good.

[RussDill]

If you can turn a screw driver and don't need a computer for video games just buy the cheapest PC at walmart for $300 to $500. They are just as reliable and if you do need to replace a part anything but the motherboard can be replaced in minutes for super cheap.

Very bad idea. They look for the cheapest components that function. Things ranging from assemblies (Motherboard, power supply, video card, etc) using substandard components (see Capacitor plague http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague) to the usage of hard drive models for which demand has fallen to next to zero due to high failure rates. These PC's are also built with less margin for things like power supply capacity vs power required by the system or heat produced vs heat eliminated.

[BenBurch]

My advice is to find the guy locally who makes computers from parts and has been doing so for at least ten years. He'll build you a good one, and he'll be there if it breaks.

[Fnord]

I recently (June 6, 2009) bought a Dell Inspiron 1545 for $600 from Sam's Club (Wal*Mart). Dual processors, 160GB HDD, and 3GB RAM.

It runs Vista and IE8. I dowloaded and installed Open Office (freeware). I disabled Windows Live Chat, and loaded WoW. So, for the first time, I play WoW on my own machine on my own network (I'm running a gnome rogue named "Owenwynn").

I'll let you know when the inevitable descent into Dellhell occurs.

[Bobert]

Didn't price include a 3 year warranty?
Frys IMHO has the best warranty.
198 for 5 years which includex loaner if /when repairs are needed and replacement if they cant repair it.

[GreNME]

I'll never buy a computer at Fry's ever again. Bought my MacBook Pro from there, it had a defect out of box (optical drive), they waited a week before sending the damned thing out for repairs (to Apple, with a week's pit-stop at Fry's central in CA), they refused to give me a status update, and after they sent it out and I was annoyed with the way their service people were treating me they refused to give me my money back. I actually had to go through the BBB to get the damned laptop I paid for back from their stupid service department.

Fry's warranty or not, from now on my MBP goes through the local Apple Store for repairs.

[arthwollipot]

Funny - my household has never had anything but good experiences with Dell machines (and Lexmark printers, by the way - Lexmark has the contract with most Australan Government departments). Of course, when anything goes wrong, we just fix it ourselves, because...

My advice is to find the guy locally who makes computers from parts and has been doing so for at least ten years. He'll build you a good one, and he'll be there if it breaks....our household has three of that guy.

[PhreePhly]

I'll never buy a computer at Fry's ever again. Bought my MacBook Pro from there, it had a defect out of box (optical drive), they waited a week before sending the damned thing out for repairs (to Apple, with a week's pit-stop at Fry's central in CA), they refused to give me a status update, and after they sent it out and I was annoyed with the way their service people were treating me they refused to give me my money back. I actually had to go through the BBB to get the damned laptop I paid for back from their stupid service department.

Fry's warranty or not, from now on my MBP goes through the local Apple Store for repairs.

Is Apple pretty good about that? Even though you didn't buy through them, they handle warranty/repair well? That's pretty cool if the case.

PhreePhly

[PhreePhly]

Funny - my household has never had anything but good experiences with Dell machines (and Lexmark printers, by the way - Lexmark has the contract with most Australan Government departments). Of course, when anything goes wrong, we just fix it ourselves, because...

...our household has three of that guy.

Same here, been pretty happy with Dell. I only buy laptops from them, any desktop will be self-built, but the laptops have been very nice.

PhreePhly

[GreNME]

Is Apple pretty good about that? Even though you didn't buy through them, they handle warranty/repair well? That's pretty cool if the case.

PhreePhly

Well, while I'm sure the 1-year limited warranty for Apple equipment bought will be recognized at any Apple store, when it comes to accepting money to fix their stuff Apple is typically more than happy to taking your cash. At least with the Apple Stores, though, I'll be able to keep tabs on the status of my work order if it needs to be shipped out, or there will be someone who is at least nominally trained in fixing Apple computers in the store. It's not great, but it's better than I expect from Fry's at this point.

The Dell laptops are pretty good, I agree. My better half has a laptop with comparable specs to mine and not only has she paid less for it, but she got a longer base warranty (3 years versus my 1 year), which is much better since that means I don't have to do all of her troubleshooting for that period (I can troubleshoot my own if I feel like it). I've been pretty happy with both her and my own purchase from Dell and Apple, respectively.

[PhreePhly]

Well, while I'm sure the 1-year limited warranty for Apple equipment bought will be recognized at any Apple store, when it comes to accepting money to fix their stuff Apple is typically more than happy to taking your cash. At least with the Apple Stores, though, I'll be able to keep tabs on the status of my work order if it needs to be shipped out, or there will be someone who is at least nominally trained in fixing Apple computers in the store. It's not great, but it's better than I expect from Fry's at this point.

The Dell laptops are pretty good, I agree. My better half has a laptop with comparable specs to mine and not only has she paid less for it, but she got a longer base warranty (3 years versus my 1 year), which is much better since that means I don't have to do all of her troubleshooting for that period (I can troubleshoot my own if I feel like it). I've been pretty happy with both her and my own purchase from Dell and Apple, respectively.

As long as you're close to an Apple Store, that's actually pretty nice, you know it won't be shipped out, but repaired on premises. As far as Dell goes, yea, my wife has an Inspiron 17" we bought about 5 years ago, now. She owns a number of bars and was getting ripped off pretty hard, so I wrote an inventory program that she uses to track alcohol. The system attaches to a digital scale and a barcode reader and basicaly logs wieght and associates with the bottles UPC label. Anyway, that poor laptop has had more drinks spilled on it, fallen off the bar and one night, she left it in the walk-in freezer. Was left in for almost 15 hours. I was worried about condensation, but never had any problem. I'm still lost how that happened, but, that system is still ticking. She lost a TAB key about 2 years in, and I replaced her battery with a non-Dell replacment for less than half the dell price just last year.

My son has one of the newer Studio laptops and that is a pretty nice setup for just over $1000. He's only had for 8 months, so nothing to brag about.

PhreePhly

[joobz]

I beleive there is the "tale of two cities" effect.
I've heard of consumer dells being problematic when it comes to service. However, if is a business purchase (through a large company/university), the support is a different beast.

best example I've seen of this is gateway. I had a monitor go out on me (at work) the exact time a friend's monitor did. They sent me a new one the next day. Fed-exed and ready to unpack. All I had to do was put the old one in the box and mail it back to them. (note that I did not buy the warranties they tried to sell).

My friend on the other hand had to send them his monitor, he had to wait 1 week to hear from them. After calling, they informed them that they were attempting to fix it and that they woudl call him back. 3 weeks later, he was sent a new monitor.

[rhtufts]

Very bad idea. They look for the cheapest components that function. Things ranging from assemblies (Motherboard, power supply, video card, etc) using substandard components (see Capacitor plague http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague) to the usage of hard drive models for which demand has fallen to next to zero due to high failure rates. These PC's are also built with less margin for things like power supply capacity vs power required by the system or heat produced vs heat eliminated.

I've got three of them in my house from three different years, two different manufactures. Besides keyboards I've yet to replace a single component. Two E-machines and one Compaq... none of them will play the top of the line video games but they do everything else perfectly.

For your average Joe I highly recommend the Wal-mart cheapo's

.02
Russell

[Fnord]

Every day, I run a registry cleaner just before shutting down.

Every week, I run a "Shallow" scan for malware.

Every month, I run a "Deep" scan for malware and defrag the drive.

The worst time I've had with Dell was when I tried to find a repair center that would replace the system board in a six-year old laptop running W2K - they all wanted to sell to me their most expensive laptop with all of the super whizz-bang features. After a month of this, I went to Sam's Club and bought my current laptop.

Although my "Dream Machine" is built to milspec and costs about 5K$US.

[Illustronic]

We got a business warranty when I got my Apple G5.

The power module fried and it was an audible and visual component incident. A walk-in-front-of-the-line was honored by the Apple store and the next day a guy brought out our newly re-built tower but dropped it while lifting it into our vehicle. They damaged it so bad they replaced it with a brand new machine and installed the hard drive we removed before taking it to them as well.

Apple cost's more but they do back up service and promises. This is not the only time I have experienced them doing something I thought was beyond their 'legal' commitments.

Kind of like the local hardware stores from the 60's that don't exist anymore. People forget what customer service means in today's throw-away society. I like Apple.

[PhreePhly]

We got a business warranty when I got my Apple G5.

The power module fried and it was an audible and visual component incident. A walk-in-front-of-the-line was honored by the Apple store and the next day a guy brought out our newly re-built tower but dropped it while lifting it into our vehicle. They damaged it so bad they replaced it with a brand new machine and installed the hard drive we removed before taking it to them as well.

Apple cost's more but they do back up service and promises. This is not the only time I have experienced them doing something I thought was beyond their 'legal' commitments.

Kind of like the local hardware stores from the 60's that don't exist anymore. People forget what customer service means in today's throw-away society. I like Apple.

And with a typical business warranty with Dell, et al, I can get replacement service in as fast as 4 hours. Our server farm in Northern California, (I'm in the SoCal office) has this. Had a Dell server go down, IT guy calls service, in 2 hours a new machine is dropped off, and the old one removed. Back up in another hour.

Depending on the warranty I buy at the time of purchase, i can get next day replacement for home gear. I would never pay for it, but it is available.

PhreePhly

[arthwollipot]

Every day, I run a registry cleaner just before shutting down.

Every week, I run a "Shallow" scan for malware.

Every month, I run a "Deep" scan for malware and defrag the drive.Goodness, I don't do anything like that, and I very rarely get any kind of problem.

Not saying that you shouldn't do that, but it does strike me as being a little... overenthusiastic.

[BenBurch]

Yeah, Fnord, but do you BACK UP?

I have FOUR external backups;

1. is for the main system disk, and is a "Time Machine" which stores time-ordered incremental backups.

2. is all the audio I archive for my web sites.

3. is the even-day backup of #2.

4. is the odd-day backup of #2.

I have not lost anything in years.

[Fnord]

Yeah, Fnord, but do you BACK UP?

Only 2 out of 3 so far:

0. The vendor's "Here's what we put on your machine" CD's.

1. The initial "I just booted up at home for the very first time" backup CD.

3. The first "It's the end of the month, and everything's still fine" backup CD has not happened yet, as I've had my machine only 12 days (as of this post).

In my desktop PC are two HDDs, one that I boot up with and work off of, and one that I "Mirror" the first one with once a month (after the monthly "Housekeeping"), and then disconnect.

Maybe modifying my backup methods to match yours, and you using my housekeeping schedule might give us both something like a "Five Nines" (99.999%) reliability rating ... whaddaya think?

[Fnord]

Goodness, I don't do anything like that, and I very rarely get any kind of problem.
.
Didja ever see that commercial for an exterminating company? The one that goes something like:

1st Woman: "I see you have a termite problem."

2nd Woman: "No ... I don't have any problems with termites."

1st Woman: "Sure you do! I see the OrkinexTM truck parked outside your house every three months!"

2nd Woman: Of course! And that is precisely why I don't have a termite problem..."

:cool:

[arthwollipot]

.
Didja ever see that commercial for an exterminating company? The one that goes something like:

1st Woman: "I see you have a termite problem."

2nd Woman: "No ... I don't have any problems with termites."

1st Woman: "Sure you do! I see the OrkinexTM truck parked outside your house every three months!"

2nd Woman: Of course! And that is precisely why I don't have a termite problem..."

:cool:Nope. We clearly don't get the same ads here in Australia. :p

Regardless, with an occasional amount of minor maintenance, my workstation churns along just fine. I have no need to spend quite that much time on just maintenance.

Perhaps that's why I can spend so much time posting here... :rolleyes:

[Prometheus]

My advice is to find the guy locally who makes computers from parts and has been doing so for at least ten years. He'll build you a good one, and he'll be there if it breaks.

Lucky for me, that guy is my best friend. I'll be getting him to build a new PC for me as soon as my 10-year-old Dell stops working.

[Ranb]

I bought a cheap Dell for my mom a few years ago. It arrived without a mouse. Contacting the service center (overseas) by phone, live chat and e-mail did not do any good. I think it was designed to make people give up. It was worse than trying to cancel AOL. I just bought a mouse after failing to get their attention.

Ranb

[Ducky]

I sympathize with the OP greatly, but I don't think this is a vendor specific issue. I've had horror stories with pretty much every major hardware vendor, even Apple. In fact, I even have nightmare support stories about Sun on support contracts worth millions.

Ultimately, it is difficult to deal with lemons when bought. On the whole, however, I see manufacturers producing less lemons now than in the past. I do think overall quality has gone up in the PC and laptop market.

That doesn't stop the horror stories by any means, but it is encouraging.

[GreNME]

I sympathize with the OP greatly, but I don't think this is a vendor specific issue. I've had horror stories with pretty much every major hardware vendor, even Apple. In fact, I even have nightmare support stories about Sun on support contracts worth millions.

Ultimately, it is difficult to deal with lemons when bought. On the whole, however, I see manufacturers producing less lemons now than in the past. I do think overall quality has gone up in the PC and laptop market.

That doesn't stop the horror stories by any means, but it is encouraging.

Yup, the hardware has gotten much better all around, and as long as the SLA is understood ahead of time when buying there usually aren't any horrible unexpected problems, even though every now and then something bad can happen.

My complaint was with Fry's, because as a retailer they don't have as much at stake with individual incidents like the manufacturers do.

[BenBurch]

.
Didja ever see that commercial for an exterminating company? The one that goes something like:

1st Woman: "I see you have a termite problem."

2nd Woman: "No ... I don't have any problems with termites."

1st Woman: "Sure you do! I see the OrkinexTM truck parked outside your house every three months!"

2nd Woman: Of course! And that is precisely why I don't have a termite problem..."

:cool:

Belt & Suspenders approach almost always gives great reliability.

BTW, my main archive disk JUST went south. Throwing read errors.

I am no longer sold on Western Digital.

BUT, I have three other copies of everything there.

And I have lost nothing at all.

I am gonna reformat and badblock it and see if I can limp it along a while, which I can do since there are so many redundant copies.

-Ben

[brobradh77]

I have an HP laptop now and will not own another one..Mother board was bad and it was "fixed" in november..in April it was exibiting the same characteristics of when the mother board went bad again..

I will get a Dell next time..I have had a dell PC and was happy...I have never had a problem getting good help from dell nor did i get people from over seas....I live in texas and they have a center in Austin that ships out computers and if i had a problem it was taken care of immediatley.

[dropzone]

Mr Mogul, because he is always building, paid my wages for several years, though I grew tired of typing "Revision 36: Floorplan changed." I appreciate it, but I OWN a Compaq and a HP.