Avoid Dell or at least gaming on laptops

Hi I recently had the pleasure of having a laptop (inspiron 1520) crap out on me after only just two years (i bought it November 2007). I had a laptop cooler and used the laptop for ocassional LAN parties, gaming and also to do my homework until I broke. I know some of you might say it's my fault for not buying the extended warrenty but come on, a $1300 dollar machine should last at least four years with normal care. That's the least I expect from a normal laptop. Is that too much to ask for? Anyway after that whole expierience I'll never get another laptop for gaming again, especially from Dell.

If you are considering buying a laptop for gaming consider other options unless you really need to game on the go.


Flame on Dell lovers and laptop gamers!

 

Tried gaming on a non-budget laptop, like maybe an XPS, Alienware, VoodooPC, or a laptop that has gaming hardware?

 

I'm guessing nVidia death? Because that'll happen to ANY brand with the 8 series.

 

What do you mean "it broke"? Could you be more specific?

I've had a Dell Inspiron 6000 for almost 4.5 years now and it still functions well. Sure, I've had to do some minor repairs here and there, and Dell Customer Service is horrifically bad, but I wouldn't eliminate the 3rd largest laptop manufacturer from consideration entirely.

 

Unfortunately most laptops are purposefully like this unless they are explicitly designed for gaming, in which case they quickly become too expensive for most people. There are brands such as MSI, Alienware, and Sager that implement robust cooling solutions into their designs, but otherwise laptops tend to be unreliable in this respect. Keeping cool has always been a challenge with laptops, and so heavy-load applications and/or games require more complex, and thus more expensive, cooling designs and parts.

Most laptop computers cannot even keep components within maximum temperature specs if they are under load, let alone for long periods of time. The reasons for this are numerous, but perhaps the biggest reason is the fairly recent decline in quality; the laptop market has become so intensely competitive that all the major manufacturers such as HP, Dell, and Acer have rolled out products that are not so much designed with any sort of foresight with respect to longevity as they are designed to maximize features and minimize manufacturing cost.

If you want a reliable laptop, don't count on it for gaming unless you get a system with a cooling system that is designed to handle the parts. Otherwise, forget about high performance components in a "budget package". If you're getting such parts for a cheap price, it means that you're making sacrifices elsewhere, guaranteed.

If you don't care about gaming yet are still looking for a good quality laptop, the only really reliable niche of laptops are business laptops; Lenovo's ThinkPad series, Dell's Precision/Latitude series, or HP's Elitebook series. Of course they cost more, but you are paying for quality and built-in reliability in the form of design.

This post really is my opinion more than anything, and I am by no means an expert on laptops. Certainly there are reliable consumer-level laptops, but these are rare in comparison to the vast majority that suffer from design defects or unreliable components. They are even rarer still when run under full load or when gaming!

 

No laptop should be operating beyond the heat specs of the parts, most processors will run at 90 degress quite happily and once they hit a certain temperature they will downclock too to prevent any further heat. What really does it in for computers is very repetative heating and cooling cycles as they physically stress the components

 

Well, my HP died because of the 8400GMS graphic card. TOo bad..

 

That quite didn't make sense, although I guess you mean other options than Dell.

I think most people who game on a laptop including myself, buy them as desktop replacements, so I would assume you would have done the same. There are simple steps to make your laptop last longer, buy a cooling pad to keep to temperatures down, every year have the cpu fan replaced cause dust kills it and while its being replaced the insides can be cleaned. And best to sleep the laptop as much as possible when not in use. Laptops generally should have a life of 3+ years, depending on the user. Personally I have a thinkpad that I'm going on 4 years now but upgrading to xps 16. Dell's potentially can last a while if you take care of it.

 

My XPS M1330 has numerous 8400M GS failures.. All within 8 months.

And the XPS series is suppose to be a "decent" laptop..

The SXPS I got is holding up well to left4Dead2 tho!

 

OK.

If we will not consider game on the go, which brand/model is best in terms of reliability and longevity ? Then should we need moderate discrete graphics or on board (like upcomming Intel i3,i5 processors) will do ?

 

Had my m1530 now for almost a couple of years and no problems so far. I got a 3 year warranty wth it. I have the nVidia 8600GT.

 

Had the M1530 since Feb 08, in the first week I had the webcam replaced as it simply didn't work. When the tech dismantled the display - we both saw the webcam's wires were not connected to the mobo... he replaced it anyway.

Since then I have had no problems...well apart from blue lines intermittently appearing when I move the display up and down - some angles they appear, others they don't. Pretty weird but not really concerned with it at the moment.

I have used the laptop for numerous games; Crysis, Fear, UT3, Half life 2, DOW etc etc with no problems. I also believe that by having the 9 cell battery - raising the laptop up and increasing air flow has helped keep it cool under stress...plus I like how it angles the laptop for typing.

I have a 4 year warranty because I got a huge discount through my work

 

You promote the Lenovo and Hp brands hu, well take a look at this http://tech.icrontic.com/news/asus-toshiba-sony-best-apple-in-laptop-reliability/

I've pasted 2 interesting parts to show the point of the article.

SquareTrade gave Asus and Toshiba the nod for this holiday season saying, “ASUS and Toshiba laptops failed just over half as frequently as HP, which makes them a solid bet in terms of reliability.”

'Tough break for Apple and its famed claims to reliability; tougher break for HP who sits the dubious throne as the west’s most unreliable manufacturer.'

Also take a look at that graph, I was totaly surprised when I saw that even Acer is better quality than HP. Lenovo aint doing that great either.

You mention those brands top products (hp elitbeook series for example) but I still have doubts about brands that sell both junk aswell better quality products. Aside from these statistics, I still beleive you should do research about every laptop you consider buying, every brand makes bad laptops. Especially Acer and Dell are know for its overheating. But even when you look at the best brand (statisticly) which is Asus, and then you take a look at their new G series which have 1 cooling fan and where the GPu goes to 95 celcius, you understand that you should rather go for another model/brand with better cooling.

Besides looking at the statistics of brands-reliability, and all the information you find on forums and reviews about the specific model you are looking for, you should always take a decent warranty. The guy who started this thread didn't take any warranty and there you have it: 1300 dollars down the drain after 2 years. Why not pay like 200-300 euros/dollars more, and be safe for 2 more years? Paying 1300 every 2 years, or 1500 every 4 years is a big difference if you'd ask me.

I already know what my next laptop will be, definitly Dell. Why? Because it is the only brand (in Belgium) that gives next day repair warranty, and when you'r a poor student that needs to write tons of papers you really can miss a breaking laptop which gets send to the factory for repairs so you won't see it for another month. Especially when you don't have a back up pc/laptop (our 2 pc's, inluding the screens broke down lol). Paying a bit more for decent AND fast warranty saves you a lot of misery.

My only hope is the next generation dell xps series won't have a screen that blocks the fan and make the whole system overheat, or that the next studio series wil finally have decent grafix cards .

 

I don't promote any brands, I promote buying certain types of laptops, namely business-class laptops. Given that almost every manufacturer offers designs for business, I'm not promoting any particular brand (though I personally favour IBM/Lenovo's ThinkPads).

Also, that report is flawed in that it looks at overall failures by manufacturer, not failure by model. This report says nothing about whether HP's business-class models are more likely to fail than, say, Dell's business-class models. If anything this report serves to point out the unreliability of an expensive consumer-level laptop.

Obviously... what I'm saying is that even despite model-specific design flaws, business class computers tend to be more reliable.

That's not really the point. Is it unreasonable to pay 1300 dollars on a given product and expect it to not crap out after a year? Of course not. That's why you shouldn't need the warranty and yet you're still paying for it.

So rather than seeking a machine that is unlikely to fail in the first place, you're going with a manufacturer that offers to fix their laptops quickly? That's an odd strategy.

 

I play games on my Compal CL56. Its 5 years old and its still running on all the original parts.

 

what was the cooler you were using? Some laptop coolers suck air from the bottom of the notebook and the inspiron 1520 sucks air from the bottom and blows it out the side.

So if you didnt check this before buying it then you stopped air from getting to the components and basically broke the laptop by using the cooling pad.

 

I'd rather not pay extra for extended warranty, but use them for a new laptop every 2 years. Some of my friends actually change laptop every 6 month to a year.

This isn't very accurate in states. Lenovo mail-in service use all overnight ups and usually send back the same day they receive it.