Is it safe to buy Dell consumer models again?

I had such horrendous problems with Studio XPS 16s (3 before I gave up) and Studio 17s (2, " ") during late 2009 and through most of 2010. Not only were the products awful - all the known problems plus a few that were not as commonly reported, not to mention unfathomable delays with no visibility at all as to when the unit would actually ship.

So, my question is, with a model receiving as much accolades as the XPS 15 (other than its garbage can appearance, lol), my questions are:

1) Are they shipping when they say they will?
2) Are they arriving reasonably defect-free?
3) When they are delayed, or come with defects, can you reach a human being, who actually has knowledge of, well, anything having to do with your computer or any computer Dell sells?

Thanks for the update.

 

1) my xps 17 ships at the day they specified. about two weeks I think, no delays
2) looks like for some there will be minor problems. mine's fan will emit clicking sound when running in high load, another forum member have that problem too.
3) so far it looks xps are well cared

 

Thanks for the quick reply. I would be grateful if you could update if there are problems down the line.

I'm wondering if people who suffered with the (gorgeous, wonderful, but tragically flawed) SXPS 16 are even considering buying a new XPS??

 

Unfortunately the XPS track record speaks for itself. Overheating GPU, bad hinge design, has been prevalent for the past 5 years. The new XPS looks promising, but so has every reincarnation of XPS.

Are you buying refurbished or new?

As a wise man once said, you get what you paid for. I haven't touched a consumer model in 6+ years which Dell consumer models shared the same chassis as business but were significantly cheaper. Business models share the same chassis generally for at least 2-3 years, share same parts and are overall higher quality materials and are more durable. And you don't have to necessarily pay more for a business model.

 

i almost did for a while. i wanted a machine that didn't have this Mac-like exhaust port blocked by the screen, as it means constant fan noise in my office and even during some meetings. fortunately (or unfortunately, which ever way you look at it) i find that this problem is not worthwhile putting money down for a new computer that, at least to me, is not an upgrade to my current machine. i like everything else about it (save for the touch-sensitive media buttons - would prefer physical ones) so i didn't find any justification behind switching.

also, i have a feeling that Dell's engineers test all their new model laptops in near perfect laboratory conditions (duh). you would think that throttling would have popped up during their testing phase, and would have caused them to re-design or at least look at the issue, instead of rolling it out immediately to customers. my office temperature never rises above 10C, because i like it that way. it also means that even though i might have many applications open as well as 2 VM's running concurrently, my 1645's CPU temps never go above ~65C, without a cooling pad. if you ask me, that's probably what Dell's engineers saw in their labs too, giving them the pre-mature thumbs up to the Marketing guys.

 

Well, my girlfriend has Studio XPS 16 and no problem at all. Everything works just fine.

 

I'm still having unacceptably high cpu temps on my XPS 15. So after contacting Dell they are sending me a new heatsink, fan assy, thermal pads, a mainboard and the bottom plates to fix it myself. It was relatively painless to get them to send the parts and all I really wanted was the heatsink so I'm quite pleased with their support. Hopefully the new parts will fix the issue.