XPS M1530 Quality Issues, NOT HAPPY...

I work as network admin for a direct marketing company in Orange County, Ca.

One of our programmers has been using his personal ACER laptop for the past couple of years, and it recently died. He's been a good employee, so his boss and I decided to let him choose a laptop the company would buy for him.

Let me preface this by saying I own an M1710 I purchased refurbished a couple of years ago now, and I absolutely love it. It's been a stable workhorse, and an awesome gaming machine. My girlfriend owns an E1505, and it was awesome till our cat spilled water into it.. doh... I purchased an M1330 for the VP of Sales for our company last year, and he loves it.

Our programmer found a smokin deal on a Dell M1530. Matte black, looks like a sexy little machine. A bigger M1330. I order it, and receiver it.

The first thing I notice after opening it up, is the keyboard seems to be bent, concave a bit, the plastic above the keyboard seems a bit rounded as well. a bit above and to the right of the mousepad, there's a small bump, like the metal lid was forced onto the machine with a screw underneath it. The ordered additional large capacity battery was also cracked. The package showed no sign of damage.

I called in, and requested a replacement. They sent it.

This laptop showed the same bowed keyboard and media button area. Not much, mind you, but for anything electronic over a grand, I expect quality. When I turned the laptop over, one of the panels on the bottom, I believe memory, was wedged open, installed incorrectly. Additionally, this package was missing the replacement large cap battery.

I called in, and requested a replacement. They sent it.

This next laptop showed less bowing in the keyboard, but it was still evident. The panels on the bottom were all installed correctly. I showed it to the programmer, and we both agreed to just live with the non-flat media area and keyboard. I fired up the machine and got vista happy and patched to SP1.

I rebooted the machine, grabbed a media set of vista ultimate, and started an upgrade. Halfway through the upgrade the machine blue screened with an IRQL_Less or not equal. At boot, it took a while for the bios to load. Eventually it does, and Vista boots. I log in. BSOD again, MEMORY MANAGEMENT I believe. I looked up the BSOD error and people claim memory problems cause. I finally get back into Vista. I try to run the memory tester in vista and the machine crashes.

The first laptop worked fine, but had cosmetic flaws.

The second laptop had cosmetic flaws, and was never booted.

The third laptop had cosmetic flaws, and memory errors. The first laptop upgraded to Vista Ultimate no problem.

I am so freakin irritated and disappointed. I always told people to buy Dell because of the quality, and their business department's customer service is absolutely incredible.

Unfortunately this laptop was not purchased through our corporate contact, but through an online sale through Dell.

I'm about to request to send this third one back, scrap it all and order from their Precision line. The programmer in question doesn't even care about gaming. He just wanted a sexy laptop.

Currently very disappointed with Dell quality. Maybe these sales are indicative of them trying to get rid of a bad batch. I don't know.

Am I looking at a fluke here? I see other people happy with their machines. Any quality issues I should know about? Do I scrap it and go back to Toshiba? I don't have problems like this with Toshiba, which is what I make my salespeople use.

-Aox

 

People are either totally ecstatic or totally PO'ed about grainy screens, bumpy keyboards, poor fit and finish, laggy webcams and terrible customer service. I'm on my replacement M1530 right now and while it's far better than the first one, I have a hard time believing that people are shelling out over $2000 for such shoddy units. I got my Outlet unit at a savings of over $900 over new, but even so, there are enough corners cut to make me suspect Dell has contaminated their performance line with low-end components. It's a darn shame that Dell has kneecapped what could've been a flagship line with cheapness. In order to save a few bucks, they've made it easy for people to tell lots of their cohort to avoid spending thousands on Dell. Suddenly, those few bucks saved become thousands lost. Pitiful.

 

Sorry to hear about your issues. About your irq bsod, I get one with minor differences and have tried some fixes for my laptop to no avail, but I just deal. They are sporadic and not too bad. If you want to check your ram, try http://www.memtest.org and run that overnight. This will tell you if it is your ram or not. Also, Lenovo may be a viable alternative for business grade notebooks.

 

Hmm...sucks man....u know dell's xps line is a big gamble...you could get a system with a whole bunch of cracks and grainy screen ,etcetc on it....or you could get one thats 100% perfected.... =(

 

wow, it is serious like that , I always thought Dell quality is the best.

but honestly, after reading your post , I am scared to get it.

as for Toshiba, I currently have a couple of Toshibas and never had any problems at all and I think my friend's Acers look nice and lasting so long.

maybe it is just me but I think HP quality control is the worst , I 've got 4 horrible HPs in a row , so I dont know what brand is most reliable any more, I also returned many Lenovos for my boss's place and his office.

I guess we can do nothing about it, just keep retruing before our credit card gets charged, it is sad though.

 

Sorry to hear this.. I got a Vostro 1500 and never had one single problem..

 

Man it really stinks to see this kind of thing happening with far too many folks. I got my M1530 about a week or so ago and I could not have asked for a better setup. Everything was put together properly, keyboard looks and feels good, and the new Optronics screen is actually quite nice to look at. They need to get their act together and make more like this one and less like the ones you've been getting.

 

HP is horrible, I can speak from a bad experience. My mother got a bad laptop, sent it back, got another bad one. I ordered a new one, it died in a week. We're done dealing with HP. They were fast to refund, I'll give them that, but just an overall waste of time, gasoline, and effort. I've been happy with my M1530. I first got a black one, returned it for better specs, then got a red one that I decided to trade for an even better one. In each case, Dell customer care performed extraordinarily well. I guess I lucked out 3 times in a row.