Do not entwine your business or $$ in DELL laptops!

Bought a Dell xps 17 laptop about a year ago for business purposes. Since I work mostly on my desktop machine, I've turned the Dell on only about 10 times total.

Discovered two months ago that the motherboard is bad because not all the usb ports would work. An internet search informs me that lots of Dell xps 17 users have run into the same problem in the last few years. Yet Dell is still shipping their laptops with bad motherboards.

Anyway, I'm covered under warantee. The support guys in india do some diagnostics remotely, and finally decide that I need to have someone over to replace the motherboard. I get the motherboard replaced and think I'm home free.

A couple months later, just a few days after my warantee has lapsed, I turn the machine on for a few minutes just because it's been sitting for a while and probably needs a Windows update.

Upon turning it off, it starts "chirping" -- a clicking sound that tells me that the hard drive has probably gone bad.

I paid a little more than $1,100 for the machine and the damn thing hasn't held up for a year. I force it to turn off and it won't reboot using the harddrive.

I don't know if I should try to replace the hard drive because given how cheaply they've put together this laptop, who knows what else is going to go wrong? They rip you off so flagrantly, so callously, it's almost as if they HATE their customers.

If you have lots of patience and money to throw away and won't depend on your machine for business, go ahead & buy Dell. If you want a machine that works reliably look into some other brand.

 

"I had a bad experience with Dell, so they suck."

Replace "Dell" with any other brand. You will find more than enough stories that would make you think the brand was the devil himself. We are all very sorry you had a bad experience, but this doesn't make sense. Not saying you shouldn't do a lot of research before buying, certainly with a big investment like a notebook, but generalizations like this...

 

Wait , you bought an XPS for business purposes?
Why didn't you buy a Vostro , Precision or Latitude?

 

Wait you toss Dell under the bus because your third party hard drive crapped out.

If the drive is a non white lable drive IE. a seagate, Toshiba, Etc it may have a 2-3 year manufacter warranty it maybe worth checking into.

There is a date code on the drive, use that along with the serial number to determine warranty coverage.

But it is not Dells fault the drive died. and hard drive failures happens to any brand of computer considering that a good bump can crap the heads

Want a better drive get a SSD drive.

 

I know you shouldn't blame them! Same thing happened with my car last year the engine exploded! But it wasn't their fault because they don't make the engines some other manufacturer does.

 

I stay away from consumer laptops.
Should of gotten a Latitude w/ std 3 yr warranty.

Dell is responsible for the hardware they sell.
However they are not responsible for the quality or reliability of the HDD.

 

My L702x also harddrive failed in approx 7 months from new, along with half of the machine (monitor / usb) following many issues from new. Once it was rebuilt, there was a ridiculous slew of other problems.

Fortunately, I was using HD Sentinel so this didn't come as a complete surprise, even though ths speed of failure did. I encourage anyone with a laptop, and especially a Dell laptop, to use HD sentinel to give them an early warning of HD failure.

Unfortunately for me, depsite buying the best warranty I could, NBD + Accidental damage for L702x, I was subjected to a ridiculous waste of time and unsatisfactory resolution, including all kinds of shenigans from the support team.

IMO, The XPS L702x is *not a touch* as reliably built as my previous XPS M1710, which shared the same chassis and similar components as their earlier precision range.

It is DELL's responsibility to choose HD vendors with decent reliability scores. It is NOT the customers responsibility to AUDIT the quality and reliability of a HD Dell has supplied, as they might if they had purchased a 3rd party harddrive themselves.

For anyone endorsing Latitute or Precision, keep in mind the XPS range are sold as BUSINESS MACHINES.

BTW, if you live in Europe there may be consumer laws that are on your side, because many purchases are supposed to work for two years, but this doesn't protect you from living with unease because of shoddy build quality and a company who's actions and policies demonstrate they do not care about customer time.

Dell Reps, how do you propose we L702x owners deal with the psychological costs of living with machines that badly built and stressfully supported in incredibly time wasting and personally expensive ways? How should I process the extremely stressful experience I have had? Why do your machines not come with health warnings, that, the frustrating combination of poor quality control and bureaucratic support process may lead to very significant, health compromisingly stressful experiences?

If you don't answer all my questions, I can only presume that you have reasons for avoiding engaging in a geniune public dialogue that you have no decent basis to discuss. If I'm wrong, please answer all my questions published in other threads.

In my experience, my recent ownership of Dell, instead of being "the power to do more" has become "the disempowerement - to do less".

 

XPS are not business class machines. Period.
Dell will offer them to businesses but keep in mind they are NOT business machines.