How long did your Inspiron last?

Guys please share you experiences with Dell Inspirons. If you've bought an Inspiron after 2010, how long did it last without hardware problems? I'm curious about the lifespan of Inspirons.

 

What if I bought it before 2010?

My 2007 Inspiron 1520 was still going strong until mid-2013, when I fried the mobo during an upgrade - my own fault. After replacing that, it kept going until a couple months ago, when its backlight went out. So for most people, that would be 6.5 years until the first failure that wasn't user-inflicted.

The chassis is actually still in really good shape, aside from the paint. I carried it in a backpack without any additional padding for years, so it hasn't been babied. I've used the original CPU for nearly all that time, and the original GPU is still in use (surprisingly, given nVIDIA's reliability issues across all manufacturers in 2007). The original RAM has long since been upgraded, though. The HDD has also been upgraded, but I still use the original as an external drive, as recently as yesterday. The webcam is also original and working well - I know some HPs whose webcams failed after a few years, so that's worth mentioning.

Currently, my Inspiron still lives, with a replaced screen. I plan to repair the original screen at some point, but haven't done so yet since I've actually been using my Inspiron a lot recently and it's not an easy repair. I did replace the battery after 3.5 years, but that's a decent lifespan for a battery, and replacing it after that long is to be expected.

In summary, I would highly recommend an Inspiron of 2007 quality. I'm proud of my laptop for having held up, hardware-wise and performance-wise, better than any of its predecessors, all of whom were desktops, and while being used more heavily than any of those predecessors. But that was one of the high points for Inspiron quality. I wouldn't necessarily expect a 2014 Inspiron to last as long. The 2013 Latitude that I use at work actually has more annoying minor issues than my 2007 Inspiron, though no major issues as of yet. Theoretically Latitudes should be more reliable than Inspirons, so that doesn't inspire confidence in the current Inspiron quality.

 

+1 to above post. My Dell Inspiron circa 2007 lasted me up until around XP end of support. I had replaced the screen b/c I got water behind it. HDD was swapped for a larger capacity after about 2 years. Never replaced the original battery --- it currently has about 1-3 minutes of juice left fully charged before it puts the computer into hibernation... Currently not a very useful machine to have on the go, but sure beats having a desktop when their is a power hiccup as your machine is still online during the power interruption... All in all, I've been using this machine as my main work horse for slightly more than 7 years. I think it's about to go kaput though b/c the CPU temperatures all of a sudden started spiking in the last few weeks.

I've also bought another Dell Inspiron right around 2009. Build-wise, it was so bad that I got rid of it in a local classifieds ad within weeks. If there is one thing I can say about Dell, their "first" golden era was between 2004-2007. There might be a second coming, but I can't comment on that as I haven't owned any other Inspirons since...

 

Have you ever dusted it out? I know my 2007 era Inspiron can pick up quite a lot of dust over the course of 18 months or so (depending on use and ambient conditions), and that can make it run a lot hotter. So if you've never dusted it out, it's worth considering. It takes a bit of time to disassemble it to really remove the dust, but it's not particularly technically challenging - just keep the service manual available as a guide.

You might also need to re-apply thermal paste to the heatsink. I can see that causing a more sudden spike than dust, if the original paste became too dried out and the heatsink no longer has good contact with the CPU.

I'd thought that not having a battery on a desktop would be an issue, too, and that I'd have to buy an uninterruptible power supply. But surprisingly, I haven't had a single outage since I built the desktop 2.5 years ago. They apparently made some improvements to the electric grid while I was away at college.

 

Just opened up my Inspiron. I have never dusted it for the 7+ years I've owned it. However, I just can't see any dust in the vents, other than the bits of lint around it and the mother board. A thermal paste gone bad might be the culprit of a sudden temp spike. What I really don't understand it... thermal paste is supposed to harden over time and make the heat sink stick more tightly to the CPU, correct? Isn't that supposed to increase thermal conduction, not decrease it?

Btw, anyone savvy enough, here's another clue to my heat problem: The CPU/vent is located in the upper left quadrant. When the laptop overheats, I can feel the excess heat all the way down in the lower left quadrant, but not the upper right nor lower right. Is this a sign of a bad thermal paste? (ie. the heat spreads on the mother board, which is why the bottom left quadrant gets just as hot as the upper left? Or, does the heat gets channeled to the lower left quadrant thru the laptop chassis, which simply means it's a blocked air vent problem?)

Anyways, those cheap Chinese made thermal grease "ketchup" packs on eBay, are they any good?

 

My 2006 inspiron 6400 lasted for 7 years. Totally died early 2013 after going through several upgrades - maxed out the RAM @ 2GB, 750GB drive. I was a noob wen I bought the laptop so I didn't opt for the discrete graphics card. Vista was never installed on the system despite the fact it was a free upgrade when I bought it. Went straight from XP to 7 RC1. Loved the system to death with its cool multimedia buttons on the front edge. Hated it when Dell reduced their configuration options from extensive to nothing.

 

Just like Apollo13 I have a 1520 since mid 2008.

My HDD went bad immediately after the warranty expired - but Dell is of course not to blame, spinning disks on a laptop which is moved alot tend to Die Fast.

I broke the screen in 2010 and ordered a new one from Dell. Since replacing it myself I got to really love the internals of this model - very high quality compared to the hundreds of other brands/models post 2010's I have seen so far.

I had the lowest configuration offered - with 1.8GHz CPU and weak integrated GPU. This combined with just 1GB of RAM and Win XP got me all the way through 2013 when I switched it to Linux.

After all these years it is still in perfect working order. I have opened it so many times that I could probably do it blindfolded, yet it still lives. The battery is still alive and holding 40-50 min of charge.

One thing to highlight is the keyboard which is really the best one I have ever seen.

The 1520 is still my second system that I use everyday and handles everything just like always - turtle like but max reliablility.

In 2013 I tried again going to the Inspiron line with Inspiron 17 SE 7720. What a disaster. The internals were no different from that of the cheap brands - lowest grade Chinese quality. The keyboard was wobbling out of the box and when I opened to repaste CPU I could never fit it firmly again - it was held by plastic brackets. Mind you - I am a Pro when it comes to opening laptops and I handled them with great caution. The build quality was a joke - I was absolutely sure that most of the plastics would not hold after 1.5-2 years.

As it appeared this was the least of the problems. The motherboard had internal issues and as a result when trying to read the sensors the system would freeze/hold/ for a second. The speakers would fuzz/freeze if you are playing something.

Dell's techies were baffled when replacing the MoBo did not help. One of the reps I talked to said they hadn't seen the issue for a few months. What? You know and you still sell it?

I gave up and sent it back.

On a lighter note the current Inspiron generation looks as a comeback for Dell. I have not opened up one yet, but they do appear to have taken notes. I would personally wait for the Hasfail line to be forgotten and DDR4 to make its debut.

My thumbs up for an Inspiron 2015 comeback!

 

What model are you asking about this would help others more to give their experiences with Inspiron units??? I have 3-1525 with W7x4 Ult Sp1 and they are still working and running. I think alot depends on for older model if they were ever dissembled and dusted out and had their GPU or CPU thermal paste reapplied this will extend the laptop far past their lifespan usage til the hardware board finally fails. But I also upgraded my CPU to Core2Duo as well as upgrading RAM and HDD to better keep it up to date for usage.

 

Totally missed this thread until today. I'm not a thermal paste expert. But I would recommend avoiding the plastic paste packets. I bought one via Newegg, and it's a mess trying to apply it properly. Head over to your local MicroCenter and pony up $8 or so for a halfway decent tube of thermal paste. Key word tube, as in syringe. The smallest size ought to work, but it will be much easier to apply in a tube than a plastic packet.

I also love the multimedia buttons on the front. I don't know why those haven't caught on more.

The 1.8 GHz isn't actually the lowest configuration that was offered on the Inspiron 1520. The 1.8 GHz is the T7100, right? I don't think the 1.8 GHz T5670 was offered. But anyway, the 1.5 GHz T5250 is the lowest-end model offered that I know of. One of my friends has a 1520 that shipped with a T5250 and an 8400 GS. It was a huge jump when he upgraded to the 2.5 GHz T9300 and 8600M GT last year.

The Vostro 1500 was also offered with the T5270 CPU, which is arguably even slower than the T5250 despite the name. While the T5270 benefits from an 800 MHz FSB (versus the T5250's 667 MHz FSB), the T5270 clocks in at only 1.4 GHz, versus the 1.5 GHz of the T5250. I had another friend who had the Vostro 1500 with the 1.4 GHz T5270. That was not a fast CPU, either, although his was a bit of a lemon. I don't know if the 1520 was ever offered with the T5270. I don't recall it ever being offered with any Pentium or Celeron processors, although it may have been in some regions.

That's the other thing - the configurations offered varied over time, and likely somewhat by region as well. So the T7100 may have been the lowest-end offered when you bought it, but it wasn't overall.

My Inspiron 1520 is celebrating its 7th birthday tomorrow. And while it's mostly been idling tonight, it got to hit the road for some LAN gaming two nights ago and was also providing effective webcam services yesterday. So it's very much 7 years and still going strong, rather than collecting dust.

 

My mistake - if it was available with 1.4GHz then I am definitely not at the bottom "cat /proc/cpuinfo" gets me Intel Celeron 540 @ 1.86GHz.

Will have to execute that mega update I have been planning so long...soon...before all good parts are gone