Received Inspiron 1520 today... Video DOA

So I received my 1520 today and was very excited because I only ordered it 10 days ago, my estimated ship date was the 6th of August. Everything was great until I turned it on. I believe it is the graphics card that is bad, so after wasting 20 minutes on the phone with the Dell support woman having me do different things after I already told her it was a hardware issue she transferred me to customer care which said I will have a new system in 7-10 days. Heres the pics... You can see how the screen is all ****** up, what I couldn't capture was when the screen is black there are flickering red dots and lines all over the screen. Some of you are mad because you haven't gotten yours yet, well I got mine very early and now I have to send it back so Ill probably end up with it when everyone else does. On a sidenote, the blue looks much better in person than it did on the website.

 

I'm really sorry to hear that. Hopefully they'll send out a new replacement soon. Now I'm getting scared for my laptop to come with all these "1520 quality going downhill" horror stories...

 

Ah, I'm sorry to hear that man. Hope you get a good replacement soon.

 

Aw man, that sucks so bad

 

What horror stories? This one? The guy who is mad because of a tiny scratch and crooked stickers?

There is an expected failure rate in any manufacturing process. Either this one was damaged after testing or during shipping, or something just totally flaked out.

It happens.

 

I haven't seem colors like that since woodstock

 

It seems to be my luck with this sort of stuff, my first Xbox 360 was DOA out of the box and so have many other electronics I've purchased throughout the years. I think I'll be happy with the system when I get the new one though, it seems and looks to me like a good machine. Hopefully this is an isolated incident due to DHL or something and no one else has to deal with this problem.

 

Well, maybe not personal stories like this one, but I see people screaming quality is going downhill left and right all over these boards. Whether or not this is true, I'm not sure (I sure hope not).

 

the 60% probability that your headphone jack is messed up is kinda intimidating =\
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=141100

98k, sorry to hear that though. good with your replacement model. =)

 

trippy....

 

Replacement models are going out pretty fast, I had an order with priority build next day - and 2 business days later it was in the boxing stage

 

I'm a gal not a guy. A scratch isn't a terrible thing but I think when you buy something new it should arrive free of cosmetic issues.

 

**** happens ... good luck with the replacement

 

Sorry I assume everyone online is a guy.

I agree 100%, but a small cosmetic issue isn't evidence of quality slipping across the board was my point.

 

very weird, the texts and those windows are displayed correctly,, just not the background.

maybe try updating the video driver?

 

I'm pretty positive its not the drivers; when booting up on the BIOS screen when its black there are red dots flickering all over the screen along with a few red lines

 

looks like your color is set at 8bits rathern than 32..

 

You can't tell how bad it is because the pictures are resized... The whole desktop flashes red also when Vista boots up. Its not a setting or driver issue, theres a hardware problem.

 

If the screen immediately looks like that before it gets to windows' loading progress bar, then its definitely gotta be hardware related as the drivers load when vista loads.

 

If orders go through a "testing stage" before they ship...what is actually tested? I'm curious as to why so many people are finding problems when they recieve their computers.

Or is it just very likely that all these problems happened during shipping? They appear to be well protected in the box from the pictures posted by 98k at the beginning of this thread.

 

Kinda looks cool...

 

sorry to hear that man, but get your hands on some acid and ride that out.... j/k I do not advocate drug use, but that is seriously some trippy stuff. I think I would try to pull a well lit picture of that and make that my avatar on here...lol. Good luck with your next one. I would be so pissed off I think I would throw my laptop against a brick wall then run it over if that was me. Yeah, I have anger issues sometimes.

 

You have the exact specs as I do. Can you tell me how much does the laptop it self weigh?

 

"testing stage"... hmnn, maybe just testing your patience!

 

I think if there was anything wrong with my lappy when I got it, scratched, issues like this, anything I would be Uber pissed!

Seriously I believe they only test that it can process stuff. I saw a article the other day that showed what looked like a rack of computers and the caption said something like "these are computers in testing stage" it was an older article about dell's manufacturing plant in the US. But there was no one watching pretty things on the monitor or anything, so I am guessing the testing stage is just installing the bloatware, or maybe ghosting the drive, if it will ghost, then everything must be working is probably their thought process.

 

I hate to tell you this man, but here goes:

Electronics aren't perfect!

I'm sorry, I know I know its hard to understand.

 

but if they would properly test these, things like this would happen much less often. I completely agree that things can happen in shipping, but I am guessing this was like this from the get go.

 

Well, hearing this problem and many other problems. I feel that the quality of Dell's computer is dropping. I feel like they are just rushing through each laptop (By rushing through, I mean... Their employees probably just sit there and watch TV and report the laptop is still being built), so they can get it out fast and get their money.

 

This is true, just expect stuff to happen especially when ordering computers. They are far from perfect!

 

I know how you feel. my 1520 came in about a week ago and came in dead (bad lcd) . I am still waiting for the replacement to arrive

 

if that happened to me after everything I have went through I would send back the bad 1520 in about a million pieces.

 

That sucks, I hope your replacement comes soon.

I'm glad someone posted pictures of the Midnight Blue, I'm glad I picked that color it looks awsome!

 

sumthin like this happend to me but it was a virus

 

Please don't resurrect dead threads......