WARNING to all thinking of buying a Dell Inspiron Laptop

I want to warn all of those people out there wanting to purchase a new Dell Inspiron Laptop. During the first year I have owned mine, I have had to replace the following:

• DVD Drive (this one I had to replace twice)
• Keyboard
• Battery

And, I've consistently had problems with the following:

• Wireless Card (Intel Pro 10/100)
• Touchpad
• Battery Life

And, to make matters worse, since my warranty ran out two weeks ago, I've had a red line that goes from the top of the screen to the bottom and it seems as if another blue line is forming.
I have had nothing but problems with this laptop and if I could take it back, I would!! I feel so dupped that I feel like I must warn others before they make the same mistake!

 

What model is it?
What have you been doing on the Latitude?
Have you touched the insides, etc.?

It's just for the people who might have done the same, and had problems.

Edit: Our school laptops, which are used by at least 3 people/day on average, haven't had any problems considering that its very light work. I don't mean to minimize your problems, and I REALLY dislike Dell.

 

LOL Nothing crazy has been done to the laptop.

It's an Inspiron 6000, running xp pro. I have looked up the problem elseware and everyone's response is "is it under warranty?". Definately a hardware problem.

 

sula70,

Your first and only post on this forum is a RANT!!! Quite a start.

You condemn all Inspiron's when Dell literally sells millions per year. I personally own a Inspiron 1100, a very budget lappie. It's now almost 3 years old. Had a few failures, nothing major, so my impression of Dell is overall positive.

You could mention the model, options and date of purchase. Good chance someone can help. Worth a try.

Hermit

 

Well, for some people buying a new laptop may not be a big deal, but I don't have a lot of money and my work depends on my computer, so for me it is quite a dissapointment that I have to buy a new one within a year.
I decided on this laptop because I previously owned a dell latitude and was pretty happy with it. This one, however, has been terrible. I wish someone had warned me!!

 

I understand where you're coming from-- a product isn't a customer's time to fix over and over, even if it's so soon!

The price from Dell gave me a bit of an idea of how well-built they are... I don't expect much from Dell's quality, except in desktops.

:asus:

 

Dell keyboards are in need of regular repair (I've gone through about 1 every year) and I had a hard drive die on me also. But I have the warranty so it all gets fixed. I have accidental damage to so they even fix my machines when its my fault (so far two times!)

I'd say they're a pretty average company with awesome pricing and some pretty **** good performance usually to.

 

can't say that i've ever had problems with dell and ive had my 6000 since december without a hiccup. sorry to hear that all hell broke loose on yours, i guess some people just get really bad apples from time to time. woot for 3 year completecare warranties

 

Well, I have my Dell 1150 for like 1 1/2 years, I have no problem with it and very happy with it.

JC

 

Just buy a new one.
That's why it's cheap so you can upgrade every year.

 

Just to point out that not everyone has had your experience with dell laptops.

I got one of the first dedicated graphics 600m models available... had it well over 2.5 years... I do software development, 3d modeling, and network support... my machine goes everywhere with me and is in use 10-12hrs a day on average. In all that time the only problem the machine had was that the HD went out last summer. I had concerns when I got it, because the screen casing was a little thin... but its performed like a champ.

Ive just got myself an e1505... had to send the first one back due to a bad screen (first time ever with any dell product)... they had me a replacement in 4 days and its performing great. beautiful screen, fast as hell. Very pleased.

I also manage a call center full of Dell desktops and notebooks... we keep buying dell because you just cant beat the cost/performance you get out them. I recently retired a 4200 Dell file server... It was in production for 8+ years... how many dual 233mhz machines you see in use these days?

Food for thought...

 

233 mhz?!?! unless it's running linux or some old ass version of netware, ZERO!! lol @ 233!! too funny.

 

Yep, it was actually running NT4, had a 20gb RAID external rack hanging off of it, and acted as the primary file server for a work group. Never had a bit of trouble with it... just kept humming along. Measures about 2.5 feet high, really a beast by todays standards.

 

I had the Dell Inspiron 6000 with a 1.6 Ghz 533 Mhz bus, 512 MB RAM, DVD ROM/CD RW, and a 60 GB HD and integrated graphics. I also have the USB remote control.

I reinstalled my OS and put the 'bare essentials'. I use it for 5 hours a day with 2 9 cell batteries with WIFI on.

My only problem is the battery life is about 45-60" less. Outside of that, this PC runs extremely well, despite the abuse by a 5 year old little girl who gets frustrated with her games and the occassionally chocolate on the keyboard.

Once the mouse buttons 'broke in' they no longer had the 'Spring sound' when I clicked it.

I am extremely happy with my purchase and this has influenced many people at my work to follow suit in purchasing Dells. Outside of the bloatware, the computers run well.

On top of that, my wife has a Dell laptop and an M65 incoming. I have a D620 incoming. Both have 3 year warranties.

Another company I would vouch for would be HP/Compaq and the IBMs which run well and have very good customer service.

My wife's laptop from Gateway has a cracked cased near the hinge. This does not make me a happy customer.

 

Had no major trouble with dell and tech support is great on my inspiron 9300

 

My daughter's 600m still cooking after nearly 3 years with the then new Pentium Centrino 1.6. College student -really abuses it. No problems. I hope I can be so lucky with my new 1505

 

hey in defense of my fellow collegiate laptop users, i tend to notice that the abuse of computers happens on the computers of girls more often than on the computers of guys. but yeah, dell quality and dependability is fantastic as far as i'm concerned

 

Every Dell comes with a 1 yr warranty, so if there is a hardware problem within the first year, you can get it fixed, no problem. Any problems after that year are not covered - hence the option at purchase (highly recommended) to extend the warranty for another 2 years. I am not sure what the problem is...

 

Making a blanket statement about an entire line of notebooks from one bad experience is generally not a good idea.

 

I'm just now retiring my Dell Latitude CS that has a Pentium II 400MHz processor in it if that's any indication to you how long I've had it. I've never had a single problem with it. It still looks like brand new even after years of heavy use. The original battery in it even still works (for about 1/2 hour).

I recently in December bought a cheap B130 to replace my desktop computer at work, it just sets on a desk, doesn't travel and is used only for email so quality wasn't a big deciding factor in it's purchase, cheap was. For what I paid for it I won't say it's top quality, but it's better by far than I was expecting. The case is plastic at least, for that price I was expecting cardboard. I was just happy they offered a cheap laptop because it was all I needed to serve it's purpose.

Now that I'm retiring my travel laptop (the old Latitude CS) it's being replaced by a new Latitude I just put on order. From all the reports I've read it sounds like it should be just as good quality wise as the Latitude it'll be replacing.

I know from years of building desktop systems, you can get bad hardware parts from time to time, particularly bad memory and bad hard drives I've found right out of the package, it happens. Dell doesn't make the hardware, they just assemble all the parts, so it's slightly unfair to blame Dell, since all the companies like Dell buy their hardware from pretty much the same specific hardware manufacturers you could have ended up with these parts in any laptop built by any seller.

I'd mail it in to Dell and at least let them look at it, you never know, they may be aware of a bad batch of parts that went out at the time yours was made and be able to identify your laptop as being one with such parts in it and just take care of it for you.

Though, with that list of problems your carrying around with you it sounds more like someones a little rough on the thing and maybe you'd be better off just upgrading yourself to a more durable model that can handle slightly rougher treatment?

 

Well, I have my Inspiron 4150 for over 3 yrs and it's full of issues: heat, melted MB, rubbed off letters (within the first 5 weeks), less brightness on my screen and a dysfunctional PCMCIA slot. Oh, not to mention their support, kinda like Bush's ratings over the years.

 

IMO, this kind of posts are abuse of the forum. I call for punishment for such a discriminating assault.

 

Stop Complaining about systems already Out of Warranty.... The issues that you are experiencing might occur on any other branded laptop. All dell does is assembly the parts, dell sells 150,000 laptops per day. Some of them might have nonfunctional parts, and that is completely normal. If your system is on warranty Dell would solve the issue for you.
Even if you get the complete care insurance you can get your system exchanged by accidentally dropping it.
I mean, we all know laptops might go bad. You should all get the 3+ years of warranty. Complete Care would be just great.
And your investment on a great laptop would be covered. That's what I did.

 

Sorry My Ignorance , but What does IMO mean ?

 

IMO = In My Opinion

 

there's no such thing as a 10/100 intel pro wireless card

i have a 6000 that's a little over a year old. i use it daily and it's on 24/7 except for when it's in the car going somewhere with me.

never had a single problem with it.

 

Thanks NB_Noob

 

I have a dell 1100 and i've been owning over 1 and a half year. it works great.. although i spilled a whole cup of water on it and the only thing broken is just the mouse pad. My machine can do alot of stuff though.... i haven't seen any defective parts on my Dell. Except it works slower because of multitasking . I upgraded hard drive and Ram and it's back to normal. Overall, it's still good.

I hope i 'm not in that unlucky number of defective laptop.

 

My feelings on this topic is as Reize says, when a company is selling thousands of a product a day you can't make a blanket statement based on one item, you have to evaluate based on faulty product per / thousand sold or something. And as Dell sells thousands of laptops a day, it's unfortunate that somebody might end up with a problematic machine -- usually (90% of the time) if something is seriously wrong due to manufacturing issues it'll crop up within a year and be covered by warranty (definitely get a 1-year warranty), if you're really worried then get a 2-year warranty but I really don't think 3-year warranties are worth the extra money.


Anyway, I'm closing this thread because I think opinions have been aired and I don't think we're going to accomplish much else here with such a vague topic that isn't the truth in general about Dell laptops.

LOL, that's a bold statement. There's no way to measure if that's true or not, and if it were based on your observation, I still wouldn't go saying such things if I were you, you'll only get yourself in trouble