vostro 1700 DEAD ON the FIRST DAY!

I ordered a vostro from dell canada and was so happy when everything went according to plan ... received it on time and was able to use it.... ONCE!

the second time it would not start, gave a disk read error! it was equipped with 2 120gb hard drives!

is it bad luck or is it the purolator idiot who was throwing the box around like it was empty.... what happened to the DURABLE vostros and the good quality components they use to build them? and what happened to all the testing they do???

It's on its way back for a full refund ... I refused a replacement since I have no time to wait 3 more weeks! First experience with DELL gone bad... VERY disappointed.

did this ever happen to anyone else? are dell notebooks really reliable?

 

It happens with every brand. But this isn;t usually an issue with Dell. The shipping is. But not the breaking apart randomly.

Since more laptops are shipped from dell (very popular), there are gonna be more breakdowns and malfunctions.

For every breakdown per computer;

I would say is one of the lowest of computer brands.

 

It's a piece of electronics. No matter what you buy, where you buy, or how you get it, there will always be a chance of failure. I bought a $30 flashlight the other week, and it didn't work. It can happen to anything.

I hate Dell, because of their customer service (which is just down right pathetic), but their computers are not prone to hardware failure anymore than other manufacturers.

 

so should I give it another try but maybe with an inspiron this time?

 

Inspiron would be the same thing, anything has a chance of failing when you try it. If you have two HDs, why didn't you just try swapping drives, and using the recovery disc to install the OS on the 2nd HD?

Disappointed with who? This is more a problem with electronics in general. Dell can not hand deliver the laptop to you on a silk lace pillow to make sure it get there OK. Even things you buy in the store can be broken when you get home. Do companies put broken items in boxes so they can point and laugh at consumers? No. Fact is, shipping a product that is DOA results in a huge loss for the originating company. We had a Sun Fire server fail to turn on right out of the box once, and I believe that was close to $20K. So we are stuck with DOA worth more than my car and it could not be replaced immediately by Sun, it can happen...

You have to go very far down the food chain of mail order companies to find any that ship out junk with a high failure rate.

 

dell sucks!

 

yeah yeah... lenovo rocks right? heheheh

 

Every brand will have a bad copy, unfortunately it just sucks a lot more when it happens to YOU.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, i've personally had good experience with Dell. D600 x 2, D610, D620 and D630 - all of which are still in service (except one of the D600's whose lease has expired) - have collectively only had a bad (Fujitsu) hard drive.

I hope you get your replacement laptop soon (regardless of the brand), and know that for every "my dell sucks!" story, there's another dozen out there like mine who have years of trouble-free service.

P

 

I think you should call Dell and ask for some credit and order another Vostro 1700 and get them to expedite it with free overnight shipping. Every Dell laptop i've purchased has either giving me years of great service or works great out of the box. I can't even complain about their customer service as i've had nothing but great experience with them.

Like everyone else has said electronics are a crap shoot no matter where you buy it from.

 

My 1700 has been running just fine.

You probably could of scored a nice discount and expedited shipping of a replacement 1700, but no, you probably got all pissy with the Dell rep which is why they didn't offer you that much to keep you as a customer. All because you don't know the nature of electronics.

You should go to BestBuy and buy a computer there. That way if it dosn't work you can just replace it right then. It sounds like (in your mind) that would make up for paying a few hundred dollars more for your machine.

 

Well, if you hadn't sent it back already, I'd say take out one of the drives and try running with just the other one. You'd have to reinstall the OS onto it. If that doesn't work, try just the other one. Dell would've sent you a replacement for the bad drive, which you could then reinstall.

Edit: Woops, I didn't notice Ocellaris said almost the same thing.

 

There is a bad apple in every bunch, how deeply have you tried troubleshooting it? It could be as simple as a bad connection, to a failed drive which could result from a myriad of reasons, do a little research on how a hardrive operates and you will be amazed at how they can withstand the abuse we can put them through. Since you first got it, I would simply ask for a replacement, unless you've decided you dont want that model anymore, I see no practical reason to change it, I wouldnt place the blame on dell, they dont make the components, they just slap em together, and hard drive failures can happen straight out of the blue, since you have two drives, I would have intalled the os on the other and see how it fares, if works fine keep the unit and have dell replace the faulty drive.