I will never buy a f*ucing dell ever again!

[omalak]

So i have had my XPS 1330 laptop for a couple of years now.. still top of the line.. with a T9300 cpu with 6mb cache 4gigs of DDR2 mem at 800mhz and a 250gb hd

and of course they enver offered an ati video solution so i got stuck with nividia (which i always hated)

so of course anyone who keeps track of the pc industry knows the big fiasco that happened with nvidia regarding their goforce mobile 8400 gpu's

they were manufactured like shit basically... the solder points on the bga package were not strong enough or too weak for continued use.. and thus we had the problem with thousands of laptops failng due to this solder issue..

Many manufacturers offered incentives, and other supports such as extended warrenties and what not..

Dell was one of the last companies to do anything.. Finally they gave in and supposedly extended everyones warranties by 1 year.


So this is great right? 1 year extension.. i have 2 years now sweet.. after spending 2100 bucks, thats what i like to hear..

so my laptop is running great up until 4 months ago.. video crapped out.. it was the gpu issue.. i called dell sent it back got it fixed.. and back comes another laptop ready to die on me ( due to the nature of the problem, every laptop will always be defective, its just a matter of when it will die)


SO fast forward to today.. my hard drives randomly crashes.. i reboot disk failure.. i run some utilities.. turns out the partition table mbr, and everything is somehow corrupted.... i pull the drive out in an attempt to backup 70 gigs of data.. 6 hours later the job is done.. I got most of my files back stored safely on another drive..

so i pop the drive back into my laptop and start messing with some hd utilities.. i managed to get it going again and installed windows 7 along with somoe other hd utilities.. each program and windows as well is giving me intermitant messages telling me the hard will fail anytime..

hard drive was failing SMART test and DST tests.. ( that just means it's gonna go real soon)

so ok great i have 1 extra year of warranty from dell, i call them up.. (24/7 service) explain the issue.. i am on hold for a good 15 min after the tech spoke to me.. comes back and says:

well sir, your extended warranty is only for video issues,.. the rest of your system is not covered.." %#$^y#$% mother f'ing dell not covered what the F i spend freaking 2100 on a defective laptop and they dont extended the warrenty to the whole laptop this is such bullshit...

then he has the nerve to say, this call would be a charged call as well since youe phone support is over.. then he goes you can add 1 year warranty to the laptop for only 325 bucks.. im like holy shit i'll go do it mysdelf thanks for nothing... and i hang up

so thats that.. dell bloody shit ass company, i will never buy another dell product in my life..

By the way the harddrive is a 200gb Seagate hd.

Seagate itself offers a 3 year warranty on all hard drives ( unless they were sold to oems, such as dell acer etc..)

its sad to see that you spend so much and they are giving you the run around..

:flaming dell

/end rant

Now i have to go buy a fcking hard drive!

[Thrizzl3]

my dell latitude D830 hasn't given me any problems and i have an nvidia quadro 140M. my hard drive makes a beeping sound sometimes but thats about it..i think the XPS series laptops need some heavy duty parts because of how big they are and inside that machine can get verrrrryyy hot!

[tmpz]

Your hard drive is probably still under warranty. See if you can RMA it at the manufacturer. I had a similar thing, my hitachi had errors, it was after the warranty period and I was able to RMA it.

[Aitch]

This is why, although I continue to buy Dells, I go with a full 3-year warranty while I'm leasing the computer. The current one has done fine, but the last one had to go in for service twice and both times was back to me within 5 days. As soon as the warranty's up (at the same time as the lease) I send it back and get a new computer. Personally I've found this is much less hassle than anything else.

[omalak]

Your hard drive is probably still under warranty. See if you can RMA it at the manufacturer. I had a similar thing, my hitachi had errors, it was after the warranty period and I was able to RMA it.

if you buy an HD OEM (ex. canadacomputer, etc) you get the standard 3 year warranty.. some drives ship with 5 years..

BUT once you buy a system from either dell or any other company, your warranty is taken care of through them (not the hd manufacturer)

Dell offers the standard 1 year on my laptop.. they extended waranty to 2 years due to a known video card failure issue.. but that extension doesnt cover anything other than the video.. which is waht pisses me off..

Had i bought my own hd from canadacomputers... i would ahve been covered still..

the xps 1330 i have is not the big ones. its the slim ones (business type)

anyhow.. thats its.. no more dell for me

[skunk2]

were you told the warranty extension was only for video and not the whole system?

[omalak]

after the nvidia fiasco, dell silently extended the warrenties... never told anyone.. you can chk your service tag online and it shows the new warranty period..

i should go on and check if it even states just video issues.. or they will hear from me again.

[mazdabetty]

ahhhhh!!! Lesson learned, ALWAYS build your own computer!!! :chuckle of course this might not be possible with a laptop :P

Canada Computers had me covered for 3 years, and actually I only had one issue and it was taken care of right away.

Dell/HP = garbage (IMO). I also prefer the luxury of having ALL the driver CDs without having to pay for them and hassle these big boy companies if I feel like reformatting. lol :complain

[mzkaye729]

Dell/HP = garbage (IMO).

Be kind, mazdabetty ! This is my preferred line of laptops. The one I have now is actually an HP Pavilion :) My sister has an HP as well ! If I had the money though, I'd buy that 13" Toshiba...

[Krakor]

It's terrible what has happened to you but you have to keep in mind that all companies like Dell or HP or whoever will have issues from time to time. What makes the difference is how they handle it.

I have purchased about 20 Dell systems for my office in the past 5 years and have had no issues at all! My server is a Dell as well and the only issues in the last 3 years was a hard drive died. I had a RAID system setup so I didn't even know the drive had died! It sent a message to Dell and the next day a tech was in to install a new one. Freaked me out.

All companies had good and bad experiences.

I hope you get your resolved but as Phil said, those powerful units have heat issues and that is enemy #1 to your hard drive.

Sony had a large issue with that a few years back that affected Toshiba and a couple of other companies because they used their products. The Sony hard drives were overheating and causing damage to themselves and people because of the heat.

Crazy stuff.

Hope it works out for you.

:)

[omalak]

well i'm going to call dell when i get home and ask a simple question.. what is covered in my warranty which you have extended.

I do make my own pcs, hell i have been modding them since i was 12.

i think i still have my water cooled duron which o/c'd from 600 to like 1.3 ghz (good old pencil trick)

but anyways.. unless you buy a barebones asus laptop you cant really make your own laptop!

at the time when i bought the xps 1330 it was one of the lightest slimest sexiest looking laptops around... it's too bad nvidia had to fack everything up by making a defective gpu.. ( always buy ati/amd folks always! cant go wrong.. yes im a fanboy)


Dell should have/could ahve replaced the xps 1330's when they found out about this problem instead they decided to only extended the warranty only on the gpu it seems..

the 1330 now ships with another gpu.. they should have done the right thing and replaced the boards for all previous owners of 1330's who had the 8400 gpu.

i'll keep you guys posted. if the warranty doesnt work out, well i;ve already place an order with cancomps for a WD black scorpio 320gb 7200rpm drive.. with 5 YEARS WARRANTY damn dell.

I do however like the new laptops acer and asus are putting out..

The only positive i liked about dell was the ability to cusotmize your hardware (Well to some degree) last thing i wanted was a laptop running a shit cpu. and thats where you benefit from dell i gues..

oh well lets see what happens

[mazdabetty]

The one I have now is actually an HP Pavilion :) My sister has an HP as well !

ahhh my sis has an HP Pavilion too!!! It's nice looking... but I'm allllways at her place trying to fix it! :chuckle It just really needs to be reformatted... it's been bombarded with HP software and is ridiculously slow... and it's such a pain to have to buy the drivers, which should have come with it. sighhhh I suppose most computers will always have their fair share of problems! :whoa

[tmpz]

*ahem* mess up the GPU...

[skunk2]

ahhh my sis has an HP Pavilion too!!! It's nice looking... but I'm allllways at her place trying to fix it! :chuckle It just really needs to be reformatted... it's been bombarded with HP software and is ridiculously slow... and it's such a pain to have to buy the drivers, which should have come with it. sighhhh I suppose most computers will always have their fair share of problems! :whoa

can you not just download the drivers? i've never had to pay to get drivers from dell or hp.

[alhope34]

I just hate laptops in general, seem to be 1/2 the speed and 2x the cost of a desktop with similar hardware. But then, for my job I don't need a computer. I used to like ATi cards too, being they are Canadian, but on my last computer I had the 9600XT and I couldn't stand how 1/2 the games the video card would glitch on and it would freak out when I o/c'd it even 5%. I used to like AMD better too cause at the time they were kicking Intel's ass so I had the Athlon 64 2800. That CPU was fine, o/c'd from 1.8 to 2.2 right out of the box with a Thermaltake cooler.

My new computer I put together around Christmas and I decided never to go back with ATi again cause of all the problems I had with driver/game compatibility. Every friend who owned an ATi also had a lot of problems with the game compatibility and got rid of their ATi's a lot faster than I did. This computer has an Intel core 2 quad Q8200, o/c'd from 2.33 to 2.8. I also have a BFG nvidia 9800 GTX o/c'd 15% for games. This system has been super stable compared to my AMD/ATi setup and am completely happy with it.

Too bad on your warranty issue...I'd never buy from a 3rd party manufacturer.

[Olestra]

Ah that sucks.
On the bright side, I think you'll be very happy with your Scorpio Black. It's a much better drive than that 200gb OEM Seagate you had.

And barebone laptops are becoming more mainstream. They are a little pricey but usually it's because they come with quality parts. If you build your own laptop, you can make sure everything you put in is quality and you aren't subject to the 1 year Dell warranty.

[mzkaye729]

ahhh my sis has an HP Pavilion too!!! It's nice looking... but I'm allllways at her place trying to fix it! :chuckle It just really needs to be reformatted... it's been bombarded with HP software and is ridiculously slow... and it's such a pain to have to buy the drivers, which should have come with it. sighhhh I suppose most computers will always have their fair share of problems! :whoa

Pretty sure you can download the drivers on the official HP Canada website... I've done it before :)

I noticed the bombardment of HP "spamware" so the first thing I did was delete everything unnecessary. I even deleted Norton Antivirus because it took up so much RAM, it's ridiculous !

[STeeLy]

ahhhhh!!! Lesson learned, ALWAYS build your own computer!!! :chuckle of course this might not be possible with a laptop :P

Canada Computers had me covered for 3 years, and actually I only had one issue and it was taken care of right away.

Dell/HP = garbage (IMO). I also prefer the luxury of having ALL the driver CDs without having to pay for them and hassle these big boy companies if I feel like reformatting. lol :complain

+1

Building your own comps for your own needs = best... but again, like betty said, laptops might not be that easy.

As for the drivers thing. I've had an instance where I had to install the driver for the ethernet card before I can use it... so how am I supposed to download it off the internet without internet and i only have one computer.

[gabbygenier]

that really sucks, always hated dell and always will.

my brothers gf had one and not even a month after they got it the mobo died. the tech guy came over to fix it and he had the old mobo out and the new one in in like 5 mins. first time ever seen a mobo snapped into place. and the guy from dell told me that when they break that often you have to make it quick to fix

as for your hd im sure even if its oem ull get warranty with the manufacturer. we sell them at canada computers and htey come with full warranty. and ive also returned a seagate that was in a laptop.

as for what company its all preference really. i have 3 hp's, have had about 8 in total and only had one issue with one, the mobo died. but if any laptop would have taken the beating that one took im sure it would have done the same.

[philipfreire]

Buy a Mac + Applecare and it will solve all your problems.

Haha, kidding. Being a designer i am biased towards macs.

[omalak]

Confirmed with dell my warranty only continues for video related issues..

Went to canada computers bought a scorpio black 32gb 7200rpm drive with 16mb cache mm so far so good..runs about 8 degrees cooler too

5 year warranty. cost me 100 dollars but im happy knowing im covred

Never gonna get another dell

I did check the seagate hd serial number on the seagate website, it picked up that is was from a dell system, and it said seagate wont provide the warranty manufacturer of laptop would.. so yeah out of luck there..

oh well

i'm likin the like of all the new asus laptops. my sister needs one maybe i'll look to get her one of those

[DumpInfo]

Never gonna get another dell

Let me sell you a dell you won't regret it!!! :chuckle

[Fuman]

digg this.
get a huge response from the internet
dell will come back and please you

[x_o_k_x]

i bought sony vaio 6-7 years ago, had to upgrade ram and video card to keep up with the latest, but not a single problem since day 1:bana2

[marvin24k]

Dells are pretty solid machines, but when they fail they fail hard. I have the XPS730... Power Supply EXPLODED after one year. It was a very loud noise, scared my coworker beside me, he thought I had finally lost it and was gonna go on a shooting spree. LOL back to the story. I pulled out my 4 HDs, sent it back to dell got a new one in 5 days. Popped my drives back in everything was back to normal. (Power Supplies on these huge machines are built into the case).

I have extended warranty & I run Linux :)

[omalak]

Oh i should also mention..

About 3 weeks ago my main desktop shot out lol.. i made that one myself, but it seems like the mobo went (Asus P5WD5 Deluxe)

Good thing is they carry 3 year warranties, so i've gotta get in touch with them now.. I guess when things mess up with technology it all happens at once! lol