Do dells self destruct over time?

[swbsam]

I've noticed that dells seem to, with no real good mechanical reasons, degrade in performance and stability over the years.

For example, my dad's dell worked perfectly fine for about 2 years. Now it hangs during post, the front usb port doesn't work, and it won't detect one of his 2 hard drives (the hard drive is fine, I tested it in other computers). It's slowly falling apart, and reinstalling windows or adding more ram hasn't helped.. While I just "refreshed" his 5 year old sony vaio, reinstalling windows leading to like new performance.

I googled his boot issue (it just sits at the bios screen) and the problem is pretty widespread with dells, many people complaining that they didn't do anything (add new hardware/software/etc.) to trigger this problem, echoing my suspicion that dells just self destruct in time.

I have plenty of computers - dells, HPs, Apples, gateways, sonys, and home builds and have never seen this sort of unprovoked self destruction.

edit:

woaw, found this forum post http://www.realpoor.com/Dell_s...ct_Theory_t161323.html

 

[PottedMeat]

sounds like a shit motherboard

 

[KeithTalent]

I've had my Dell Inspiron 6000D for about 5 years now and it runs just as good as the day I got it. I replaced the hard drive once, but that was my own fault, so other than that no issues at all.

KT

 

[swbsam]

Originally posted by: PottedMeat
sounds like a shit motherboard

The thing is that I've dealt with shit motherboards before - every problem becomes evident in either hours or days. For things to fail years into ownership (after the warranty is over).. It seems fishy to me.

 

[swbsam]

woaw, just found this post on another forum:

http://www.realpoor.com/Dell_s...ct_Theory_t161323.html

 

[LS8]

Dell had an entire line of Optiplex GX270 desktops fail a few years back. The motherboards were equipped with shit capacitors and were just about guaranteed to fail. My company at the time had over 500 GX270s in their inventory and Dell replaced the motherboards in ALL of them. After that incident the higher up folks insisted we start buying HP desktops (and truthfully as far as business class machines go HP makes the better desktop now days IMO).

Then there was the whole battery recall for D600 and D610 notebooks two years ago. This wasn't really Dell's fault as they didn't manufacture the batteries but it was still a hassle. My company had over 1000 D600 notebooks with bad batteries.

 

[ViviTheMage]

The gX270/260's were horrible ... and they only had ONE issue, which is under warranty still if you have the issue, it was the capacitors....they balls'd up and said it was there fault for getting the cheap capacitors, and look, they hadn't done that since.

All of the dell laptops that I have owned personally, have no issues, nor do the ones we use at work.

I blame the user, 95% of the time

 

[Killmenow]

Friend's IDE controller went flaky on his DELL computer after a couple years... I remember looking it up and it didn't seem to be an isolated case for that particular model (as in other individuals were also having the same issue).

 

[SpiderWiz]

My section at work have GX260s. Finally after 5 years they are being upgraded this year.

 

[oddyager]

Originally posted by: ViviTheMage
The gX270/260's were horrible ... and they only had ONE issue, which is under warranty still if you have the issue, it was the capacitors....they balls'd up and said it was there fault for getting the cheap capacitors, and look, they hadn't done that since.

All of the dell laptops that I have owned personally, have no issues, nor do the ones we use at work.

I blame the user, 95% of the time

GX280's as well. At the time we noticed they were all using Foxconn manufactured motherboards and they all had crappy capacitors.

 

[Balr0g]

Originally posted by: swbsam

Originally posted by: PottedMeat
sounds like a shit motherboard

The thing is that I've dealt with shit motherboards before - every problem becomes evident in either hours or days. For things to fail years into ownership (after the warranty is over).. It seems fishy to me.

You have obviously not dealt with shitty motherboards before then.

Else you would know that over time cheap caps degrade and leak and then you have all sorts of odd issues.

BTW, I have a 5 year old Dell laptop and it runs just as good as the day I purchased it.

 

[SirStev0]

recycled/refurbished parts methinks. Their quality went down when they transitioned to this.

 

[sdifox]

We had a bunch of RAID controllers that had issues. Dell came in to inspect them (like 15rack worth of 4u), stickered then ones they deemed to be problematic and fixed. Within 2 weeks, all the other non stickered ones failed...

How it fails you ask, it kills 2 drives out of 5 so there is no way in hell you can recover. Good think I did not trust them and did my manual off to USB drive secondary backup.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: oddyager

Originally posted by: ViviTheMage
The gX270/260's were horrible ... and they only had ONE issue, which is under warranty still if you have the issue, it was the capacitors....they balls'd up and said it was there fault for getting the cheap capacitors, and look, they hadn't done that since.

All of the dell laptops that I have owned personally, have no issues, nor do the ones we use at work.

I blame the user, 95% of the time

GX280's as well. At the time we noticed they were all using Foxconn manufactured motherboards and they all had crappy capacitors.

Funny you mention Foxconn. My son's mobo is a Foxconn (Winfast branded) and decided to just up and die. For the life of me I do not know why. Wont post. Everything was checked, CPU/GPU/MEM work on other mobos, no busted/leaked caps. Just death. My GF's Dell (Foxconn) mobo has just up and died twice in the 3 years she's had it. She's on her third but they just die.

 

[brtspears2]

Originally posted by: ViviTheMage
The gX270/260's were horrible ... and they only had ONE issue, which is under warranty still if you have the issue, it was the capacitors....they balls'd up and said it was there fault for getting the cheap capacitors, and look, they hadn't done that since.

All of the dell laptops that I have owned personally, have no issues, nor do the ones we use at work.

I blame the user, 95% of the time

They won't replace GX260/270/280 motherboards anymore or sell you a replacement. Unfortunately this place I work for gets too good of a discount with Dell to leave.

Otherwise, over 1000+ units, low rates of failure. Most computers are replaced in 3-5 years.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

The LCD on my 4 year old Dell Inspiron 9300 decided to just start acting stupid. Might be the logic board or the LCD itself, but I checked all the connections inside the laptop and they're fine. I've got a bunch of random "dead" vertical lines in the screen now, very annoying.

 

[sdifox]

My co-worker's laptop's monitor just died. I am guessing the backlight power module is dying so instead of bursting into flame, it shuts the backlight off. the lcd is still working, so if I hold it up to the light I can see the desktop displaying correctly. This is less than 1 year old.

 

[trmiv]

Originally posted by: LS8
Dell had an entire line of Optiplex GX270 desktops fail a few years back. The motherboards were equipped with shit capacitors and were just about guaranteed to fail. My company at the time had over 500 GX270s in their inventory and Dell replaced the motherboards in ALL of them. After that incident the higher up folks insisted we start buying HP desktops (and truthfully as far as business class machines go HP makes the better desktop now days IMO).

Then there was the whole battery recall for D600 and D610 notebooks two years ago. This wasn't really Dell's fault as they didn't manufacture the batteries but it was still a hassle. My company had over 1000 D600 notebooks with bad batteries.

Was this at Kaiser Permanente? I worked there, and we had the exact same thing happen. They ended up switching to HP too.

 

[iamwiz82]

Originally posted by: oddyager

Originally posted by: ViviTheMage
The gX270/260's were horrible ... and they only had ONE issue, which is under warranty still if you have the issue, it was the capacitors....they balls'd up and said it was there fault for getting the cheap capacitors, and look, they hadn't done that since.

All of the dell laptops that I have owned personally, have no issues, nor do the ones we use at work.

I blame the user, 95% of the time

GX280's as well. At the time we noticed they were all using Foxconn manufactured motherboards and they all had crappy capacitors.

The standard tower GX280 was fine, but the small form factor and the SX280 both had capacitor issues. We had a few hundred towers, and a sprinkling of the SFFs and the SX280s, and all of the SDD and SX280s had motherboard replacements.

 

[Modular]

Most of the issues you read about are common to most MOBO/OEM computing companies. It's just that Dell's problems are exacerbated by the fact that Dell most certainly sold more desktops/laptops than any other company over the past 10 years. That being said, Dell has always had sub-par cooling, ie using a 92mm jet engine with a shroud to pull air through the CPU and also as the one any only case fan, and as a result, most of their hardware failures can be linked to higher temps I'm sure.

I do have an old Dell 4600 desktop that's running as an HTPC currently, and it has been rock solid since the day I got it.

 

[D1gger]

My company has been buying dell computers for about 5 years, and we have yet to have a failure in any of the 30 or so machines we have purchased.

This is probably out of the ordinary to have no failures, and I'm sure I have now jinxed myself, but I certainly still recommend Dell to others who ask me.

 

[Xyclone]

My MSI motherboard's (S754) capacitors were horrible. They bulged at the top and killed the motherboard.

 

[Nik]

Mine hasn't died and it's not new.

Methinks the people Dell markets to, the generally retarded crowd, seem to blow up their computers and Dell takes the rap.

Oh wait, I have a Dell :laugh:

 

[trmiv]

Originally posted by: D1gger
My company has been buying dell computers for about 5 years, and we have yet to have a failure in any of the 30 or so machines we have purchased.

This is probably out of the ordinary to have no failures, and I'm sure I have now jinxed myself, but I certainly still recommend Dell to others who ask me.

It's just because you're not dealing with the numbers bigger companies do. The last place I worked was a Dell shop and we had so many issues, but we dealt with a few thousand computers. The current place I work is Lenovo, and the number of hardware issues is way down, but because of cost we're not moving to Dell's. Stupid move IMHO, but what do I know.

BTW, Dell laptop power adapters, especially the PA-12 series are horrible. I've had to replace mine four times on my Inspiron in the year and half I've had it.

 

[hunewbie]

it's called planned obsolescence

companies build things to break...how else would they stay in business?