Do dells self destruct over time?

[LS8]

Originally posted by: 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.

It was at a large financial firm.

 

[foghorn67]

Originally posted by: LS8

Originally posted by: 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.

It was at a large financial firm.

Same here. Dell sent out two contractors to replace the motherboards in GX270. About 150 of them. Then they ended up replacing all of those with the SX280.
This is the only sour experience I had with Dell. The rest of the machines hold up pretty well, or are comparable to other brands I have worked with.

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: hunewbie
it's called planned obsolescence

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

I don't think this is even that, just crappy machines. On one of the Dell desktop I was using, the CPU fan, PSU and HDD were replaced twice each.

 

[Oyeve]

The funny thing is when Dell first came out in the 80s the Private Investment company I was working for at the time was one of the first to buy those Dells. I still have one in the closet. Cost nearly 10k and is a 386/25 with a whopping 4 megs of ram. Weighs nearly 50lbs and still works to this day. I beleive it was the first PC to come with 32 pin memory modules which I think (I could be wrong) Dell invented or something like that. Anyway, that was back in the day when a PC was a huge investment and not the disposable consumerables they are now.

 

[yours truly]

my 8100 is nearly 8 years old and still chugging away.

i keep meaning to upgrade, but i dont need a quad core to check my mail

 

[ivan2]

inspiron 8500 laptop still going strong into it's 5th year.

 

[OCGuy]

Dell PSUs suck, that is for sure.

 

[Crono]

Their home/home office desktops about 4 years ago and earlier weren't too good, from my experience. Had 3 Dell's personally that died (HDs, mobo, or PSU), and dealt with more fixing PCs of friends and family. I think they've improved their case design and are using higher quality components now.

 

[ConstipatedVigilante]

It sounds like they're putting more into the computers than the PSU can handle - a PSU will degrade over time and start crashing/hanging the computer if it's shitty.

 

[swbsam]

I think the problem really started 3 or so years ago, I'm seeing a lot of murmurs on the web about a huge drop in quality since then.

 

[NaOH]

From my experience, laptops "dying" have a lot to do with the usage characteristics of the owner. I've heard people complain sooo much about X and Y brand dying. But everyone that I know that has a laptop does not use/take care of them correctly.

For instance, I could come over to my friends apartment, with whom he lives with 3 other people. All of them have laptops because they're still in school. ALL of them, when not using their laptops, place them on the sofa, carpet, bed (on blanket), etc while still running. Let's think for a second. Most of these CPUs still run pretty hot, even though they throttle themselves and consume less power. Some desktops still overheat, if they are placed inside a cubby of a desk. What do you think will happen when you place your laptop on a bed and block your vents, and also insulating heat around your laptop?

My friend was tryign to get SP1 on his gf's laptop allllll day. I cam over and he was like, "Yeah, it's taking sooo long to load....etc etc." I look and it's placed on the fucking ground and touching the bottom side of the laptop actually hurted... I couldn't even put it on my lap. It ended up saying that SP1 could not be installed after 5-6 hours of being on. So I took his damn laptop and put it on the TABLE and ran the update again. It installed fine.

I would say that everybody that I know that has a laptop treats their laptop as if it's invincible. Then bitches when it breaks. I had a dell inspiron back in 2003 up until 2007. I sold it to buy a new one. It ran fine, and even the battery survived. I left it on and used it as a file server at one point in the dorms as well. I now have a T60. I expect to have that thing live forever, until I need a faster one or need a tablet(which is prob never)....

cliffs: don't melt your laptop.

Also, I'm not refuting that laptops can die without fault of the owner. But just like cars, a lot of the malfunctions have to do with ignorance by the owner.

 

[alkemyst]

You get what you pay for. Dell makes bulletproof and flimsy machines.

If you are buying the $200-300 workstations expect them to last 3-4 years if lucky....ours usually start having HDD failures around 3 years (same with HP).

They higher end are built better.

This is just an excuse for someone to be given something for nothing.

 

[Aikouka]

My Dell M1530 is a piece of shit. $1600 down the drain .

 

[LTC8K6]

My company gives me Dell desktops to use.

Never had a failure or a problem.

The only problem at all that I can recall was with a built in ZIP drive on an old Dell, but it was the drive.

Of course now that I have said this, I have probably put the whammy on my computer...

 

[RagingBITCH]

Never had an issue with their desktops or laptops. Thinkpads, which people love so much, completely suck ass to me.