Lenovo Here I Come

Hi,

Welcome to our community.

We hear your frustration. Sorry about that. Rest assured you’ve reached the right department and we’ll surely try to assist you. Please give us a chance to know as to what the issue is, so that we can try to assist you.

The issues, at present, are mostly what I listed in my first post. I produce audio books in my recording studio using my main desktop (Dell Optiplex) computer, but when listening to them on my "new" i7 laptop, the audio quality is garbage.  The Dell circuitry introduces noise and digital artifacts that are not there on any other of a half-dozen devices belonging to me and others - including my old i3-based Dell Inspiron 1545.  And they are not compression artifacts from compressing the audio into mp3.  I listened to them in uncompressed WAV format.

The touchpad is next to useless, since they added a full number keypad to the right of the keyboard, but didn't bother to re-design the touchpad layout by moving it farther to the left. As a result, when the hands are over the keyboard's home-row, the right hand covers nearly the entire right half of the touchpad.  Even with the option of desensitizing the right side of the touchpad, reducing the original surface area by about  half or less of the original size, it still falses.  Apparently someone knew it would be a problem, but rather than design it correctly, even if it made the visual esthetics of the keyboard area look a little off balance (idiotic form-over-functionn), they just added an app that would make the right side mostly numb to the touch, therefore, virtually unusable - except - the cursor still moves if you touch that part of the pad.  But if you don't invoke that option, you absolutely cannot type any document, email or otherwise, without moving the cursor and falsely selecting some other area on the screen.  This of course necessitates having to then re-position the cursor where you want it, going back to the keyboard and figuring out exactly what you typed that got transported to another area of the document while the cursor was off having lunch somewhere else, eating up or inserting, in the wrong place, what you typed.  Then you have to delete that, and attempt to re-type it in the proper place, hoping it doesn't happen again, which hit usually does. (Does ANYone actually try using these products before they entice the consumer to throw money at Dell?)

At this point, I was beginning to understand why Dell lowered the price of this piece of junk.  Apparently others understood this, and the word must have gotten around.  So they unloaded it on poor, ignorant people like me.

Continuing:

Instead of serving the interest of the end-user, by designing distinct left/right buttons, they again took the form-over-function (not to mention the cheapest) route and positioned the left/right buttons under the lower edge of the touchpad where you cannot actually see what part is touchpad and what part it button.  I know others, like Apple Macs, do this, but they have engineered it in such a way as to make it actually usable - not so this thing.  This makes it often impossible to activate the buttons over a link without moving the cursor off the link and having to re-position it, and try again, only to have it move again because the thumb or other digit isn't held perfectly motionless - a REAL nuisance when you are trying to get some work done, and keep having to take your hands off the keyboard to hunt for the "button" area on the touch pad, or re-position the cursor back to where you want it.  Even as I am typing this description, I had to do that, and I've had  months to get used to it.  This unnecessarily lengthens, considerably, the time it takes to type anything.

And . . . having purchased this "thing" because it had the fastest (i7) processor available, I find that it is essentially no faster than my old i3 brick.

In short, having bought this paperweight because it should have been better than my previous i3-based Inspiron, I find that it is a poorly designed, poorly executed, poorly built - but, ahhh, a nice looking doorstop.  So, if my goal for buying this slab was only to look at its pretty design, and not actually use it, then everything is just wonderful.  But if I have to actually get any work done with it . . . well, I always have pen and paper - or hammer and chisel (we have a lot of flat rocks where I live).  (Sarcasm absolutely intended!)

So, as I said in my first post, after using and loving Dell products for about 20-years, I have to sincerely wonder if it is even possible that the company can again produce a product that isn't solely predicated on fleecing the consumer, until it sinks under the weight of its own ineptitude and decay.  I say that, because this is not the first instance I have witnessed of Dell's turn from consumer satisfaction to bottom-line economics, not realizing that the two are inextricably joined like the left and right hulls of a boat.  Is Dell sinking?  There have been widespread rumors of that.

Yes, I can see your interest in my concern is very great indeed.

I am absolutely breathless at the overwhelmingly helpful responses to my post.

Do you think I'm going away?

Well, since you have been give a "chance to know what the issue is" and you have given no response whatever, I must ask, why did YOU ask?  

I for one feel your pain, Gabriel. It seems pretty clear, from my own experiences with a Dell XPS 13 which cost an absolute fortune, that Dell doesn't give a fudge of hairy ship about QA. Or their customers. I would put money on them having a formula of expected failure rates if they drop QA by a certain percentage in order to drop overhead.

But you don't hear about these issues, like screen flickering or card readers that don't work or extremely weak "Killer" wi fi cards, in the professional reviews by respected tech magazines.

Why?

Because I bet they have a select edition of say 500 machines they ramp up QA for, intended for these reviewers. Higher QA, in fact, than they'd even use for industry standard QA.

There is no other explanation for the lack of issues in reviews, yet there's such prevalence of unhappy customers with those same machines defective in some or other way.

The Dell support guy disappeared because he can't help you. No one can help you, unless of course you get an exchange (perhaps your particular computer is defective rather than the model).

Obviously, you're angry. I'm angry too, considering how much I saved for this machine. I'm in the process of trying to find out how to exchange mine, though I'm in a country where support is limited.

Channel your anger into a more public forum. Maybe inquire as to why machines done for reviews don't seem to have problems, yet consumers machines do. Why price is so high, yet quality so low. Like, how is it EVEN possible for an old i3 to be on par for performance with a new i7? That doesn't make any sense, unless there is something deeply unethical and perhaps illegal at play.

Good luck with your hunt for justice. Dell has gotten by on its reputation for a very long time. But that reputation is now, from what I've read from other unhappy customers, becoming impinged.