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December 22nd, 2009 08:00
Latitude Hardware Reliability
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I purchased a laptop computer, Latitude D630, in October of 2007. By March of 2009, it had three mother boards fail that had to be replaced and one hard drive. They then replaced it with a refurbished Latitude E6400 in April of 2009. That computer has already had one hard drive failure which had to be replaced and is now making the same clicking sound that it did just before it went out the first time.
Each time either of these computers failed it required me to be on the phone with Dell from two to four hours. Then there was an additional ten to twelve hours I had to spend reinstalling the operating system, all of the pre-installed software and then all of my backed-up data. This does not include the time of trying to recover data that was lost since the most recent back-up.
Is there no end to the inconvenience that Dell will cause customers due to faulty products that they receive? It is as though our time is worth nothing. Are all of Dell's laptops this unreliable? I have nothing but Dell servers and desktops in my office and at home and they have been quite reliable, however, their laptops have been a disaster. Do I need to find a different vendor for my laptops? I would think that Dell would have a better solution after five major failures in two years than “I’m sorry, just spend another couple of hours on the phone with us and we will fix or replace it so you can spend another six hours trying to restore it back to functional use”. This is completely unacceptable. Does Dell honestly treat theirr customers this way?
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ejn63
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December 22nd, 2009 08:00
I would venture that with multiple drive failures on different systems, that it's the owner who may have an effect -- are you running the system too hot (In your lap, etc.) or subjecting it to shock or vibration?
hrova
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December 22nd, 2009 08:00
Hi,
I am typing this on an older Latitude D510. Prior to using this, I was using an Inspiron 1100. My son uses an Inspiron 1150, and two other people in our household each use the latitude D630's....
We have had great luck.
The 1100 needed a new heatsink and fan, and then ran well for another two years and presumably still works, though I like this D510 better, so I retired the 1100.
One of the D630's needed a new hard drive.
That is it... I think you've just had bad luck. Not all Dell laptops are that bad...
Just FYI, Dell laptops are middle of the road regarding reliability. Read this:
http://squaretrade.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/squaretrade-reports-on-laptop-reliability-asus-and-toshiba-come-out-on-top/
Asus, Toshiba, Sony, and Apple are the ones higher than Dell, though the Apple's lead does not apppear statistically significant... Once you get past Dell, the drop is prominent, so I'd avoid those laptop makes (Acer, Gateway, HP)....
Hope this answers your question.
rothenfluch
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December 22nd, 2009 09:00
No, I have three laptops that have virtually identical usage. One is an older laptop with XP and has experienced no problem at all. the other is a little newer one but does still have XP. It has had one hard drive failure in 3 years but it was restorable and did not have to be replaced. It is only the the newest one and it's replacement with Vista that i have experienced all of the problems with and no one in Tech support has ever asked the questions that you just asked. There is very little travel and that is all local inside a case purchased from Dell. There is some usage on laps but I don't think it is excessive. It doesn't seem to have bothered the older computers anyway. I could check on other issues that might make it run hot. What is included in the etc other than lap usage?