XPS M1330 GPU dead (a second time)

Well, you are right in principle, but I did not give my money to nVidia, but Dell and therefore it is a Dell issue. I paid for a machine that works. That much should be possible to maintain as a minimum standard, no?

nVidia put manufacturers in a very awkward situation - they are covering about $200 toward the cost of repairs - for a limited period of time.  The manufacturers must pay the rest - and they can't write a blank-check to do so for all affected users.

The fact is that you chose to purchase a system with a 1-year warranty, which Dell extended for video failure for a second year.  That period of time is now over - so repairs are at your expense.  You MAY be able to purchase a warranty extension NOW to cover your problem, but it will likely be expensive - the insurance actuaries know this video chip is flawed, and that repairs will be common.

The least expensive way to proceed is to replace the mainboard with the Intel version (cost, about $300 US at retail) and install it yourself (or budget another $100 for labor to have it installed).

The warranty extension is for  one  year beyond what you initially purchased, so if it's out of that (which it sounds like it is), repair is at your cost now.  It's really not worth doing the repair UNLESS you buy the board with the Intel video chip - the nVidia chips are problematic.

This is NOT a Dell issue - you'd be just as angry with HP, Apple, Sony, etc. - as hundreds of thousands are -- since the fault is nVidia's, not the system vendor's.

I chose to buy a system that works. Apparently Dell does not work. Simple. Before selling something they should test it, but if they do this properly, they will not be able to roll out (in my opinion, needlessly) so many different devices so fast nor collect so much money. I am no charity to subsidize their failures and like you mentioned, hundreds of thousands had the same experience. If this is all Dell could do, they simply lose my business.

Either way, thanks for the reply.

Then I would suggest doing with your next system, what you should have with this one - buy a 3- year or longer warranty up front.  Given the current low margins on notebooks, NO manufacturer is going to extend warranties gratis - if they do so on a large scale they won't be around to honor that extension anyway.

The profit margin on a notebook is now well under 10% -- meaning $100 on a $1,000 system at best (more like $50-75).  At those profit levels, no one can afford to be generous with warranty coverage.

Thanks for the advise. But. Let me put that so: I don't want warranty. I want a working machine. A normally working machine, no miracles and not something that breaks two days after delivery. I have a ten-years old HP laptop that still works fine and I never had to call support for it, in all of its ten years of non-stop use.

If a company expects me to buy on-going warranty for their products, it then creates garbage and has chosen a revenue model which relies not on quality products but on the fees for support and replacements. Even more - the fact that they replaced the broken mobo the first time with another flawed one, while knowing that it is flawed, is totally unacceptable! It's a rip off.

And finally, I can see you defending Dell as it is a Dell forum - it will be normal to expect there will be people doing this job. But it is a hard job because objectively there is nothing that can defend lack of quality because of low profit margin. You don't get high profit margin from selling more junk, even if the big idea is that you can make money afterwards from replacing parts and warranty subscription. "Let us sell you a 'premium product' that will break in a week and we shall be then repairing it till you get tired of us altogether, thank you!"  Well, not really. I think the dumps of electronic garbage in Asia and Africa are anyway big enough already and will not contribute further to either that or the profit margins of Dell. Not until their requirements to quality don't get somewhat higher than those for a toaster. Oh, and since I work in IT, I will be useful to friends and colleagues with advise to choose something else.

I am a consumer and I never asked for a cheap device (paying over 1K euro still doesn't sound cheap, does it?) but I got one. In the sense of how it looks and performs, it sounds ridiculous to call it "premium". You say that HP are unreliable and this may be so now, but it does not make Dell automatically reliable. It only reinforces what I am inclined to do from now on and this is to pay as little as possible for an average device with the knowledge that if it dies on me, I would have thrown much less money in the bin than I did with this one. Will Dell and Co. win from that? Doubtful.

P.S. From the first link from the search you posted: "A new study published by SquareTrade revealed that the smaller name brand notebook manufacturers are usually more reliable than their larger rivals." Puts nicely what I am thinking. So nicely that I will even mark this as "an answer" to my...rhetoric question.

Smaller is relative - remember that 75% of all notebooks come from just two actual manufacturers.

You've made up your mind -- I will not make any further attempt to confuse your determination with facts. 

I am in the same boat as this poor fella. The facts are:

-Dell knew they had a problem before I purchased my laptop (like this guy) and they sold it to me anyway. I know this becuase I see many complaints online from 2007 about this problem in Dells (And others). I would have gladly purchased one of their other products. I have purchased many items from Dell.

-HP sent out a communication way before Dell did.

-HP extended the warranty two years while Dell only gave us one.

-Dell issued a bios update that simply makes the fan run all of the time and steps down the voltage to the card if it gets too hot. All it did was extend the life of my laptop beyond the warranty (By two months by the way) and makes it impossible to render video which is what I bought the laptop for in the first place.

-Many owners are complaining that their GPU failed again after a MOBO replacement.

EJN63,

In my humble opinion $1600 does not a disposable product make. I work in IT for a Fortune 500 company. A mid to high end laptop should last 4 years easy. I bought a business class machine by the way. If I average out a monthly cost for the amount of time my laptop lasted it cost me $61.53 a month. I can get a lease for less than that. In fact, a lease is probably what I will do next time.

-Dell knew they had a problem before I purchased my laptop (like this guy) and they sold it to me anyway. I know this becuase I see many complaints online from 2007 about this problem in Dells (And others). I would have gladly purchased one of their other products. I have purchased many items from Dell.

nvidia knew of the problem long before HP or Dell - yet did nothing until forced to do something.

-HP sent out a communication way before Dell did.

Not sure where you saw that - they both responded at about the same time.

-HP extended the warranty two years while Dell only gave us one.

Possibly - but HP pressed nVidia before Dell did, so they may have cut a better deal with them.

-Dell issued a bios update that simply makes the fan run all of the time and steps down the voltage to the card if it gets too hot. All it did was extend the life of my laptop beyond the warranty (By two months by the way) and makes it impossible to render video which is what I bought the laptop for in the first place.

So did HP.

-Many owners are complaining that their GPU failed again after a MOBO replacement.

So are Sony, HP, Toshiba ... and all other nVidia system owners -- the problem may not truly have been fixed at all.  There are those who believe that nothing short of totally re-engineering the chip would have fixed it (something neither nVidia nor the system ODMs or vendors could afford to do).

So it would appear your whole argument is to justify bad behavior by pointing at other bad behavior?

You have discounted things I have said withour researching them like your comment about HP extending the warranty two years which is fact and that HP announced the problem several months sooner (before I bought my laptop) is fact.

You do not have a dog in this hunt yet you want to defend Dell on this issue which seems strange to me.

"So are Sony, HP, Toshiba ... and all other nVidia system owners -- the problem may not truly have been fixed at all.  There are those who believe that nothing short of totally re-engineering the chip would have fixed it (something neither nVidia nor the system ODMs or vendors could afford to do)."
----I can't afford to fix my laptop or buy a new one. When you sell a good or service you are liable for the quality of that good or service.

When I had an electrical problem with my car, Dodge did not blame the Taiwanese manufacturer of the bad circuit board. They just fixed my car. How is this situation any different?

You are absolutely correct, this fight is between Dell (and other manufacturers) and Nvidia so why is it the Consumer that must bear the cost?

Simple answer:  nVidia is still a relatively small company, and were it to be required to replace all defective chips, for all time, it'd simply declare bankruptcy, be bought out (probably by Intel) and disappear - leaving consumers with nothing.

Funny you should mention Chrysler - which for about 20 years built defective automatic transmissions that failed routinely, just out of warranty - leaving consumers twisting in the wind.  Well - sort of;  it's very likely that the fallout has taken a while, but the company may get a market-reality check - it's barely on life support now and may not survive the next couple of years.  Actually - make that DID NOT - were it not for FIAT it'd have been liquidated by now.

I'm not defending Dell in the least - I'm simply pointing out while you're free to buy whatever you want next, you should do so in light of the fact that no other company is going to handle things much differently.  Warranties cover faults for a period of time, and extensions expire.  Buy that HP next time - and see what happens when the mainboard fails after 15 months.  You'll be paying for the repair.

My point isn't that the situation is fair - only that it's no different from the situation with ALL OTHER manufacturers. 

Bottom line remains:  if you don't want to wind up in the same situation a year down the road, buy an extended warranty up front.  Consumers Union, which usually recommends against such warranties, DOES recommend them for notebooks.  They fail at a 25-30% rate in the first three years - which is higher than it is for just about any other product you might buy (excepting perhaps a vehicle from Chrysler group -- they seem to have endemic faults they get away without repairing).