If you couldn't afford to replace the systems -- why did you not choose a 3-year warranty?

About 25% of all notebooks will have a major component like a mainboard fail in the first three years - you should have budgeted accordingly.

I knew I would get a response like this.

Why should I buy an extended warraty on a product that should have lasted atleast 3 years?

Has Dell's quality control gone to pieces?

I have laptops that are five years old or better that have not had a motherbaord issue (or any other issues) and yes some of these are Dells.

So, all the people that own laptops with the Nvidia card should have brought the extended warranty?

The people who have purchased laptops where the power adapter is not regonized by the system after a year should be charged for a "new" power adapter?

This is just a couple of examples.

Be realistic here, from my google searches I am not the only one having this issue.

Maybe Dell should stop making these boards in China (cheap labor) and up the quality control.

There is obviously something wrong here if Dell can not produce a motherboard that last less than 2 years.

Dell didn't produce the system - it was built for Dell by Quanta or Compal, the same two companies that supply almost 75% of all notebook computers regardless of brand.  If you buy something other than Dell next time - you'll get the same hardware with a different nameplate on the outside.  The fact is that notebooks of all "brands" fail at a 20-25% rate in the first three years - they're all the same, and they're all made by the same contractors with the same parts.

You can search for Apple, HP, Toshiba, Sony -- whatever you'd like.  You'll find failure and horror stories for ALL of them.  Right now, you're biased against Dell - but I had someone leave my office on Friday with the same feeling about Sony - her VAIO failed at 13.5 monts old and guess what?  Sony won't repair it for free, either.

With the average selling price of notebooks down to $800 or less, NO vendor will stay in business long by providing gratis out of warranty repairs.

Biased has nothing to do with this.

 I am not upset with the Dell products I purchased, but maybe Dell seeing they are putting their name on this should find out what is going on.

If I hired a company to build me a product and the product failed (for what ever reason) in a time frame that is should not have, do you think I would still have this company make this product. I think not, my business would not suffer at the expense of shoddy workmanship or defective parts. If 25% of my customers were to complain to me about a product and I did nothing to see what was going on (just give excuses). How long do you think I would be in business? Just word of mouth, let alone the bad advertising I would get over the internet (nowadays) would be devastating. Not to mention what the Government may do.

 It is apparent that the board has manufacturing issues and if Dell does not want to admit it, then they should at least go to these manufactures of this board and see what’s going on. I am sure Dell is the one that designed these systems not the manufactures. The manufacture is only producing what Dell told them to. If the manufacture is using parts to build this board that are defective, then I would make sure it comes out of the manufacture pocket and not my consumers. If the design of this board is defective then Dell should own up to it. I am sure Dell either hired-out or made the design.

 I know this could happen to anyone and there could be other reasons why this board failed (that’s why there is a warranty, I know), but as you stated if 25% of these boards fail and 75% are made by Quanta or Compal (A ONE THIRD FAILURE RATE) I would be seeing what’s going on.

Recalls are made with less failure rate.

Bill

Hear Hear,

 I have a company Vostro 1000 which is 2 months over its warranty and I contacted Dell support and was told it would cost £310.59 for it to be repaired, now I have a quote (I have a corporate account) for a better spec Vostro 1520 for £290. Now I dont know about you but why would I spend more on repairing a laptop when I can get a brand new one cheaper, there is something wrong here. As for the 25% failure rate you have hit the nail on the head here, if I ran a company with that failure rate not only would I not have a business but I would find it difficult either starting another business or getting another job. This is scandalous.

 I used to be a failure analysis engineer for IBM (when they produced pc's, laptops) and my job was to look at failure rates and solutions on how to bring them down. I dont know where the other poster got 25% from because IBM's failure rate at it's highest was round about 0.02% (fact). If thats the case now and 25% failure is the norm then why shouold I buy a laptop when 1/4 of them will fail, what the other poster is saying is that if I buy 40 laptops (which is possible as I am now an IT manager and a IT decision maker) then 10 of them potentially will fail, that is unacceptable. If it was me doing failure analysis, I would strip the company who makes the motherboards down and advise them that if their failure rates don't drop considerably over the next couple of months I would look at other manufacturers.

If it is a Dell design, then I would take a hammer to the Engineers and demand a solution. Sorry for the rant but out of warranty support by Dell is absolutely attrocious and I understand they have to make some money but not at the expense of losing valuable customers. Extended warranties are mostly a waste of money for some companies especially in this current climate as everyone is trying to minimize spends. Anyway thats that off my chest, thanks Bill giving me this chance to get this off my chest :-)

Tom

I just wrote a huge reply to this and it didnt go through aarrggghhhhh!!!!

Hear Hear,

I have a company Vostro 1000 which is 2 months over its warranty and I contacted Dell support and was told it would cost £310.59 for it to be repaired, now I have a quote (I have a corporate account) for a better spec Vostro 1520 for £290. Now I dont know about you but why would I spend more on repairing a laptop when I can get a brand new one cheaper, there is something wrong here. As for the 25% failure rate you have hit the nail on the head here, if I ran a company with that failure rate not only would I not have a business but I would find it difficult either starting another business or getting another job. This is scandalous.

I used to be a failure analysis engineer for IBM (when they produced pc's, laptops) and my job was to look at failure rates and solutions on how to bring them down. I dont know where the other poster got 25% from because IBM's failure rate at it's highest was round about 0.02% (fact).

If thats the case now and 25% failure is the norm then why shouold I buy a laptop when 1/4 of them will fail, what the other poster is saying is that if I buy 40 laptops  (which is possible as I am now an IT manager and a IT decision maker) then 10 of them potentially will fail, that is unacceptable.

If it was me doing failure analysis, I would strip the company who makes the motherboards down and advise them that if their failure rates don't drop considerably over the next couple of months I would look at other manufacturers.

If it is a Dell design, then I would take a hammer to the Engineers and demand a solution.

Sorry for the rant but out of warranty support by Dell is absolutely attrocious and I understand they have to make some money but not at the expense of losing valuable customers.

Extended warranties are mostly a waste of money for some companies especially in this current climate as everyone is trying to minimize spends.

Anyway thats that off my chest, thanks Bill giving me this chance to get this off my chest :-)

Tom

Dell doesn't design anything - like all others, its notebooks are designed and produced by Quanta, Compal, Inventec, Pegatron, Wistron, Clevo and a couple of others.

You must not have worked for IBM when the GXP75 and 120 hard drives were made - those failed at almost 100% by the time they were a couple of years old.

Even brand-new hard drives fail at a 1% or so rate - and the manufacturers consider that acceptable.  Given that hard drives are better than they were years ago, I doubt the validity of the 0.02% failure rate - either that, or it's PR, of the same time GM and Chrysler used to delude their management into believing they were producing decent vehicles, when the customers knew otherwise.