Dell complaints

[sickofdell]

I know, I know

I don't really love buying Dell, but I guess this seems like the best place for this. My new company was going to switch to Lenovo from Dell, however, Dell has it in their contract with us that they will refund 5% for each day that the shipment is late, whether it is their fault or not. Lenovo would not agree to that and would only go up to 1 day late, which, from what we've heard, they have had a lot of issues with receiving parts to build and sending systems out up to 2 months late. Being in education, we can't afford for students laptops to be sent out 2 months late, so we had to go back with Dell. Right now, Dell is looking pretty good in my book. haha, i still hate them, but whatever.

Anyway, we are trying to decide on the Lat. D620 or D820. On paper, the specs look pretty similar, with the exception of a smalled display and the chassis is lighter on the d620. Does anyone have any early information on known issues with either of these systems that need to be avoided.

Please do not respond if you are going to bash dell, I don't like em either. We have to order the system by the end of the week and already have a working contract with Dell, so, cannot go with anyone else at this point.

Thanks a bunch
_________________
Have you seen my dell laptop?

http://www.tgdaily.com/picturegalleries/gallery-20060731-1.html

(ok, so it's not mine, but it's freakin cool)

[AlexisGrey]

LoL, dude, you got a Dhell.

Ok, if you want specifics you have to give them. D620 or D820? Those are models but the configurations really vary.

Start with the screens...the stock screen sucks for doing any work that involves precision on D820. Lines are different weight, colors are not even close to what they should be. I can't tell about the screen on the D620 since I havent' been able to compare them but the stock screen wasn't very good imho. The highend screen (I believe they have 3) for the D820 is overpriced but really is the way to go. You spend all of your time looking at it and it is nice.

Network adaptors also vary. Use the Intel if you can. It seems to work much better under load and when connecting to a variety of Bridges or Routers (DLink, Linksys, Cisco - I've had problems with all of them).

The Video adaptor is either the Intel GMA or NVidia Quaddro. The Intel is not really a performance adaptor but it does offer good solid operation for text. However, the SiSoft tests of the Quaddro in the D820 was not all that impressive (Less than a system running Radeon 1300) - while this test does not give you a good baseline to say running Autocad 2007 it does give you some idea of the raw performance. I didn't find any problems with the Intel. Under load the Quaddro seemed to make the unit run a bit hot/warm - though not as bad as some of Dell's earlier models but enough that I personally have some concerns.

Memory....be careful here. The stock units seem to come with 2 memory banks already filled. Get them with one filled bank. Careful of the clips if you upgrade them yourself. We've had a couple crack so they don't hold the memory in as tight as they should. Installing the memory is a bit of a pain, be careful of openning the memory slot and of the clips.

Battery life...not too impressive but haven't compared that with the 9 cell...a 6 cell is all we've seen.

The DVDRW Drive is kind of picky about Media. Works ok but speed is very slow with some media (Sony or Staples brand) and others it doesn't work. You might just want to use a CDRW.

In benchmarks, the 5400 RPM hard drives were slow. Very little improvement over our stock 4200 test unit. On the other hand, the 7200 RPM drives were right on baseline.

What can I say about the standard warranty? Nothing really without using 4 letter words. Its erratic. Sometimes you send them in and they actually work on receipt. One thing in Dell's favor, they actually fixed the units we cracked the memory clip on...one thing against, one of them isn't back yet.

Keyboard is nice. One other favorable thing...they don't seem to be loading all the junk software on these that I usually see. And unlike the Thinkpads we usually use and recommend, Dell doesn't short you on USB ports. Why would anyone put just 1 or 2 USB ports in?

Thats about all from here.

[Rocke_T_Sinetist]

Great review, Alexis. A lot deeper analysis than I've got. Mine's all generic.

Student graphics, or graphics students? If you're teaching MS Office suite or freshman English, the 'free' Intel graphics works just fine. If you're teaching Animation 301 or AutoCAD...shouldn't you be doing that on a desktop where there's room to dissipate all the extra heat?

Display: Don't get the cheapest one, it's just too compromised. Buy one or two steps up from the low end display. Worth it, if only in terms of eye fatigue.

CPU: Dell portables have a thermal problem. Some models are more notorious than others. Not knowing the gritty details of these specific models, let's just look overall. Dell portables had no thermal issues at all, when Pentium 3s ran under a gigahertz. The higher you go above the GHz barrier, the more marginal the thermal design becomes in a given space. Get the slowest nominal Pentium they offer. Packing performance that belongs in a desktop into 1/8th the space has got to compromise something, and what it compromises is reliability. AND: I've compared them in the same chassis with the same image--you have to squint pretty hard to see the difference between 2.3GHz and 3.2GHz. Don't get Celerons, they ARE slow, no matter what the GHz rating.

Memory: W98 runs fine on 256M--I've run Autocad and Cakewalk without incident. WXP prefers 512M for nominal performance. If we extrapolate this to Vista, and you want the machines to be updateable, Vista will want 1GB to be comfortable. No reason to go over that. By the time you 'need' 2GB, a Dell portable bought today will no longer be working or repairable.

Optical bay: Combo--DVD reader, CD writer. The only step down is CD/RW, can't read high-density media at all. The steps up are write multiple standards R/R/W/RW/ROM/RAM/+/-/slash/whatever (I'm pissed at them for not settling on one standard) and write DVD which students don't need. Hell, if it's cheap give it to them anyway. Adds versatility. DVD writers generally license ALL the read/write decoders so you're less likely to be shut out of any one medium that way. (But half the students will use the DVD writer to pirate "Girls Gone Wild". )
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Rocke T Sinetist
as in, 'it doesn't take a...'

[sickofdell]

Thanks for the replies. We are all certified dell techs, so just have the parts sent to us and we replace the parts ourselves. Anyway, the specs we are looking at is the Intel® Core™ Duo T2300 (1.67GHz) 667Mhz Dual Core, probably the WXGA+ display, 1Gb of memory, 100 Gb hard drive, probably the integrated video chip. Everything else doesn't really matter.

I just wanted to see if there were any common specific issues with either of these 2 systems. It does look like we are going to go with the D620, due to the weight of the system compared to the D820.

Thanks for any more input you have.
_________________
Have you seen my dell laptop?

http://www.tgdaily.com/picturegalleries/gallery-20060731-1.html

(ok, so it's not mine, but it's freakin cool)

[Carmen_Sandiego]

Get the Gold Support Contract (3 years) on these laptops. Also I would advise getting Complete Care as well. I'll explain.

Reason: there are a "few" issues that have been seen at random on these, but certainly nothing of concern. Keep in mind that these machines are new, and haven't been "out in the field" and battle tested very long by millions of users. Sometimes issues that may plague a system don't show up on the test models the engineers put through hell. Tech support has been asked to capture these systems on definitive hardware failure and just set up system exchanges with new systems, but we all know that won't last long.

I have found that, especially with businesses, that the Gold Technical Support contracts, while many may scoff at them, are the way to go as it is far easier to get replacement parts for the machines with the Gold techs. In addition, ALL of the Gold techs for businesses are in the US now and broken up between either Twin Falls, Idaho or Nashville, Tennessee, so if you do get sent to some Indian fuck farm, ask to be sent to Gold Technical Support.

The reason I suggest Complete Care, is that this is sort of like Insurance against "stupidity" or "accidental" damage. So if you start having problems with your machine and you get some tech support dweeb that just isn't fixing the issue, leaving your laptop ontop of your car when you pull out of the garage and it falling to the ground and getting run over was a complete accident and certainly not customer abuse. So long as you can send "most" of the pieces back to Dell, they will fix your system or replace it with a like system if available or an upgrade if no like system is available. By like system they mean a system who's specs meet or exceed your system. Will this system be new? No. It will be a refurb, but Dell often has brand new systems that were sent to a customer, the customer actually over ordered products and sent them back to Dell, but because they were opened they cannot be sold as new and are now refurbs. This is federal law, and is often the case.

I don't want to sound like Dell's lapdog, just giving you the information you need to cover your ass on deciding about these laptops. Both of the systems you are looking at are selling well for Dell, and very very few problems have been reported with them. The only "true" problem I can think of is that the Embassy software that controls the TPM module interaction with the bio-metric stuff does seem to have a conflict with Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, and there is no expected resolution time for this issue at the moment as IE7 is still in beta. Other than that, the system remarkably have been for the most part, error free.

Good luck on your company purchase, and remember that you could be forced to deal with Gateway, HP, or IBM, all of which I have dealt with in the field and swore never to buy from again. Dell's technical support may be a pain sometimes, but it beats the alternative unless you build your own.
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Respectfully,
Carmen Sandiego

[sickofdell]

Actually, we get certified on the products we buy and deal with warranty parts direct, so gold doesn't really do us much good. Complete Care is definitely good. The students we have treat their computer like crap, so we have to utilize it quite often.

Before I arrived, they had Gateway's and will never go with them again. We will probably try to get IBM next year. They wouldn't meet our demands this year. I have found that as long as you don't have to call tech support regularly, just go online and order parts, life is so much sweeter. Well, in my case, I went from taking calls at dHell to placing orders on the web. billions and billions times better.

It's definitely good to hear that the d620 has been problem free so far. I know there is always the occasional failure with any system, so I'm not expecting perfection, but close to is better than far from. Can't wait to have the new laptop in my hands in 6 weeks.
_________________
Have you seen my dell laptop?

http://www.tgdaily.com/picturegalleries/gallery-20060731-1.html

(ok, so it's not mine, but it's freakin cool)

[btsuji]

the maker of the RAM is Hyundai?!? didn't even know they made RAM. speaking from experience, the d600 was faster than my current d820. my 2 year old HP is faster than this thing. it has taken the NVidia card in this thing about a month to remember that i have a dual monitor view setup. everyone has problems with the wireless in these things. i asked for an etch a sketch and an abacus before this thing. they thought i was joking....