Comment by linsomniac

Comment by linsomniac a day ago

2 replies

I got my first Dell laptop, the XPS15, 5 years ago. Prior to that I had a good 25 years as a Thinkpad die-hard. The XPS has been ... ok. I've had some issues with it resetting for no apparent reason over its life. Frequency varies, but sometimes it'll just blank the screens and then the BIOS comes up on the display, a few times a week, then it'll be good for a month or more.

I had one issue where I needed to ship it back: it would reset and then it was running off the battery, and no matter what port I plugged a charger/docking station into it wouldn't charge until I powered it off and back on again. I got them to do a replacement under warranty a couple years ago.

Around a month ago it was doing the reset fairly frequently and then wouldn't power on sometimes, and I noticed the wrist rest was a little bowed. I replaced the battery pack (kind of a pain, but not the worst I've done), and it was good for around a month, but now it has that "won't charge the battery" issue again. I believe when they did the previous repair they replaced the motherboard, but now I'm out of warranty.

For my next laptop I kind of want a Framework, so I can replace the mobo if I need to. My work likes us to replace hardware no more frequently than every 5-6 years, but we get a warranty for way less than that (my laptop I pushed to get a 4 year).

Meanwhile my previous Thinkpad T470s is still going strong, though the screen just developed a line through it. That's ~10 year old now.

My personal 4 year old Macbook has been a real workhorse, never had any hardware issues with it. My son's macbook has been another story, he's had that in for service 4-5 times in the 3 years he's had it. But, I suspect that is more him than the hardware. I don't baby my MBP, but he is just terrible with things. He's lucky if a pair of glasses can last 6 months, ditto with a phone (usually broken screens), so I'm not sure I can blame the MB Air...

ferguess_k a day ago

I think we have the exactly same problem with the Dell laptop. Anyway after reading through all comments I figured it is unlikely buy a Dell laptop, and less likely to buy a refurbished one as they only carry a 1-year warranty max (one year for 49 CAD and 100 days for free).

And yeah my 470S is still pretty strong. I started to use it again for my side projects.

I kinda wish I could find a contracting job, so that I can buy an expensive laptop and expense it as cost, and my wife won't cast an angry look towards me, lol.

KetoManx64 a day ago

I have the exact same issue with my XPS 9500. But for me it turned into a daily issue and there's a bunch of forum posts of people having this issue. I think it's a manufacturing defect and Dell just never admitted to it and just gave board replacements to people that had warranty (with plenty of posts of people complaining that the same issue came back after the replacement as well)