Nov 29
Dude you don’t need a Dell
I have mentioned the Dell laptop I have at work. It hasn’t been feeling very well lately. It has many different problems - or should I say symptoms:
- Network gets jammed up (tries to send out terabytes of packets and naturally disconnects me from everything)
- Local Area Connection disappears after reboot (meaning, the computer is not aware that a network controller exists at all)
- It freezes completely forcing me to shut it down by pressing down Power. This freeze can happen during normal operations, during startup, or during shutdown. It can also happen before Windows starts
- Sometimes it blue screens
- Sometimes the computer refuses to boot at all. I don’t mean that Windows doesn’t start, or that it freezes, or blue screens - I mean it just simply does not do anything when pressing the power button
- In docking station, the external monitor shifts colour (the monitor itself is ok)
- In docking station, the external monitor changes display resolution after restart
All of this, apart where mentioned, can happen in and out of the docking station and at random. The problems can occur directly after booting up when the computer has been shut down overnight. Or sometimes it can run fine for a day. It can happen during high activity, or no activity at all. With and without a network cable being connected. With a lot of software running, or no software at all (including Windows!).
This is what has been done so far to fix this:
- motherboard has been replaced (twice!)
- the bottom cover of the laptop has been replaced
- computer has been reinstalled (twice)
- graphics card has been replaced
- processor has been replaced
- palm rest (top cover) has been replaced
- harddrive has been replaced
- memory has been replaced
- speakers (yes, as in “loud speakers”) have been replaced
All of this misery started when the cover for the docking station connection got broken. Otherwise the laptop was just fine, but since the cover didn’t close up anymore, it was not possible to use the computer outside the docking station. Dell swapped the bottom cover and motherboard and the original problem was fixed, it’s just that at the same time the Pandora’s box was opened and everything else started going wrong. My theory, and my colleagues’ theory, is that when the laptop originally was broken, it also affected the docking station. So now when the motherboards are replaced, the faulty docking station just breaks them again. Thus, the laptop doesn’t work properly outside the docking station either. And because the motherboard is broken, it doesn’t matter which part they replace after it. The funny thing is that Dell is not really interested in this theory. The engineers have only a passing interest in the docking station when we mention this. Of course, we may be wrong, but we are also running out of parts to exchange…
Can you believe that Dell is still dragging on this case? How much has it cost them to send out an engineer on site 6 times (!) and replace all these parts? How much has it cost my company in lost working hours while I’ve just struggled to make the laptop work? Consolation prize is that it really is a company laptop so I haven’t needed to waste any of my own time or money on this.
It’s such a shame. I have loved the laptop, it has been reliability itself. I had a private Dell laptop once and never had any problems with it. But now, I’m disgusted. There comes a point when it just isn’t funny anymore. Although, I keep laughing. The joke is on Dell…
What is wrong with the computers now, when they do things like this. Luckily it’s not your own laptop, and luckily you have plenty of witnesses for that fault. If I were Dell, I’d make a unit exchange right away for both laptop and docking station to get rid of that problem. It surprises me, why big companies act so miserably with they products. As you said, it truly is more expensive to give on-site service than change the thing.