DELL problems?

raddy59

Spent ages going through the minefield of reviews looking for a new laptop as the old one is on its deathbed.
Looking to buy one of Dell's gaming laptops - Dell 15 7577 which looked ideal and on special offer
Had one in the basket to buy, but I thought I'd check Amazon for buyers experiences, and was surprised that about 20% had problems with the computer and Dell's service.

Anybody confirm this - can't really afford a new laptop let alone an expensive mistake, but I have to have one.

I thought Dell were supposed to be really good - no longer?

Back to square one

System

Remember that on the internet you'll usually only get people posting about problems, you'll not get the thousands of people who've had no problem posting. This gives a distorted view of reality. If there was a 20% failure rate it would be all over the IT press, gaming websites/forums, Reddit and Youtube. It isn't.

Buy on a credit card so you have Section 75 cover if you're worried.

A._Badger

raddy59 wrote: »

Spent ages going through the minefield of reviews looking for a new laptop as the old one is on its deathbed.
Looking to buy one of Dell's gaming laptops - Dell 15 7577 which looked ideal and on special offer
Had one in the basket to buy, but I thought I'd check Amazon for buyers experiences, and was surprised that about 20% had problems with the computer and Dell's service.

Anybody confirm this - can't really afford a new laptop let alone an expensive mistake, but I have to have one.

I thought Dell were supposed to be really good - no longer?

Back to square one

I use my laptop a lot - really, a lot, and have had no trouble at all with a Dell Latitude I bought three or four years ago. Even better I bought it from Dell's factory outlet, which saved quite a lot of money.

I have had experience of Dell's technical support in the past and while I wouldn't rate it very highly it is still streets ahead of some others that I've encountered.

Jon_01

I've had about 6 from Dell. All with no problems.... Apart from their Alienware range, everything else 10/10.

AndyPix

Dells consumer grade stuff is pretty meh to be honest but their business range (latitude and optiplex) are excellent.

As above regarding the support. Not brilliant but better than most

raddy59

Thanks for all that - I might take another look. Reported problems revolved around battery and units freezing.

that

Hard to tell which brands are the best, but how you treat is and how lucky you are are other factors.

Square trade the insurers have published a report who the most reliable ones are, but personally feel that these purchases are the cheaper end of the market models. Most business pc/laptops are covered by manufacturers warranties, some for 4 years and is extremely hard to compare this end of the market.

There is also another reports stating the reliability which puts apple first. For the high purchase price in some could have bought two laptops. Also apple PC tend to be bought more affluent and older, rather than school kids.

Also some will classify a hard disk problem as a failure even if the computer dropped on the floor. Other will say poor performance by malware is a failure.

this is one report. Having delt with laptops would disagree that 1 in 3 laptops fail within 3 years, but could agree depending how failure was measured that if 1 on 3 is the real figure, the button pushers were the cause.

https://www.squaretrade.com/htm/pdf/SquareTrade_laptop_reliability_1109.pdf

Myself, biased, I would try to avoid the consumer brands, like sony, samsung etc. My pet hated manufacturer is Acer. I would only buy a business machine, a secondhand business machine, unless there is no other option

raddy59

I need one a bit "beefy" as my musician son is getting a lot of work adding jazz sax lines to songs - messing with all the audio inputs is heavy on the memory, and the audio files are quite large, and are copied and copied to get to the final result.That is why the current one that has sufficed is finally creaking.

He also got some work putting music to video -which again is resource heavy.

I need at least 8gb ram and a fairly large hard drive. Some in a similar position resort to gaming boxes.

that

raddy59 wrote: »

I need at least 8gb ram and a fairly large hard drive. Some in a similar position resort to gaming boxes.

Some 4 year old one support 8GB ram. Mine is 6 years old, was a high spec and supports 16GB, I put a ssd in it days after purchase and never looked back. I did buy it new as I needed i7 quad for virtual machines, and I wanted usb3

Gloomendoom

raddy59 wrote: »

Thanks for all that - I might take another look. Reported problems revolved around battery and units freezing.

I've had two of their desktops and two of their laptops. I wouldn't hesitate to buy another.

Zandy_23

It's hard to really say if it's in tip top shape. Sellers won't usually say issues or at times problems appear only after a week or so. If your buying a new one, you'd rather get the latest and yup, if you hear bad reviews about it I'd say just get a different one.