Screw you, Dell.

[Blue-Hawk]

I have had it with these ingrates. My parents and I have been buying from Dell for the past 8 years now and in that time, their pc still works and I've been through 2, each one had a different hardware issue. The first was a bad hard drive after 2 1/2 years. This one I'm on now has gone from 4 gigs of ram to 1 gig thanks to 3 slots mo longer responding in less than 2 1/2 years as well. And with no warantee they won't help at all nor, with the past issues I've had and on their records, they even won't give me a break on a new one. Their customer service basically told me to go fuck myself.

Screw you, Dell. Screw you and all you stand for. You used to be good. What happened?

[Volcompat321]

That's one reason I stopped buying from Dell.

I hate their computers. (Cept for the XPS....)

[Powder Keg]

Dell seems to have fallen in the past few years.

I'll never forget when my friend's laptop had to get recovered and the recovery CD(s) didn't have all of the necessary drivers and you had to find and install them all on your own.

[amtalx]

Well, frankly 2.5 years is pretty old for a computer. It never ceases to amaze me how people believe that computers are these magical contraptions powered by fairy dust that never break. Everything with moving parts will break eventually.

[Powder Keg]

Well, frankly 2.5 years is pretty old for a computer. It never ceases to amaze me how people believe that computers are these magical contraptions powered by fairy dust that never break. Everything with moving parts will break eventually.

2.5? No way....maybe for a laptop, but definitely not a desktop. Desktops should last a minimum of 5 years if taken care of properly....you may have to replace a fan and maybe the hard drive but that's it.

[amtalx]

2.5? No way....maybe for a laptop, but definitely not a desktop. Desktops should last a minimum of 5 years if taken care of properly....you may have to replace a fan and maybe the hard drive but that's it.

Considering one of the OPs issues is hard drive related, I'd say that fits the bill. It certainly depends on usage, but 2-3 years is usually when you should start expecting issues, particularly if that's continuous uptime and/or heavy data throughput.

[Volcompat321]

Makes sense.
Though it was about a year and a half for my laptop. :o

I'm probably never getting a laptop again. Ever.

[joefro]

I love Dell's computers, hate their laptop designers, and really hate their customer support. The last Dell I got was a mini 9, a couple of months after they had come out back in 2008. I loved that little thing, except for one thing, the screen had a vertical line of dead pixels. Spent an hour on the phone with someone who barely spoke English and I finally got him to send me a box. I sent in the mini and about two weeks later I got the laptop back. It worked fine for about a week and then in the same area of the screen as before, the screen started to flicker and change colors constantly. I was midway through the semester so I just kept the thing and went on with school. Christmas that year I received my MacBook Pro and I've never touched that mini since then.

[Outrider]

I love Dell's computers, hate their laptop designers, and really hate their customer support. The last Dell I got was a mini 9, a couple of months after they had come out back in 2008. I loved that little thing, except for one thing, the screen had a vertical line of dead pixels. Spent an hour on the phone with someone who barely spoke English and I finally got him to send me a box. I sent in the mini and about two weeks later I got the laptop back. It worked fine for about a week and then in the same area of the screen as before, the screen started to flicker and change colors constantly. I was midway through the semester so I just kept the thing and went on with school. Christmas that year I received my MacBook Pro and I've never touched that mini since then.

I just picked up a Mini 10 a few weeks ago and now I'll be freaking out forever. THANKS A LOT.

[amtalx]

Meh. Everyone's experience is different. It's like Seagate vs. WD. Personally I think WD is garbage. I've had no less than five die on me in the last few years, but there are others who have a graveyard full of Seagates.

[joefro]

I know that I just got unlucky with my last Dell. I'd buy a new product from them in a heartbeat. I still have a Dell E1505 from 2006 that I use for one of my classes that requires Internet Explorer/MS Office. I think their xps towers are quite nice, and a great alternative to those who don't want to build their own PC.

I really wish that all American companies would have American customer support staff. I just hate dealing with people who don't speak good English.

[Palle]

...but there are others who have a graveyard full of Seagates.
Three in five years, here.

[Outrider]

Meh. Everyone's experience is different. It's like Seagate vs. WD. Personally I think WD is garbage. I've had no less than five die on me in the last few years, but there are others who have a graveyard full of Seagates.


I know that I just got unlucky with my last Dell. I'd buy a new product from them in a heartbeat. I still have a Dell E1505 from 2006 that I use for one of my classes that requires Internet Explorer/MS Office. I think their xps towers are quite nice, and a great alternative to those who don't want to build their own PC.

NOPE TOO LATE I'VE ALREADY SET FIRE TO THE COMPUTER.

No, but seriously - I had pretty good luck with the Dell desktop I got in 2003. I used it throughout school and post-college life until this past holiday. It started having trouble booting up and it seemed like the hard drive was failing, so I backed everything up and retired it.

I realize that's beyond operational norm, but it really worked great for the majority of those 6 years. I'm gonna miss the little guy.

[Gunslinger-08]

My folks had a Dell desktop that they got in 2001. The sucker worked for 8 years before the hard drive kicked the bucket. Also, it was never reformatted even once during those eight years. (Just imagine how slow that thing was before it died!) We constantly used it, whether someone was online, or I was playing Mechwarrior 4 over our dial-up connection. (My family is also part of the 1,000 customers keeping AOL afloat.)

Also, I've had a Macbook for about 2.5 years. The HD died, was replaced by Apple, the DVD drive died, was replaced by Apple, I had a battery that lasted 350 charge cycles, and I get the thing cleaned up every now and then. I know that Apple is horridly unpopular around these parts, but I have to hand it to them when it comes to saving me a lot of trouble when something's gone wrong with my lil' Macbook.

[astuarlen]

Last summer I replaced 2 Dell desktops which had been puttering along for, IIRC, 9 and 7 years with some old-but-newer spare parts. For myself, I have 1 Seagate, 2 WD, and 3 Hitachi harddrives (they're called DeskStars, for pizza's sake, which is too cool to pass up), of which--knock on wood--none have failed yet. I guess luckily for me, the only pieces of hardware which I personally have owned, loved, and lost were Corsair RAM modules (and I have happily bought their RAM since then), a Plextor CD/DVD drive (sadface.jpg, 'cause I was careful about researching what the "best" options at the time were), and, oh yeah, the screen of my Sony Vaio (the tale of which had a sort-of happy ending, because the screen physically broke in-transit to the repair location, so the postal insurance $$ went towards a Wacom tablet I've been married to for 7(?) years).

Um, I guess the point is electronics break (except for this stupid Samsung mp3 player which has been hanging around like an ineffectual ghost since 2001... it may have cockroach DNA), but usually they don't for a good while. And also most people won't get their hands on a large enough sample to determine if company A really sucks more than company B. And, finally, I will continue to buy things with cool names like "DeskStar".
[spoiler-box]Which is funny(?), because the Wikipedia entry on 'em says

The IBM Deskstar 75GXP (as well as several other models made around the same time) became infamous for their reportedly high failure rates[2], with more than 50% of the drives failing within the first year from purchase, sometimes in only weeks or days. Some users reported the drives being dead on arrival. This led to the drives being colloquially referred to as "Deathstars"[3]. Due to this, the drives were ranked 18th in PC World's "Worst Tech Products of All Time" feature in 2006.
Water under the bridge, baby.[/spoiler-box]

Sorry you've had rotten luck, though.

Amtrax, I plan on disproving your thesis about things with moving parts by never dying. Just a heads up.

Outrider, I hope you took that golden computer-torching opportunity to roast some marshmallows. Mmm, toxic s'mores.

[HeartBreak301]

I have an '02 Dell Desktop, I don't currently use it because of the fact I can't get internet on it, but despite it running a little slower than it did in its prime it still works fine.

[Outrider]

Outrider, I hope you took that golden computer-torching opportunity to roast some marshmallows. Mmm, toxic s'mores.

I, uh... actually haven't disposed of it yet. It's sitting in the corner with the front piece taken off.

My guess is that one day soon it'll rise from its grave and devour my brains. Y'know - the usual.

EDIT: OH WAIT YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT MY NETBOOK. DON'T WORRY, I HAVE BURNED ALL THE SPIRITS OUT OF IT.

[Blue-Hawk]

Considering one of the OPs issues is hard drive related, I'd say that fits the bill. It certainly depends on usage, but 2-3 years is usually when you should start expecting issues, particularly if that's continuous uptime and/or heavy data throughput.

My older Dell was the hard drive. This one I'm still barely able to use has the DIMM slot issues. I've never heard of the slots not working. The memory sticks were fine but the slots stopped responding.

[NegaTsukasa]

Well if you have the knowledge, passion, and time, custom built is nicer. the only thing is you'll have to perform most of the maintenance on it yourself is something goes wrong.
The pros and cons of a custom built are roughly evened out.

[Blue-Hawk]

Well if you have the knowledge, passion, and time, custom built is nicer. the only thing is you'll have to perform most of the maintenance on it yourself is something goes wrong.
The pros and cons of a custom built are roughly evened out.

You forgot something there, my friend.

If you have the money, which I don't because I just moved into an apartment 2 weeks ago, so rent is a higher priority. I was hoping this pc would last another 2 years, but they way it's looking, I'm not sure if it'll last another 2 weeks.

[Mike]

In college, I bought a Dell laptop. It worked ok for about 6 months. After that, the motherboard died. I couldn't get the laptop out to Dell to replace it for another year because I was abroad so when I was finally able to get it back to Dell to replace, it cost 300 dollars or something. Then that motherboard died and I gave up on it. I'm on a 3~4 year old Fujitsu now and it works great. It's not nearly as powerful as the Dell laptop I had but at least it works.

The Dells my family used started to go bad around the same time too. They weren't in bad shape or old, but things just started to go downhill. And now there are no Dells in my house.

[str898mustang]

Bought a Dell XPS 710 in 2006. The motherboard decided to kick the bucket in 2009.

[Blitzkommando]

Perhaps you should take a gander at these results of laptop failure rates divided between manufacturers. Dell comes out in the middle of the pack, only slightly more prone to failure than Apple. HP and Gateway come out with around 25% failure rates. While Asus, Toshiba, and Sony tend to be most reliable. So, at least you didn't get an HP. I can vouch for those being horrible machines for reliability as I don't recall having a single one that didn't develop hardware issues at some point. One even didn't function correctly from the get go as it wouldn't play nice with writing CDs with the stock writer.

Source (http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/11/17/reliability.study.has.apple.4th.place/)

[Blue-Hawk]

Perhaps you should take a gander at these results of laptop failure rates divided between manufacturers. Dell comes out in the middle of the pack, only slightly more prone to failure than Apple. HP and Gateway come out with around 25% failure rates. While Asus, Toshiba, and Sony tend to be most reliable. So, at least you didn't get an HP. I can vouch for those being horrible machines for reliability as I don't recall having a single one that didn't develop hardware issues at some point. One even didn't function correctly from the get go as it wouldn't play nice with writing CDs with the stock writer.

Source (http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/11/17/reliability.study.has.apple.4th.place/)

I have a friend that had a Toshiba laptop. It died in less than 3 years, And it was prone to crashing.