My Dell experience

[cygnusx1]

I bought a top of the line Dell XPS700 when Dell decided to try to get into "alienware type" killer gaming systems. I bought it less than two years ago, when they announced it was ready for production. It was great. I had no problems with it at all. Stable, fast, played all the latest games with all the graphics options enabled.

 

This Monday, the PC just would not turn on. I diagnosed it as a bad motherboard. After many arguments, Dell tech also diagnosed it as a bad motherboard over the phone.

 

Here's the fun part. My warranty expired Dec 07. It also turns out that Dell generously gave away FREE motherboard upgrades for customers that bought the XPS700. They gave them for FREE, a $500 upgrade package to turn the XPS700 into the newer XPS720. Why? Because there were TONS of complaints about the mainboard of the XPS700.

 

Fortunately, my PC held on until this Monday so I had no reason to go to the Dell website and ask for an upgrade. I had NO IDEA about this free upgrade. Dell had announced the FREE UPGRADE PROGRAM to about a dozen online communities but never sent out a mailer or flyer to XPS700 owners! huh:icon4:

 

Now they want to sell me a replacement XPS700 motherboard for $306!!!! They said that the FREE UPGRADE program had a deadline of Oct 13th 2007.

 

Are you eff***ing kidding me?

 

To top it all off, it's a proprietary motherboard layout that ONLY Dell can sell me.

 

You make the call? I won't tell you what to do but I can no longer recommend Dell.

 

BTW, I have been all over India. Two hours on the phone and EIGHT call transfers with hold times in between, ALL leading to my credit card to sell me a new overpriced motherboard. I ended up losing my cool.

 

I now own a $3000 paperweight. Luckily, I found someone that had a used XPS710 motherboard laying around and picked it up for $125.

 

:nono:

[Gollum]

I feel ya man. This whole proprietary crap is what keeps me from buying systems or even recommending name brands to other people. Unless the company can link me to an online store that sells the very components I'm buying then I don't want thier computer.

 

I want a motherboard built by someone who cares, no the lowest bidder.

 

Unfortunately my PC is having issues as well. Been going steady for 2+ years, and now I'm just getting beeps on startup. No video so I'm thinking it's the graphics card. If so that'll be a GOOD excuse to get a new DX10 card.

 

I used to build computers all the time, I'm sure I'll figure it out.

[PhilbertZ]

That's why you build your own - DIY FTW!

 

Gollum - there's some great new DX10 cards out now:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_family.html

 

And if you want a new motherboard (intel OR AMD:

http://www.nvidia.com/page/mobo.html

 

For cheap PCs, Dells are great - for High end gaming rigs, go it alone

[Gollum]

Oh trust me, I know ALLLL about the hardware side of things, and what DX cards I'm interested in. It's one of the few areas I've really kept up on lately this last year.

 

I think i'm gonna keep my AMD 939 for now though. Might see if I can find a NOS CPU upgrade eventually. Not sure if it's worth it though, the new quad cores aren't that expensive...

[m4xwellmurd3r]

Here's what you do. Buy a new mother board, Powersupply and Case, and take all your stuff and put it in. I say a powersupply too because (I don't know if they've changed their ways yet) But their powersupplies have proprietary configurations that can damage NORMAL ATX boards.

 

That's why I always custom build my PC's I can right now, build a VERY nice quad core AMD setup, for just a touch over 1k

[PhilbertZ]

Save your money on the Quad core and settle for Dual core - invest the same money (or less) of the difference in price into your Video card - there's more (extra) bang for your buck in GPUs versus CPUs - not just for games....

[cygnusx1]

This XPS700 had enough legs to go at least another two years on gaming. I am going to repair it best I can and leave it at that.

 

I have ALWAYS built my own rigs until this one. The very reason I bought this Dell was because the rig I was using that I built, better than this Dell, bit the dust and my wife was pregnant on full time bed rest for six months. I had ZERO time between work and caretaking that when my rig died, I called Dell for backup. I figured I would part out my rig. That's the ONLY reason I didn't build. Boy am I sorry.

 

I wanted plug-n-play, no issues, full tech support, you know, easy street so I could get on with my life. This PC became the exact opposite of what I bought it for.

[(goldfish)]

I haven't seen Dell use any proprietary motherboards in their main systems for at least 5 years. I bet it's a BTX motherboard. Harder to find the ATX, but they are out there. Just the case & MB manufactures didn't want to use Intel's superior layout, well because it was Intels.

 

 

Hasn't Dell owned Alienware for more than 2 years?

[m4xwellmurd3r]

Save your money on the Quad core and settle for Dual core - invest the same money (or less) of the difference in price into your Video card - there's more (extra) bang for your buck in GPUs versus CPUs - not just for games....

Nah, the GPU i'm putting into it is actually a really nice GPU, and the price of a low end quad core is NOT that expensive at all, so to me it's worth it. BUT I won't be able to build the rig for quite a while, so by the time I DO get around to it, quads will probably be high end standard

[80LS1T]

My mom had a DELL, worst customer service I have ever had to deal with. Computer ran great when it worked but my god if you had to get some technical support......well lets just say I hope you have 2-3 hours on your hands to be transfered and keep saying "what? what did you say? I'm sorry I couldn't understand you..." because your calling India for sure where no one speaks good English and the acents are very very THICK!

 

She now has a HP and it's been good so far and when she does have to call tech support atleast the people she's talking to speak clear english! I also own a HP and I have had great custome support when BEST BUY majorly screwed up my computer while it was still under warrenty. Basically Best Buy said that the parts to fix my computer were on MEGA back order so HP said that I was to get a replacement. So naturally I think cool I get a new HP! Well Best Buy tried to trade me into a Gateway. Well I wanted nothing to do with a Gateway(horrible customer service also IMHO). So I called HP and they thought that was very interesting to say the least! The guy on the phone said "hmm last time I checked HP doesn't own Gateway, so why would we want you to have a Gateway?" I called Best Buy and told them that HP wanted me to send my computer back to HP so that they could fix it and overnight it back to me if it was repairable. At this point Best Buy was like "oh ok we'll see if we can get it back for you". So I called HP and said they Best Buy was going to see if they could get it back from HP's repair center...at this point it got interesting! The guy at HP told me that they have no record of ever recieving it in from Best Buy! After about a week HP called me and told me that it was taken care of and that I could go in and get my new HP! Ha Best Buy take that! Best Buy lost my computer but HP must have called up that Best Buy and got it handled some how. I went in and got my pick of 2 brand new laptops, both of which were upgraded from mine! HEHEHHEHE! Best Buy F'd with the wrong guy! The guy at HP told me that they were going to investigate what happend to my computer and that someone was going to get in some trouble!

 

Guy

[007max]

If you're going to buy a Dell the key is to get the best extended warranty they offer with the computer. I've had my Inspiron laptop for just over 2 years and in that time I've had the HD, motherboard, 2 power supplies, and the CD/DVD drive all replaced under warranty. I've never dealt with Indian customer support either, unless they now speak perfect English. It is a pain in the ass to go through all the troubleshooting steps before they diagnose it to be the problem you knew it had all along, but it has still never taken me more than an hour on the phone to get the problem fixed or to get new parts ordered. When the motherboard had to be replaced they even had a technician come out to my house to do it. Point is, get the damn extended warranty.

[naviathan]

Yes the key to Dell Tech Support is the Gold Warranty Support. Get it. It's not a warranty in itself, but it's a standard of service they have to give you. You still have to get your parts warranty separate, but the Gold Support is the only way you'll get to talk to an American tech. I work for a larger contracting company and we have machines from HP, Dell, Gateway, IBM etc... and by far the best support I've received was from IBM. Even their basic service is by far better than anyone else. Sure we had to pay for parts on the basic service agreement, but that was just part of the deal. Unless it was a manufacturing defect or fair wear and tear, the parts had to be paid for. And they were great about it if we weren't sure. They would over night a box with labels for a return over night shipment. We had the machines back within a week depending on the day we sent it out. The worst, Dell because the contract office didn't purchase the Gold support on some of the equipment and we had to fight for replacement parts. They insisted on sending their own tech to do the repairs or returning the machine for repairs....Haha, like to see that tech come out to Iraq, that's not how our contract works...But, all in all, get an IBM for good customer support (yes even now that they're owned by Lenovo, just stick to the Thinkpad series).

[cygnusx1]

Yes it's a BTX motherboard.

 

1)try to find one

2)try to find one that works with all the Dell bells and whistles built into the case

3)impossible

 

Here is the case that I really like and want to stick with.

 

 

UPDATE:

I posted my dilemma on the Direct2Dell.com forum and a "Dell Outreach" employee emailed me saying that he read my post, and told me he was looking into my situation.

 

Fingers crossed.

[Gollum]

Save your money on the Quad core and settle for Dual core - invest the same money (or less) of the difference in price into your Video card - there's more (extra) bang for your buck in GPUs versus CPUs - not just for games....

 

I do a lot of encoding and decoding of audio and video. With how fast things are becomming multicore capable the extra 30-40% in price increase is worth it.

 

I haven't seen Dell use any proprietary motherboards in their main systems for at least 5 years. I bet it's a BTX motherboard. Harder to find the ATX, but they are out there. Just the case & MB manufactures didn't want to use Intel's superior layout, well because it was Intels.

 

 

Hasn't Dell owned Alienware for more than 2 years?

 

HAHAHA. Come to my work. We use dell corporate wide in several states and many of our systems are no older than 2 years. Many of the "newer" ones have a propriety DIGITAL ONLY video card that only has a special output that REQUIRES a dell specific splitter. It's a precision series, which is far less proprietary than the optiplex boxes we have here. I was hired knowing that I could handle some IT work in my spare time here, and it's been rather annoying dealing with these dell boxes.

 

 

 

 

UPDATE:

I posted my dilemma on the Direct2Dell.com forum and a "Dell Outreach" employee emailed me saying that he read my post, and told me he was looking into my situation.

 

Fingers crossed.

 

SWEET. Good job, make some noise and see if they bite. It's worth a shot right? Besides, you might still need their free motherboard upgrade. I've never had good experience, or known anyone with good experience buying a used motherboard...

[ShaggyZ]

Mac

[sweetleaf]

LOL. My Dell Power supply blew up like a grenade. Little Pieces everywhere.

I got them to replace it out of warranty but they put in a lower powered supply without the PCI-E . So I had to replace it anyway. Oh, well.

[Gollum]

Any news from Dell? Would be nice if they came through for you still.

 

I found my PC's problem this weekend. Bad ram slots. Don't think I'll be able to run dual channel anymore. Oh well. Maybe I should look for a replacement mobo. This one has been good to me this long though. Would be nice to see it plug on.

[cygnusx1]

Gollum, what Mobo are you using?

 

The Dell rep, sent me another email on Friday saying that he would get back to me on Monday, today. No word yet.

[Gollum]

It's a gigabyte, can't remeber the model off the top of my head.

 

Nforce 5 north bridge

939 AMD socket

onboard gigabit LAN

onboard 5.1 sound

onboard firewire + usb 2.0

4 DDR 1 slots

4 SATA 1.5 ports

 

That's as much as I can remember. It was hot stuff when I bought it. It replaced my Asus A7V8X (pretty well known mobo of it's day) which I had nothing but problems with. I still have it, and it still runs, but it's got lots of quirks. After having SEVERAL issues with VIA chipsets, and ASUS mobos I'm not sure I'll use either in my own boxes ever again.

[cygnusx1]

Update:

The vagabond Dell rep that read my post on the Dell forums called me today and offered me a free motherboard to replace my dead one. It's not the upgrade that they had performed for free for many XPS700 owners but it is a resolution that is reasonable. I should not have had to make as much noise as I did to get that kind of service.

 

Moral of the story: If you own a Dell and have an issue that you feel is a legitimate fault of theirs, post it on the direct2dell.com forums. Don't wait on hold, or pay for a telephone based service tech in India.