Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Dell is not a good company anymore.
- Thread starter maflynn
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
- Status
Hahaha, yes. I once had to call in and they asked what the amp rating of the standard power cord I was using. Was using something other than what shipped, 15A maybe? They asked me to try again with the original 13A rated cable.
I recently went through 2 ThinkPad X1's. The 1st had a screen defect and the 2nd bricked during BIOS update..
anymore? lol
They were never good to begin with and their support is subpar at best. Every single machine we owned from them ended up in the trash.
They were never good to begin with and their support is subpar at best. Every single machine we owned from them ended up in the trash.
same thing could happen happen to any computer. The fact is thinkpads have the best keyboards and are waterproof.
They are many dells, macbooks, thinkpads, hps that die, explode and brick and come with defects.
Your experience might vary but I had a thinkpad during high school and boy were they easily upgradable and repairable.
If you people did not know Lenovo is one of the few companies that provide service manuals online for their PC/laptops.
Dell is a for profit company. The biz plan they put in place is determined by the market space and how they can turn that into revenue.
The PC industry, outside of Apple which is unique case, has raced to be as supremely tight in cost control as possible. The gross margins are very tight in most of the X86 space. Their accessories and up spec sells help make up for it -- regardless It's really not Dell's fault. That's just the nature of the competition in the PC space. PC companies that don't find every dime out of the mfg to sale process likely can't remain in business.
Keep in mind a lot of people depend on Dell and HP, among other PC makers, to remain employed.
The PC industry, outside of Apple which is unique case, has raced to be as supremely tight in cost control as possible. The gross margins are very tight in most of the X86 space. Their accessories and up spec sells help make up for it -- regardless It's really not Dell's fault. That's just the nature of the competition in the PC space. PC companies that don't find every dime out of the mfg to sale process likely can't remain in business.
Keep in mind a lot of people depend on Dell and HP, among other PC makers, to remain employed.
Dell is publicly traded company. So shareholders drive the profit, above all else, drum. Boutique system builders like Falcon Northwest or Velocity Micro sell fairly nice systems. You just don't get that silly MSRP markdown with them like you do Dell/HP etc.
I've been buying ThinkPad X1's for years so I am aware of their past quality which is why they were my go to.. However, something has either changed with them or I just got unlucky..
Also, their customer service has always been pretty bad but luckily, it's not needed often. At least in the past it was not needed often.
I think something has changed with them. I've been buying for them for well over 10-years and the quality out of the box is just not there anymore, at least in my recent experience with them over 2 different machines..
There a publicly traded company? Yes they are and, short of being a non profit, expect to return to owners or investors. Publicly traded or private investor funded doesn't change the underlying.
But on that subject, a company's biz plan and its resulting, hopefully, growing revenue stream is taking care of shareholders (whether public or private) Grow revenue->-share price grows->shareholder return. The exception is when an industry, for example EVs, show an expected huge future growth in revenue. Companies can have revenue that seems ??? compared to costs but that's the fate of the bottom floor investing. See the dot.com boom for out of wack revenue stream compared to share price.
Some companies go a step further. They return revenue in the form of dividend, in the form of share buybacks, some even occasionally have a one time payout. Others may take some or all of revenue for M&A, new market expansion, debt pay down, marketing/media blitzes, or go heavier R&D. Apple, for example, does it all except, to my knowledge, one time payments. Apple is a very good shareholder returning corporation.
I just don't know what that has to do with Dell being a company that is for profit, in industry X, and therefore will have constraints of that industry. The X86 PC industry is a mature industry. These companies almost have to follow others else heavily risk market share loss/money/revenue drops because the other guy is squeezing prices and GP because they are more "a bad company".
As to the smaller makers, that's great I think. Small niche companies can sometimes win because the layers of clusterF red tape don't restrain them as much. But their ability to ever get into that coveted top 5 spot is unlikely without a disrupting differentiator.
It was more bringing up there are still PC makers that "hand build" higher end systems and not just throw them together down a massive assembly line with parts that really shouldn't be used (looking at you Dell with your crappy air cooler that isn't made for AMD chips). When you are chasing profits above all you have to cut corners like that because lets face it it is cheaper for Dell to use that cheap Intel cooler an an AMD chip than it is to design an appropriate cooler. And their target audience* isn't going (or isn't likely) to notice so they can get away with it.
*it appears @Steve Adams did notice the super crappy cooler and replaced theirs with a better unit, but I wouldn't count on everyone doing that, and that is on an Intel system where the cooler would probably be alright for a <65W part.
Its really the business model, and while I'll not disagree with that profits are the driving force, I think you can have a business model that produces great machines and make money.
I think some of Dell's moves are shady at best, I mean marketing/promising a laptop to be upgradeable, and then turning around saying that's not what they meant - now they're facing a lawsuit.
Being compared and being found inferior to something that walmart produces is embarrassing, and while some of the members think that's click bait, its a sad situation that dell put themselves in to be compared to a walmart pc in the first place. Consider Apple, no matter how click baity things could get, you couldn't get to a point where you would compare a Mac to a walmart pc.
Their laptops seem fairly well regarded, so it seems some of the less then ideal business practices are more on the desktop and alienware side of the business.
Did they charge you for it? Why give them a pass on saying it was a "glitch?" Especially when there is evidence of them sneaking in charges that people didn't ask for or declined?
The 10700K comes with a nice heatpipe style cooler so give them a 50% grade on that one. They only have the stock intel one on my machine.
The business side is less likely to pull those kinds of invoice games that they can on the consumer side.
No argument there, the enterprise sector is a different business model, and playing those games could cost them hundreds of millions.
Basically remove the heat spreader. Enthusiasts have noticed that Intel uses crappy (or maybe too much) TIM between the die and the heat spreader and have devised tools to remove the heat spreader to either fix the TIM (replacing with liquid metal) or run the cooling on the die directly. If you are looking to maximize cooling performance, delidding can reduce temps by as much as 20c, when done properly.
That's very good. Provides me and you jobs. The more crappy laptops there are the more work I have.
Well, in the end yes.
Der8auer: Intel's Core i9-10900K Runs Eight Degrees Cooler With Liquid Metal
STIM is better than TIM, but liquid metal is better
So not only would you repaste the heat spreader, but you would also repaste the die as well.
I don't need to go that far with it. Just a repaste and improved cooler I will be fine.Well, in the end yes.
Der8auer: Intel's Core i9-10900K Runs Eight Degrees Cooler With Liquid Metal
STIM is better than TIM, but liquid metal is betterwww.tomshardware.com
So not only would you repaste the heat spreader, but you would also repaste the die as well.
Dell's consumer practices definitely sound shadier than other makes - as a rule though, I'd stay away from any one that uses proprietary *anything* in their machines. If I was in the market for a high-end, pre-built rig, I'd look at Asus, MSI, Lenovo or even HP before I'd check out Dell.
I can't fault their business line though - work gave me a Precision 5520 w/an i5-6300HQ and 8GB of DDR4 that hasn't given me any problems (yet).
I can't fault their business line though - work gave me a Precision 5520 w/an i5-6300HQ and 8GB of DDR4 that hasn't given me any problems (yet).
My current laptop is the Dell XPS 9570 from 2018. I can sum up my experience with my Dell:
Positive:
-The value I got from it - I paid maybe $1500 for this laptop after upgrading the RAM to 32 GBs and putting a 1TB SSD into it as well. It's lasted me 3 years of everyday, professional work and it's made me a lot of money. I'm going to perhaps get a MacBook Pro after they are updated, but might hold on another year. I wouldn't be so sure that the MacBook Pros of the time would have done as satisfactory of a job this laptop gave me.
-Customer Service - Never had to wait long on a call. Had to get my laptop serviced twice - one was accidental damage to the screen where I dropped it and another time was due to the logic board failing. Both experiences were great. No questions asked. Short wait times on the phone. One week turnaround time from initial call to getting my repaired laptop back.
Negatives:
-Dell's shady BIOS upgrades practices - they disabled all undervolting with certain BIOSes with forced, sneaky updates within Windows Update system. Borderline unethical. It's downgrading a product you paid for.
-Heat management - for a computer at the time - an 8750H and GTX 1050 Ti in this size, other competitors made laptops that handle the cooling a lot, lot better. This makes the decision to sneakily disable undervolting even weirder.
Overall, I would buy a Dell again if the specs were again the best value for dollar, but that's about it. If another PC manufacturer offers better value per dollar, Dell didn't win over any loyalty with me.
Positive:
-The value I got from it - I paid maybe $1500 for this laptop after upgrading the RAM to 32 GBs and putting a 1TB SSD into it as well. It's lasted me 3 years of everyday, professional work and it's made me a lot of money. I'm going to perhaps get a MacBook Pro after they are updated, but might hold on another year. I wouldn't be so sure that the MacBook Pros of the time would have done as satisfactory of a job this laptop gave me.
-Customer Service - Never had to wait long on a call. Had to get my laptop serviced twice - one was accidental damage to the screen where I dropped it and another time was due to the logic board failing. Both experiences were great. No questions asked. Short wait times on the phone. One week turnaround time from initial call to getting my repaired laptop back.
Negatives:
-Dell's shady BIOS upgrades practices - they disabled all undervolting with certain BIOSes with forced, sneaky updates within Windows Update system. Borderline unethical. It's downgrading a product you paid for.
-Heat management - for a computer at the time - an 8750H and GTX 1050 Ti in this size, other competitors made laptops that handle the cooling a lot, lot better. This makes the decision to sneakily disable undervolting even weirder.
Overall, I would buy a Dell again if the specs were again the best value for dollar, but that's about it. If another PC manufacturer offers better value per dollar, Dell didn't win over any loyalty with me.
- Status