Why do Dell owners have so many problems?

TraderGary said:

As I've said before, my System One is my 7th Dell XPS Premium laptop. I'm in the USA and Dell support has always been superb here.

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All my laptops were bought as used, that's how I can afford to have so many (and why it's such an eclectic collection).

The newest of the Dell laptops were less than a year old when bought and still had most of their 3 years of Dell Pro Support remaining. Dell support follows the machine to a new owner, I've only needed to call on them once. One of the used Dells had a bios password. A call to Dell support got it swiftly removed.

Web support sites are also important, IMHO Dell has one of the best (closely followed by Lenovo). For example, drivers and service manuals are still available from Dell a quarter of a century after this Lattitude C600 was built.
Support for Latitude C600 | Drivers & Downloads | Dell US

HP on the other hand seem to delete all their support pages and drivers for anything older than 10 years.

TraderGary said:

As I've said before, my System One is my 7th Dell XPS Premium laptop. I'm in the USA and Dell support has always been superb here. If ever I've had a question or problem, I've easily and quickly gotten help from Dell support. If I need onsite support, they come right to my home. I never have to send my Dell to them. Dell's support is a prime reason that this is my 7th Dell.

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But aren't you buying business models? What do you normally pay?

spapakons said:

Have not checked recently, but a few years ago Lenovo had very bad support here in Greece. I was working at RMA department of a computer store and we had to file a report to Consumer Rights Institution to force Lenovo Greece honor the Warranty in some cases. After too many reports we had been friends with the client and talked in singular.

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That must be local thing...has nothung to do with the hardware issues themselves though...

SlicEnDicE said:

Asus, comes as at good second place.

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I'm on my fourth VivoBook. Reasonably priced, super fast, zero bloat! Decent online support.

kelper said:

But aren't you buying business models?

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I always buy Premium XPS models, which are used for both home and business, although they are a bit higher priced than Latitudes which are the most commonly used business model.

kelper said:

What do you normally pay?

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I usually pay a bit less than I did this time as I wanted 64GB RAM and memory prices are high. I also wanted the Series 3 Ultra X9 388H CPU and the 16" Tandem OLED screen.

TraderGary said:

I usually pay a bit less than I did this time...

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Yeah..., but we want to know how much actual dough you forked out..., never mind, I already looked it up..., Ouch!!!

Edwin said:

Yeah..., but we want to know how much actual dough you forked out..., never mind, I already looked it up..., Ouch!!!

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lol, if it is a money making machine, as I'm sure it is in Garys case, it's worth the price.

TraderGary said:

@Bree
Dell has recently brought back the XPS designation. I just purchased a new XPS a few weeks ago. It's my System One listed below. I like it a lot.

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Yep, and our reps say they're bringing back the old-style numbering. I'm not sure if they'll go back to Latitude, OptiPlex or whatever, but they've heard the complaints about the naming scheme change and are reverting to something coherent.

Dave2D on YT had some positive stuff to say about the latest XPS lineup.

TraderGary said:

I always buy Premium XPS models, which are used for both home and business, although they are a bit higher priced than Latitudes which are the most commonly used business model.

I usually pay a bit less than I did this time as I wanted 64GB RAM and memory prices are high. I also wanted the Series 3 Ultra X9 388H CPU and the 16" Tandem OLED screen.

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Here in Greece professionals can buy a laptop or tablet or smartphone and pay only the price without the VAT amount if they issue an invoice. Of course they can't do that many times in a year or it is considered buying for reselling and they pay tax. With 24% VAT for a 1000€ range laptop (final price with VAT) professionals actually pay 806.45€ So if they actually give about 1000€ they get a better model that others paying the price with VAT (1240€) cannot afford. This VAT-less purchase is valid irrespectively of the use of the laptop, for their job or for personal use at home. They are not obligated to tell what they need it for.

@TraderGary

what did you pay for your used Dells on average?

spapakons said:

Here in Greece professionals can buy a laptop or tablet and pay only the price without the VAT amount if they issue an invoice.

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You mean a business owner etc... this stuff works the same in whole Europe. One can buy tools for their business and write off the VAT as expense, which will be deducted from the VAT they would have to pay from sales or other services they provide customers. This can be done directly as 0% VAT purchase or later be deducted in the bookkeeping Income VAT - Expense VAT, which will give you the same end result. VAT is something that is paid by customers/consumers, and business owners/companies are the collectors for the government.

pseymour said:

....they've heard the complaints about the naming scheme change and are reverting to something coherent.

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Thank goodness for that. I found the 're-branding' opaque and confusing.

Bree said:

I also like the Lenovo ThinkPad range. My one regret was buying a budget Acer, my (now retired) System One below.

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LG is going to court for the same shenanigans that Lenovo got sued for (and lost) repeatedly. Embedding spyware is not cool. My 17 year old is still using the Acer laptop that I put together from 4 other throwaways back in 2012. She's definitely due for another and it will likely be a Dell. My 19 year old is using a Dell touch screen (also used to be mine) for university because it answers to all the requirements for software engineering (and then some). She hasn't had any trouble with it in the last two years since she had it. And GROSS! She uses One Drive. Meanwhile, many of her colleagues are having all sorts of issues with their expensive Apple lap tops. Because of this she has thanked me numerous times for giving her my Dell laptop.

After leaving the world of TANDY for a Microsoft platform I purchased a brand new Sony VAIO desk top. That unit gave me more trouble than the Dell unit I purchased later but it was more of a Sony software issue than a hardware issue. (We are talking 26 years ago.) When it comes to support my experience has been that Dell is second to none. I purchased a brand new Dell Inspiron 530 in 2007 and that thing ran circles around the old Sony. Support was excellent. Dell even let me add RAM and hard drives to my Inspiron without violating the warranty. Because of their support and reliability I purchased a brand new Dell Studio XPS 9000 tower in 2009 which still runs reliably to this day. My wife uses an old XPS laptop and the only thing I've had to do with it in the way of hardware is purchase another battery charger for it. (Although I have made some modifications to it to beef it up a bit.) The particular model she uses comes with a double size battery pack which is very handy for out in the field and in the lab. Today she just uses it at home but she is very happy with her Dell.

I have serviced many Dell PCs since and have found them a delight to work on for the most part. I also own a Studio XPS 9001 that works just fine despite the fact that it can only handle 24GB of RAM. This is my bed room unit for watching documentaries and listening to audio books while I sleep. It is terribly under used. Perhaps the newer Dells are a problem. ASUS used to be pretty good back in the day as well. Not sure if I trust them that much today. At least with Dell you won't be getting any embedded spyware. I can honestly say that when it comes to proprietary builds Dell has been among the most reliable of them all. But then, I've only had 26 years of experience tearing apart PCs and rebuilding them so my knowledge is limited.

SlicEnDicE said:

You mean a business owner etc... this stuff works the same in whole Europe. One can buy tools for their business and write off the VAT as expense, which will be deducted from the VAT they would have to pay from sales or other services they provide customers. This can be done directly as 0% VAT purchase or later be deducted in the bookkeeping Income VAT - Expense VAT, which will give you the same end result. VAT is something that is paid by customers/consumers, and business owners/companies are the collectors for the government.

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Bookkeeping is for everything you can state useful for your job. Obviously you cannot buy tools or toys irrelevant to your job with invoice. For these you pay the total price with the VAT amount but the VAT part is substracted from the VAT you pay monthly for your services. Excuse me if I don't use the correct terms, but you get the idea. When buying laptop or tablet or smartphone with invoice you don't pay for the VAT amount so you have 0 VAT to add to your expenses.

dacrone said:

I’m not a business. I don’t run ads. Still waiting to see the withdrawal from my account…

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You're not looking very well.

dacrone said:

Just saying that it collects your data is a pretty big reach, based on the fact that every single interaction in day to day life collects some form of data from you…

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You got that right. Congratulations

dacrone said:

*and when Flock cameras take over every street corner, Google will be the least of your worries

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Yeah and when google winds up running them (with the governments help) then we'll see who has the last laugh.

SlicEnDicE said:

Lenovo, ThinkPads in particular has been the most reliable and easy to work with machines in my experience. Asus, comes as at good second place.

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I got rid of a ThinkPad, last year and I only had it for a year. It had so much Lenovo proprietary bloat on it that it would take over a minute to boot up. I even deleted some of it only for Lenovo to push it back on my machine the next month. Jesus, delete means delete.

It was decent hardware but the Lenovo bloat left a lot to be desired. At least by deleting Dell's bloatware, it hasn't come back.

pseymour said:

Yep, and our reps say they're bringing back the old-style numbering. I'm not sure if they'll go back to Latitude, OptiPlex or whatever, but they've heard the complaints about the naming scheme change and are reverting to something coherent.

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I wish they'd bring back the R/L trackpad buttons and HD indicator lights to let me know some activity is going on. Currently my Dell 14 only has a power light on the power button and that's it. No battery charging light, either. I miss those.

kelper said:

@TraderGary

what did you pay for your used Dells on average?

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I get the impression that Gary is not going answer questions about his personal financial affairs, and I respect his privacy.

I on the other hand am not so concerned. Back in May 2025 I said....

Bree said:

My most recent purchase was 8 months old when I bought it. At £880 it was the most I've ever paid for a laptop (by a long way). I had to think long and hard before clicking 'buy'. It's a Dell Latitude 5550, Core Ultra 7 165H, 64GB RAM, 1TB NVMe with W11 Pro. As an added bonus it came with Dell ProSupport until June 2027.

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As this was still a current model at the time, 'thinking long and hard' included configuring the same spec machine on Dell's sales site to see what it would cost new. That came out at nearly twice the price I paid for mine.

I haven't paid over 1000 bucks for a Laptop......, yet!!!

Probably never will, either! I don't use them that much!