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I had an XPS, top of the line with full warranty/premium support. Horrible experience. They swapped many models to a shitty wifi card that caused bsod. I had to

I had an XPS, top of the line with full warranty/premium support. Horrible experience. They swapped many models to a shitty wifi card that caused bsod. I had to spend over 15+ hrs with support to finally convince them the fix was to swap the card to the original Intel and not doing another system restore or reformat. Then the battery. Oh the battery. The computer would randomly wake up from hibernate and drain the battery till it was dead. This also caused premature drain. Guess what? Dells batteries are rated for less cycles (half compared to apple) and this seemed to coincide with the end of my warranty period (time to buy a new one) but it doesn't even matter because their premium support only covers battery replacements for the first year! And get this! They only sell refurbished batteries. Just everything about this company is trash. The XPS is a nice line. It is very premium, but only skin deep

tastysandwich 5y ago
Oh man oh man I have the worst story. My XPS 13's wifi stopped working completely. After a similar experience to yours with support, they dispatched someone to replace the whole motherboard. The dude completely botched it. The device wouldn't boot into Windows (BSOD), and he told me it was because I needed to reinstall Windows. And he didn't put the laptop back together properly - something inside was jammed under the motherboard so that the back plate wouldn't screw down all the way, and the laptop wouldn't close. Then he said to me, "Can I go now?" When I tried to argue (politely), he said he'd just call his supervisor, and then drove off! About 15 minutes later, I received an email that the job had been successfully completed. Under the "customer signature" area, I kid you not, he had written something like "verbal confirmation given". Needless to say, I kicked up such a big stink, emailing customer support, Michael Dell, and Angela Fox at Dell Australia. They sent me a brand new replacement.
sixothree 5y ago
I had so much trouble buying a replacement battery for a server raid card. At the time, this was a card they were still selling! Oh man. Dell. What a mess.
ansible 5y ago
> The computer would randomly wake up from hibernate and drain the battery till it was dead. I am under the impression that this was a more general Windows issue. Does someone else have more information?
- Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
  From my experience, it is the wake timers in some apps that abuses it. I recalled it is one of the function that use the wake timers. To find this out, open the cmd/PS/WT and type: powercfg -lastwake This will tell you which action or hardware initiated the wake. It should provide enough clue of the offending software. Also the wakes are recorded in the log, you would be able to pull up the event viewer to find the lists of the offending software that abuses this. There is a event ID for it which you can use to track this down, I couldn't remember the number. Edit: Here the guide for finding this in the event viewer.[0] [0] https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/63136-see-wake-source-windows-10-a.html https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/63136-see-wake-source-wi...
- tomxor 5y ago
  I had a couple of similar problem under Linux, but I believe these are purely software issues and thus unrelated to the windows ones. and also not specific to Dell AFAIK. 1. Linux kernel "mem-sleep" mode default [0], which determines what actually happens when systemd-sleep "suspend" is called. The default value is "s2idle" for many distros which is as good as leaving your computer running with processes paused... when what most users expect is some kind of suspend-to-ram ("deep"). Obviously this burns through battery pretty quickly but at least it shouldn't overheat. 2. I found this systemd infinite hybernate loop bug [1] (now fixed) when swap is smaller than RAM... although you only would come across this is you accidentally under-provisioned the swap partition on install like I did - but the failure mode was spectacularly bad, because it will retry over and over swapping and compressing the RAM which obviously ramps up the CPU, get hot with the lid closed, make short work of battery and SSD. Anyway the common issue is #1 which you just have to know about otherwise your computer doesn't really suspend at all, and since most machines are very quiet these days you won't notice unless you dig. [0] https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/538541/suspend-to-ram-with-systemd-configuration https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/538541/suspend-to-r... [1] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/19550 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/19550
spideymans 5y ago
I had disavowed Dell more than a decade ago due to their horrible support, but I figured it was time to give Dell another shot at the height of MacBook keyboard gate. Boy was I wrong. The laptop itself was great when it worked. But my XPS 13 shipped with a barely functional trackpad. As with you, I had to spend countless hours on the phone with them to get them to repair the laptop that was well within its warranty. Never again.
Scoundreller 5y ago
> The computer would randomly wake up from hibernate and drain the battery till it was dead. I had this happen, but it was the cat that would nap on the keyboard until the laptop died and stopped being warm.
- the-dude 5y ago
  This is either hilarious or you're working for Dell ( I love cats ).
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    It wasn’t a Dell, no.
Spooky23 5y ago
The secret to Dell is you need to buy “ProSupport”. It costs like $100 more. I had an issue that was known with certain Dell universal docking stations. We had the elevated support and got a hot fix in a few days. A colleague with the same laptop, same dock has the same problem and got nothing - they refused to acknowledge or support the dock connection, claiming that they only support “hardware” and not windows drivers. Eventually the driver was released a few months later. Other OEMs like Lenovo and HP don’t fuck around with stuff like this. Just price Dell like for like with the equivalent support offering. Dell’s pricing is usually very competitive, so you’ll probably find they will still win some comparisons, and when they do the “pro” offering is better.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  This is such a bad business decision as they could really establish themselves on the notebook market, even it got smaller in the meantime. But they have had this strategy for years and I don't believe they will be able to continue this for much longer because more and more people talk negatively about Dell. Problem is there are not too many alternatives and it seems to be a general trend.
- getcrunk 5y ago
  > The secret to Dell is you need to buy “ProSupport”. It costs like $100 more. I had the prosupport, still got Indian call center.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    I've received plenty of decent support from what seem to be Indian call centers. ("seem" because I could be wrong about accents). I've had awful support from other call centers. I have also been involved in multiple call center procurements: The question is more about the training of call center staff that you're willing to pay for, not location. Dell could get high quality call centers in India if they were willing to put resources into building an excellent knowledge based and extensive training for call center staff. Dell has chosen not to go that route.
whylo 5y ago
> The computer would randomly wake up from hibernate and drain the battery till it was dead. I had exactly the same thing on my XPS 15. I'd take it out of my bag, it'd be warm and the battery would be dead. Plus one day it suddenly decided it didn't have a TPM module (didn't even show up in BIOS) so BitLocker stopped working, and of late the CPU is constantly throtling and fans running at full blast because it's overheating even with next to no load (I've checked the fans for dust).
quasse 5y ago
> Then the battery. Oh the battery. The computer would randomly wake up from hibernate and drain the battery till it was dead. I have a Precision laptop (absolutely top of the line business laptop that shares hardware with the XPS 15) that does this too. The only fix is to either keep it plugged in 100% of the time or perform a full system shut down any time it's going to be unplugged. It's extremely frustrating and has basically killed any usefulness the laptop has as a portable computer.
- 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  We used to buy Precision laptops for 3D designers due to the need for a beefy graphics card, and I got the impression they were just heavier versions of Dell's regular crap. IBM was my preference before Lenovo, but now I have no idea if there's any premium Intel laptops left.
tomxor 5y ago
> Dells batteries are rated for less cycles (half compared to apple) [...] They only sell refurbished batteries Are there any decent battery suppliers that sell dell compatible replacements?
blintz 5y ago
Similar experience with the battery and sleep on XPS devices. Constantly opening my backpack to discover a literal hot mess. At this point I’m fed up - what’s a better Windows laptop? Not interested in touchscreen/tablet modes and I’m willing to pay quite a bit. I am leaning towards something from the Surface Laptop line, but open to suggestions.
- mattwad 5y ago
  I can recommend the Surface line. I think it's a huge difference when Microsoft is selling both the hardware and software, so you know they are fully compatible. But definitely buy "Microsoft Complete." I've swapped my Surface Pro 4 out twice no questions asked, both times for some screen artifacts which I think came from too much pressure on the screen, and the second time they gave me a Pro 5 which hasn't had the issue. Their keyboards are exactly the same dimensions as Macbook too.
  - glinkot 5y ago
    After using a macbook with bootcamp for years, I finally bought a Surface Book 2 a couple of years back, thinking the same thing. Was close to the top of a line, nearly $6k AUD. Nice 'not butterfly' keyboard, unified hw/sw manufacturer. From the first few days it was problematic - had to reinstall from rescue media, and it intermittently failed to see the GPU. In between times, normal windows updates would create annoying issues - no more screen brightness adjustment for example. My least favourite one set the volume on any reconnected bluetooth device to 100%, thanks guys. I'll give it to them though, they didn't quibble about replacing them. On the third one, the keyboard went dark and the top half failed to identify the bottom half (they snap apart so the top half is like a giant ipad, for those unfamiliar). So dozens of device issues popped up constantly. At that point they were ready to give me a fourth and I opted for a refund. So support is good, the idea is fantastic (loved that crazy giant ipad!) but the dream of the 'hardware creators making sure the OS works perfectly' makes complete sense and has been proven by Apple. But MS failed to do it. I still live in hope for a future iteration that realises the promise. PS. I know a few people who have others in the surface line which seem reliable, so those are likely to be much better.
1024core 5y ago
I was contemplating buying a Dell to replace my 10-year old MBP, but after reading your comment, I will stay as far away from Dell as I can. Thanks for the warning, friend!
- rxbudian 5y ago
  Keep in mind there will be much more people complaining about how bad some electronic device is than people praising about how good it is because they have more reason to complain. All products have lemons and unless there's a site that collects information on repairs, it's hard to tell which laptop has a bad design. I've had 2 Dells for myself and bought one for my dad (all Inspirons) and never had a problem with them. Lattitudes are workhorses, so with people now working remotely there are companies that buy those laptops by the 100s, so the production quality of Dell Lattitudes should be high enough that Dell wouldn't have to deal with warranty issues from its corporate clients
  - JoshuaPK 5y ago
    I don't think this is a case of "some units are lemons"- from what I can see this is a design flaw of some sort. I've been buying Latitudes for personal use now for MANY years and this is the first "annoys me every day and can't be fixed (or they refuse to fix it)" issue I've had.
- bradwood 5y ago
  2 words: frame.work
  - krasin 5y ago
    I really wish it was true. Same issues with sleep on framework, see this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30166802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30166802
    - baskint 5y ago
      i own one and running Ubuntu on it and I confirm that it will drain the battery if left on sleep. Mine is always on charge and I make sure to shutdown before traveling. Otherwise, it is a decent machine for lagging around
fruit2020 5y ago
Isn’t this a known issue that it can’t hibernate properly?
jtwigg 5y ago
I had similar issues with dell support and my XPS 13 a while ago. Absolutely no way that I'll be buying another dell.
verdverm 5y ago
Dell monitors are pretty nice and have high quality. About the only thing I'd buy from them though.
- photon-torpedo 5y ago
  Yes... there are some nice models we'd like to buy. But we are business customers of Dell, and they tell us that these have 95 working days lead time (almost 4 months). While on their regular web page for consumers it says that these are available within 3 weeks. :(
ILMostro7 5y ago
AFAIK, the issue with hibernation, partly at least, is because they don't provide an alternative sleep method via firmware. Only the default method is available; e.g. S2idle on Linux. I was about to link to a discussion about that, but that seems to be gone as well. The relevant kernel docs here: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/power/states.txt https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/power/states.txt
rob_c 5y ago
Yep, have to agree completely. Support around the XPS is lacking when there is a hardware defect. I've even pointed out one with the bios which Dell wouldn't acknowledge or fix as my 9360 was way out of warranty by the time I'd identified it. (Random lockups on wake caused by bad i2c behaviour from trackpad, fix disable i2c and "fallback" to spi)... Ended up with 3 motherboards though as my employer has a good warranty agreement. Shame they all suffered from coil whine and the 2nd engineer sliced a cable with a screwdriver. I genuinely could have done better myself, ended up fixing the coil wine with non conductive hot snott.. Great work Dell...
dest 5y ago
A 2015 Dell XPS 13 9343 is still running fine today. I replaced the battery twice, DIY-sourced on AliExpress. Stellar machine for the price (< 1000€ at the time)
- hadlock 5y ago
  The sleep issue is in firmware, was introduced in 2017, and any time the ability to use the correct sleep mode is introduced in firmware, it's quietly removed. The 2015 XPS is a great laptop, the 2017 and forward have significant, ongoing power management issues.
saulrh 5y ago
The broken hibernate is my biggest problem - back in college my laptop cooked itself one day because it woke up in my well-padded messenger bag and started installing updates. >_<
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I do not understand how people with MacBooks have been able to slam their lid shut, shove the laptop in their bag, and then walk away for 15+ years, and in 2022, it is still only Apple laptops that can do that.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    I have a moderate Lenovo and have done that for years. It is a P Something. Nothing special. I have an Apple M1 machine this year too. Battery life / capacity is much better on the Apple. However, installing two batteries on the Lenovo is cheap to do and overall performance is comparable. The M1 is 2 to 3x the raw compute of the Lenovo. Anyway, I shut the lid and drop the machine in my bag all the time. How? Just have it hibernate. With today's fast SSD drives, one hardly notices it. I sure don't. Lenovo is running Win 10. M1 still on Big Sur.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      That’s good, I have not experienced betting same to shut the lid on any Dell Latitudes or HP Probooks, and the last Lenovo I tried was Yoga, which also did not have it. Perception is everything, I just do not understand why Microsoft leadership would not make such a convenient, useful, and publicly visible feature a top priority.
      - ddingus 5y ago
        I really dislike Dell laptops. Nothing but bad experiences. There's that perception right there! Won't own one. The two Apple machines I own are exemplary! One is the 2012 i7 MBP. Killer, but hot running machine. The M1 Air is crazy lean. Love it. I worry about it, hope I keep loving it. Harder to fix than the 2012... (And I generally fix my own stuff) All, but one of my Lenovo machines have been exemplary too. Tanks. Dropped 'em, froze one (literally, it got time in a deep freeze by mistake!), travel the world, bump, clank, slide, thump for a few years kind of travel. Not a lick of trouble. Maybe I've been lucky. However, I love Lenovo and Apple machines. For me, they work, with one gripe and that's the materials Apple uses for power bricks on the 2012. My ancient Lenovo, back from the Thinkpad days, has power devices that still look and work new! The little brick for the Apple has crapped out, damaged cable multiple times. I have an aftermarket one that looks more ugly, but so far just works. The Lenovo machines are generally easy to service. I've a W420 that I put parts in a couple times. It never actually failed, just got noisy. Oh, and I have an old T60p running XP. It's offline, has some dev software license or other on it that I don't want to spend for to replace and I may need. A few times a year I fire it up, and it's got a crappy fan assembly... But, the machine runs fine on passive cooling, so what I do is shoot a little air into the fan so the BIOS sees a spin. Once it boots, the fan is never commanded on again. (Or it rattles like no other) That's the machine I traveled with and really beat hard. Display is crisp and bright, keyboard worn down with no characters visible on most keys, and it's a joy to use still. I don't know whether it's Microsoft. One thing I've noticed on Dell and HP machines is their BIOS seems aggressive on performance, and often runs the fans hard. My W520 will do that too, if I set it, and I just don't. The other thing I've noted is the little hinge sensors are set to a hair trigger! To anyone struggling with the machine magically turning on in your bag, consider a few layers of tape where that sensor is. Make sure it's engaged. And that's if you can see the thing. On many newer machines we can't, because it's hidden somewhere, or is inductive. Apple tends to put a magnet there to keep the machine closed. Maybe they know something the others haven't figured out yet. But worth a look. My T60p did the cook in bag thing to me just once. I replaced the battery, because it was cooked!! And I put a little blob of nail polish on the sensor nub, and some tape. Later, the blob broke off, and I used thicker, stiffer tape. (the blob was attached to a little point, just not much to bond with) Point being, that little sensor was hair trigger and just does not need to be. My M1 air has a fairly aggressive lid open sensor. Only takes a degree or two and it's ON! I think it's aggressive, but not too much, but I also would make damn sure it's closed up type aggressive too. It does have a magnet, will stay closed under all but Extreme circumstances. It's probably okay.
Datenstrom 5y ago
Switched to System76 after I was given one at an old workplace and loved it, never had any problems with Linux on one. Had to deal with their support too once after I spilled beer on the keyboard during a late night hacking session. It was easy, low friction, talked to a real human, quick, and they even offered to replace it for free but I paid for it anyway.
josephcsible 5y ago
> They swapped many models to a shitty wifi card that caused bsod. I assume you mean the Killer card. If you bug their support about this, they'll often agree to replace yours with an Intel one.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
Yep. 3 generations of dell for me, every time a different problem. I miss my samsung ativ book. Next one will be a framework laptop.
Naracion 5y ago
Companies might also change / evolve / devolve over time--how old is your experience?
hadlock 5y ago
The wake from sleep issue on the XPS 15 is what killed Dell for me as a brand. I do not have this problem with any other brand. I chat with a lot of Dell XPS 15 owners and they all report the same issue.

tastysandwich 5y ago

Oh man oh man I have the worst story. My XPS 13's wifi stopped working completely. After a similar experience to yours with support, they dispatched someone to replace the whole motherboard. The dude completely botched it. The device wouldn't boot into Windows (BSOD), and he told me it was because I needed to reinstall Windows. And he didn't put the laptop back together properly - something inside was jammed under the motherboard so that the back plate wouldn't screw down all the way, and the laptop wouldn't close. Then he said to me, "Can I go now?" When I tried to argue (politely), he said he'd just call his supervisor, and then drove off! About 15 minutes later, I received an email that the job had been successfully completed. Under the "customer signature" area, I kid you not, he had written something like "verbal confirmation given". Needless to say, I kicked up such a big stink, emailing customer support, Michael Dell, and Angela Fox at Dell Australia. They sent me a brand new replacement.

sixothree 5y ago

I had so much trouble buying a replacement battery for a server raid card. At the time, this was a card they were still selling! Oh man. Dell. What a mess.

ansible 5y ago

> The computer would randomly wake up from hibernate and drain the battery till it was dead. I am under the impression that this was a more general Windows issue. Does someone else have more information?

Isthatablackgsd 5y ago
From my experience, it is the wake timers in some apps that abuses it. I recalled it is one of the function that use the wake timers. To find this out, open the cmd/PS/WT and type: powercfg -lastwake This will tell you which action or hardware initiated the wake. It should provide enough clue of the offending software. Also the wakes are recorded in the log, you would be able to pull up the event viewer to find the lists of the offending software that abuses this. There is a event ID for it which you can use to track this down, I couldn't remember the number. Edit: Here the guide for finding this in the event viewer.[0] [0] https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/63136-see-wake-source-windows-10-a.html https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/63136-see-wake-source-wi...
tomxor 5y ago
I had a couple of similar problem under Linux, but I believe these are purely software issues and thus unrelated to the windows ones. and also not specific to Dell AFAIK. 1. Linux kernel "mem-sleep" mode default [0], which determines what actually happens when systemd-sleep "suspend" is called. The default value is "s2idle" for many distros which is as good as leaving your computer running with processes paused... when what most users expect is some kind of suspend-to-ram ("deep"). Obviously this burns through battery pretty quickly but at least it shouldn't overheat. 2. I found this systemd infinite hybernate loop bug [1] (now fixed) when swap is smaller than RAM... although you only would come across this is you accidentally under-provisioned the swap partition on install like I did - but the failure mode was spectacularly bad, because it will retry over and over swapping and compressing the RAM which obviously ramps up the CPU, get hot with the lid closed, make short work of battery and SSD. Anyway the common issue is #1 which you just have to know about otherwise your computer doesn't really suspend at all, and since most machines are very quiet these days you won't notice unless you dig. [0] https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/538541/suspend-to-ram-with-systemd-configuration https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/538541/suspend-to-r... [1] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/19550 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/19550

spideymans 5y ago

I had disavowed Dell more than a decade ago due to their horrible support, but I figured it was time to give Dell another shot at the height of MacBook keyboard gate. Boy was I wrong. The laptop itself was great when it worked. But my XPS 13 shipped with a barely functional trackpad. As with you, I had to spend countless hours on the phone with them to get them to repair the laptop that was well within its warranty. Never again.

Scoundreller 5y ago

> The computer would randomly wake up from hibernate and drain the battery till it was dead. I had this happen, but it was the cat that would nap on the keyboard until the laptop died and stopped being warm.

the-dude 5y ago
This is either hilarious or you're working for Dell ( I love cats ).
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  It wasn’t a Dell, no.

Spooky23 5y ago

The secret to Dell is you need to buy “ProSupport”. It costs like $100 more. I had an issue that was known with certain Dell universal docking stations. We had the elevated support and got a hot fix in a few days. A colleague with the same laptop, same dock has the same problem and got nothing - they refused to acknowledge or support the dock connection, claiming that they only support “hardware” and not windows drivers. Eventually the driver was released a few months later. Other OEMs like Lenovo and HP don’t fuck around with stuff like this. Just price Dell like for like with the equivalent support offering. Dell’s pricing is usually very competitive, so you’ll probably find they will still win some comparisons, and when they do the “pro” offering is better.

raxxorrax 5y ago
This is such a bad business decision as they could really establish themselves on the notebook market, even it got smaller in the meantime. But they have had this strategy for years and I don't believe they will be able to continue this for much longer because more and more people talk negatively about Dell. Problem is there are not too many alternatives and it seems to be a general trend.
getcrunk 5y ago
> The secret to Dell is you need to buy “ProSupport”. It costs like $100 more. I had the prosupport, still got Indian call center.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  I've received plenty of decent support from what seem to be Indian call centers. ("seem" because I could be wrong about accents). I've had awful support from other call centers. I have also been involved in multiple call center procurements: The question is more about the training of call center staff that you're willing to pay for, not location. Dell could get high quality call centers in India if they were willing to put resources into building an excellent knowledge based and extensive training for call center staff. Dell has chosen not to go that route.

whylo 5y ago

> The computer would randomly wake up from hibernate and drain the battery till it was dead. I had exactly the same thing on my XPS 15. I'd take it out of my bag, it'd be warm and the battery would be dead. Plus one day it suddenly decided it didn't have a TPM module (didn't even show up in BIOS) so BitLocker stopped working, and of late the CPU is constantly throtling and fans running at full blast because it's overheating even with next to no load (I've checked the fans for dust).

quasse 5y ago

> Then the battery. Oh the battery. The computer would randomly wake up from hibernate and drain the battery till it was dead. I have a Precision laptop (absolutely top of the line business laptop that shares hardware with the XPS 15) that does this too. The only fix is to either keep it plugged in 100% of the time or perform a full system shut down any time it's going to be unplugged. It's extremely frustrating and has basically killed any usefulness the laptop has as a portable computer.

0xbadcafebee 5y ago
We used to buy Precision laptops for 3D designers due to the need for a beefy graphics card, and I got the impression they were just heavier versions of Dell's regular crap. IBM was my preference before Lenovo, but now I have no idea if there's any premium Intel laptops left.

tomxor 5y ago

> Dells batteries are rated for less cycles (half compared to apple) [...] They only sell refurbished batteries Are there any decent battery suppliers that sell dell compatible replacements?

blintz 5y ago

Similar experience with the battery and sleep on XPS devices. Constantly opening my backpack to discover a literal hot mess. At this point I’m fed up - what’s a better Windows laptop? Not interested in touchscreen/tablet modes and I’m willing to pay quite a bit. I am leaning towards something from the Surface Laptop line, but open to suggestions.

mattwad 5y ago
I can recommend the Surface line. I think it's a huge difference when Microsoft is selling both the hardware and software, so you know they are fully compatible. But definitely buy "Microsoft Complete." I've swapped my Surface Pro 4 out twice no questions asked, both times for some screen artifacts which I think came from too much pressure on the screen, and the second time they gave me a Pro 5 which hasn't had the issue. Their keyboards are exactly the same dimensions as Macbook too.
- glinkot 5y ago
  After using a macbook with bootcamp for years, I finally bought a Surface Book 2 a couple of years back, thinking the same thing. Was close to the top of a line, nearly $6k AUD. Nice 'not butterfly' keyboard, unified hw/sw manufacturer. From the first few days it was problematic - had to reinstall from rescue media, and it intermittently failed to see the GPU. In between times, normal windows updates would create annoying issues - no more screen brightness adjustment for example. My least favourite one set the volume on any reconnected bluetooth device to 100%, thanks guys. I'll give it to them though, they didn't quibble about replacing them. On the third one, the keyboard went dark and the top half failed to identify the bottom half (they snap apart so the top half is like a giant ipad, for those unfamiliar). So dozens of device issues popped up constantly. At that point they were ready to give me a fourth and I opted for a refund. So support is good, the idea is fantastic (loved that crazy giant ipad!) but the dream of the 'hardware creators making sure the OS works perfectly' makes complete sense and has been proven by Apple. But MS failed to do it. I still live in hope for a future iteration that realises the promise. PS. I know a few people who have others in the surface line which seem reliable, so those are likely to be much better.

1024core 5y ago

I was contemplating buying a Dell to replace my 10-year old MBP, but after reading your comment, I will stay as far away from Dell as I can. Thanks for the warning, friend!

rxbudian 5y ago
Keep in mind there will be much more people complaining about how bad some electronic device is than people praising about how good it is because they have more reason to complain. All products have lemons and unless there's a site that collects information on repairs, it's hard to tell which laptop has a bad design. I've had 2 Dells for myself and bought one for my dad (all Inspirons) and never had a problem with them. Lattitudes are workhorses, so with people now working remotely there are companies that buy those laptops by the 100s, so the production quality of Dell Lattitudes should be high enough that Dell wouldn't have to deal with warranty issues from its corporate clients
- JoshuaPK 5y ago
  I don't think this is a case of "some units are lemons"- from what I can see this is a design flaw of some sort. I've been buying Latitudes for personal use now for MANY years and this is the first "annoys me every day and can't be fixed (or they refuse to fix it)" issue I've had.
bradwood 5y ago
2 words: frame.work
- krasin 5y ago
  I really wish it was true. Same issues with sleep on framework, see this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30166802 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30166802
  - baskint 5y ago
    i own one and running Ubuntu on it and I confirm that it will drain the battery if left on sleep. Mine is always on charge and I make sure to shutdown before traveling. Otherwise, it is a decent machine for lagging around

fruit2020 5y ago

Isn’t this a known issue that it can’t hibernate properly?

jtwigg 5y ago

I had similar issues with dell support and my XPS 13 a while ago. Absolutely no way that I'll be buying another dell.

verdverm 5y ago

Dell monitors are pretty nice and have high quality. About the only thing I'd buy from them though.

photon-torpedo 5y ago
Yes... there are some nice models we'd like to buy. But we are business customers of Dell, and they tell us that these have 95 working days lead time (almost 4 months). While on their regular web page for consumers it says that these are available within 3 weeks. :(

ILMostro7 5y ago

AFAIK, the issue with hibernation, partly at least, is because they don't provide an alternative sleep method via firmware. Only the default method is available; e.g. S2idle on Linux. I was about to link to a discussion about that, but that seems to be gone as well. The relevant kernel docs here: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/power/states.txt https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/power/states.txt

rob_c 5y ago

Yep, have to agree completely. Support around the XPS is lacking when there is a hardware defect. I've even pointed out one with the bios which Dell wouldn't acknowledge or fix as my 9360 was way out of warranty by the time I'd identified it. (Random lockups on wake caused by bad i2c behaviour from trackpad, fix disable i2c and "fallback" to spi)... Ended up with 3 motherboards though as my employer has a good warranty agreement. Shame they all suffered from coil whine and the 2nd engineer sliced a cable with a screwdriver. I genuinely could have done better myself, ended up fixing the coil wine with non conductive hot snott.. Great work Dell...

dest 5y ago

A 2015 Dell XPS 13 9343 is still running fine today. I replaced the battery twice, DIY-sourced on AliExpress. Stellar machine for the price (< 1000€ at the time)

hadlock 5y ago
The sleep issue is in firmware, was introduced in 2017, and any time the ability to use the correct sleep mode is introduced in firmware, it's quietly removed. The 2015 XPS is a great laptop, the 2017 and forward have significant, ongoing power management issues.

saulrh 5y ago

The broken hibernate is my biggest problem - back in college my laptop cooked itself one day because it woke up in my well-padded messenger bag and started installing updates. >_<

lotsofpulp 5y ago
I do not understand how people with MacBooks have been able to slam their lid shut, shove the laptop in their bag, and then walk away for 15+ years, and in 2022, it is still only Apple laptops that can do that.
- ddingus 5y ago
  I have a moderate Lenovo and have done that for years. It is a P Something. Nothing special. I have an Apple M1 machine this year too. Battery life / capacity is much better on the Apple. However, installing two batteries on the Lenovo is cheap to do and overall performance is comparable. The M1 is 2 to 3x the raw compute of the Lenovo. Anyway, I shut the lid and drop the machine in my bag all the time. How? Just have it hibernate. With today's fast SSD drives, one hardly notices it. I sure don't. Lenovo is running Win 10. M1 still on Big Sur.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    That’s good, I have not experienced betting same to shut the lid on any Dell Latitudes or HP Probooks, and the last Lenovo I tried was Yoga, which also did not have it. Perception is everything, I just do not understand why Microsoft leadership would not make such a convenient, useful, and publicly visible feature a top priority.
    - ddingus 5y ago
      I really dislike Dell laptops. Nothing but bad experiences. There's that perception right there! Won't own one. The two Apple machines I own are exemplary! One is the 2012 i7 MBP. Killer, but hot running machine. The M1 Air is crazy lean. Love it. I worry about it, hope I keep loving it. Harder to fix than the 2012... (And I generally fix my own stuff) All, but one of my Lenovo machines have been exemplary too. Tanks. Dropped 'em, froze one (literally, it got time in a deep freeze by mistake!), travel the world, bump, clank, slide, thump for a few years kind of travel. Not a lick of trouble. Maybe I've been lucky. However, I love Lenovo and Apple machines. For me, they work, with one gripe and that's the materials Apple uses for power bricks on the 2012. My ancient Lenovo, back from the Thinkpad days, has power devices that still look and work new! The little brick for the Apple has crapped out, damaged cable multiple times. I have an aftermarket one that looks more ugly, but so far just works. The Lenovo machines are generally easy to service. I've a W420 that I put parts in a couple times. It never actually failed, just got noisy. Oh, and I have an old T60p running XP. It's offline, has some dev software license or other on it that I don't want to spend for to replace and I may need. A few times a year I fire it up, and it's got a crappy fan assembly... But, the machine runs fine on passive cooling, so what I do is shoot a little air into the fan so the BIOS sees a spin. Once it boots, the fan is never commanded on again. (Or it rattles like no other) That's the machine I traveled with and really beat hard. Display is crisp and bright, keyboard worn down with no characters visible on most keys, and it's a joy to use still. I don't know whether it's Microsoft. One thing I've noticed on Dell and HP machines is their BIOS seems aggressive on performance, and often runs the fans hard. My W520 will do that too, if I set it, and I just don't. The other thing I've noted is the little hinge sensors are set to a hair trigger! To anyone struggling with the machine magically turning on in your bag, consider a few layers of tape where that sensor is. Make sure it's engaged. And that's if you can see the thing. On many newer machines we can't, because it's hidden somewhere, or is inductive. Apple tends to put a magnet there to keep the machine closed. Maybe they know something the others haven't figured out yet. But worth a look. My T60p did the cook in bag thing to me just once. I replaced the battery, because it was cooked!! And I put a little blob of nail polish on the sensor nub, and some tape. Later, the blob broke off, and I used thicker, stiffer tape. (the blob was attached to a little point, just not much to bond with) Point being, that little sensor was hair trigger and just does not need to be. My M1 air has a fairly aggressive lid open sensor. Only takes a degree or two and it's ON! I think it's aggressive, but not too much, but I also would make damn sure it's closed up type aggressive too. It does have a magnet, will stay closed under all but Extreme circumstances. It's probably okay.

Datenstrom 5y ago

Switched to System76 after I was given one at an old workplace and loved it, never had any problems with Linux on one. Had to deal with their support too once after I spilled beer on the keyboard during a late night hacking session. It was easy, low friction, talked to a real human, quick, and they even offered to replace it for free but I paid for it anyway.

josephcsible 5y ago

> They swapped many models to a shitty wifi card that caused bsod. I assume you mean the Killer card. If you bug their support about this, they'll often agree to replace yours with an Intel one.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

Yep. 3 generations of dell for me, every time a different problem. I miss my samsung ativ book. Next one will be a framework laptop.

Naracion 5y ago

Companies might also change / evolve / devolve over time--how old is your experience?

hadlock 5y ago

The wake from sleep issue on the XPS 15 is what killed Dell for me as a brand. I do not have this problem with any other brand. I chat with a lot of Dell XPS 15 owners and they all report the same issue.