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I have a DELL laptop. Probably the worst purchase I made. The one saving grace is that SupportAssist actually works, and does make post-crash/post-windows-deat

I have a DELL laptop. Probably the worst purchase I made. The one saving grace is that SupportAssist actually works, and does make post-crash/post-windows-death recovery very simple and easy. But that's the thing. I can tell that they put effort into this OS recovery tool, explicitly because this Laptop is a disaster of a product. Temperatures? Burning. Fans? Locked down. Freezing? Constantly. Crashing? Commonly. Blue screens? Less common now, but used to be frequent. Just had to do another OS recovery yesterday. But hey, it breaks constantly like a Russian Lada, and can be "fixed" relatively quickly and easily.

sowbug 3y ago
Sorry about your bad experience, but what does this story have to do with misleading monitor pricing?
- Prickle 3y ago
  DELL uses pricing based on some unknowable calculus based on competitor products. So they show their monitor as a "sale" relative to competitor XYZ's monitor. Reality is that the product is just cheaper and worse than the competitor. This computer was purchased based on one of these "sales". In terms of raw performance, it seemed like a decent deal. It was not. The issue isn't just their monitors, so I am a bit confused as to why this fine singles out monitors.
hhh 3y ago
Dell very rarely builds things like this. They just buy them and slap their name on it.
zeven7 3y ago
I don't like Dell as a company, but I've owned XPS laptops for years and haven't been able to find something I like better. The only real problem I have with it seems to be a Windows problem that other laptops also have (modern standby). My other complaint was with Waves MaxxAudio, but it hasn't bothered me on my latest XPS the way it did on the older ones. Not sure if that problem is fixed or if I just got in some sort of lucky configuration that made it go away.
- Prickle 3y ago
  I actually get around modern standby by simply replacing sleep with hibernate on everything. It takes longer to start up, but at least the PC isn't burning hot, or wasting battery. Waves is... incredibly annoying. Could be worse I suppose, but I wish it wasn't a thing. The computer will randomly shut off the audio jack so it makes audio issues even harder to diagnose. The number of times where I was monkeying around trying to figure out what was causing it. Ugh. I find that it usually involves 3 steps. The audio\mic quality downgrades, then entirely shuts off the mic, then shuts off audio. I have a Inspirion(?) G7 7790. It's an old machine by today's standards, but it has had many problems from the start.
varispeed 3y ago
I remember the boot roulette with my XPS. The laptop randomly just wouldn't turn on. I learned that biggest chance for it to turn on was to disconnect power, plug it back in and quickly press the power button and hold. Sometimes it took half an hour of this dance. Eventually it stopped turning on. The "good" thing was that when this happened I bought a cheap post lease Thinkpad and just put my XPS's nvme in. I could resume work straight away it just worked. I paid £100 for that Thinkpad and it was miles better than then flagship XPS. That being said, I decided to take a plunge and bought M1 Max. This think is next level and smokes any laptops I had before. But Dell in comparison is just complete junk and that company should be banned from making laptops.
tstrimple 3y ago
My last attempt to switch back to non-Apple laptops was a fully loaded XPS 15 right around the time I wasn't willing to commit to an M1. I was excited to get back to a dedicated GPU and the vapor chamber cooling design allegedly worked very well and the screen was supposed to be better than Apple's. I'd definitely put it up there with the worst purchases I've made. As you mentioned, the vapor chamber does nothing. Even at idle the laptop was HOT. For some reason the combination of Microsoft / OEMs still cannot make a laptop which just sleeps when you close the lid. Throw the laptop in a bag and when you get to your destination and the laptop is literally too hot to touch because it's been doing something in there the entire time despite being closed. That fantastic screen was also completely ruined by Windows / Dell drivers and software. Dark scenes, which HDR is supposed to excel at instead were crushed down to muddled greys with heavy banding. That's not a laptop I would have kept if it cost me $500, never mind close to $4k.

sowbug 3y ago

Sorry about your bad experience, but what does this story have to do with misleading monitor pricing?

Prickle 3y ago
DELL uses pricing based on some unknowable calculus based on competitor products. So they show their monitor as a "sale" relative to competitor XYZ's monitor. Reality is that the product is just cheaper and worse than the competitor. This computer was purchased based on one of these "sales". In terms of raw performance, it seemed like a decent deal. It was not. The issue isn't just their monitors, so I am a bit confused as to why this fine singles out monitors.

hhh 3y ago

Dell very rarely builds things like this. They just buy them and slap their name on it.

zeven7 3y ago

I don't like Dell as a company, but I've owned XPS laptops for years and haven't been able to find something I like better. The only real problem I have with it seems to be a Windows problem that other laptops also have (modern standby). My other complaint was with Waves MaxxAudio, but it hasn't bothered me on my latest XPS the way it did on the older ones. Not sure if that problem is fixed or if I just got in some sort of lucky configuration that made it go away.

Prickle 3y ago
I actually get around modern standby by simply replacing sleep with hibernate on everything. It takes longer to start up, but at least the PC isn't burning hot, or wasting battery. Waves is... incredibly annoying. Could be worse I suppose, but I wish it wasn't a thing. The computer will randomly shut off the audio jack so it makes audio issues even harder to diagnose. The number of times where I was monkeying around trying to figure out what was causing it. Ugh. I find that it usually involves 3 steps. The audio\mic quality downgrades, then entirely shuts off the mic, then shuts off audio. I have a Inspirion(?) G7 7790. It's an old machine by today's standards, but it has had many problems from the start.

varispeed 3y ago

I remember the boot roulette with my XPS. The laptop randomly just wouldn't turn on. I learned that biggest chance for it to turn on was to disconnect power, plug it back in and quickly press the power button and hold. Sometimes it took half an hour of this dance. Eventually it stopped turning on. The "good" thing was that when this happened I bought a cheap post lease Thinkpad and just put my XPS's nvme in. I could resume work straight away it just worked. I paid £100 for that Thinkpad and it was miles better than then flagship XPS. That being said, I decided to take a plunge and bought M1 Max. This think is next level and smokes any laptops I had before. But Dell in comparison is just complete junk and that company should be banned from making laptops.

tstrimple 3y ago

My last attempt to switch back to non-Apple laptops was a fully loaded XPS 15 right around the time I wasn't willing to commit to an M1. I was excited to get back to a dedicated GPU and the vapor chamber cooling design allegedly worked very well and the screen was supposed to be better than Apple's. I'd definitely put it up there with the worst purchases I've made. As you mentioned, the vapor chamber does nothing. Even at idle the laptop was HOT. For some reason the combination of Microsoft / OEMs still cannot make a laptop which just sleeps when you close the lid. Throw the laptop in a bag and when you get to your destination and the laptop is literally too hot to touch because it's been doing something in there the entire time despite being closed. That fantastic screen was also completely ruined by Windows / Dell drivers and software. Dark scenes, which HDR is supposed to excel at instead were crushed down to muddled greys with heavy banding. That's not a laptop I would have kept if it cost me $500, never mind close to $4k.