Dell laptop reliability

denat

A lot of problems with Dell laptops are being reported here.

Are Dells less reliable than other laptops or just more ubiquitous, thus giving rise to more reports of problems?

Skatedude

I often fix pc's and laptops for friends and friends of friends and personaly i would never buy or recommend dell to anyone as i see far too many of them packing up after a year or 2 where i see other brands lasting much longer. but you also get what you pay for and dells are often cheaper then others.

Overheal

Handiness right here: http://www.pcmag.com/image_popup/0,1871,iid=242801,00.asp

apples are ranked very high and unlikely due to fanboyism. i havent used a mac since the 7th grade myself, but they must be doing something right. they are however a strong stretch more expensive to buy. And I was not impressed when my roommate showed me why he couldnt do a self-repair on his macbook a couple years ago: a proprietary screw head. eff that.

Actually given the results its a wonder im as complacent with my HP as I am. Not awful. But not to be written home about. No offense Cryos you didnt do it.

But to answer your question OP, this survey does imply Dell holds all categories for highest rate of failure. And the data from dell was compiled from a much larger test range than the other brands. Just like HP, they seem to build a lot more, and as a consequence, a lot more fail per 100 units. Possibly due to rushed manufacturing.

The data also seems to reccomend exploring the Asus brand.

robbie_998

the majority of Dell issues are battery and charger related, but my laptop is going over 2 years now and never an issue

of course my battery is gone but it lasted well.

Overheal

dont forget motherboard issues, related to GPU failures, thanks to nvidia. this inflated most vendor scores a bit on failure rates, but that applied to even the apples. everybodah had those cursed things in em.

robbie_998

Overheal wrote: »

dont forget motherboard issues, related to GPU failures, thanks to nvidia. this inflated most vendor scores a bit on failure rates, but that applied to even the apples. everybodah had those cursed things in em.

that would be an nvidia issue then, nothing to do with Dell,,,or Apple for that matter

Overheal

no. but it is kinda blanket across the market. so dell is still to blame for something. same with hp. at least with dell the heatsink vent is standard and you can attach external fans to it. HP pav's are beveled and awkward. http://www.provantage.com/startech-nbfan~7STR90ET.htm

robbie_998

Overheal wrote: »

no. but it is kinda blanket across the market. so dell is still to blame for something. same with hp. at least with dell the heatsink vent is standard and you can attach external fans to it. HP pav's are beveled and awkward. http://www.provantage.com/startech-nbfan~7STR90ET.htm

its just very simply Dell are easier to customize and easy to repair/take apart and so on. Hp and Apple and that are a right pain

leninbenjamin

Overheal wrote: »

Handiness right here: http://www.pcmag.com/image_popup/0,1871,iid=242801,00.asp

well Sony, Apple and Lenovo you'd expect to more reliable, as they (usually) cost a fair bit more than a Dell. If i had money I'd go for one of these all the time, but I don't so I go for Dell where the price/performance ratio is much higher.

I can't see a date on that thing, but Asus i think are up there because of the prominence of their netbooks compared to other brands and netbooks should always be more reliable as they are using less powerful hardware, generate less heat and generally have less parts that can go wrong. That's not to say Asus laptops aren't good, but typically whenever i'm going to recommend a laptop for someone i find the range of specs that Asus have are much more limited than others.

As for Dell's reliability, I've honestly not found them was bad as people say. I think part of the reason they've generated more bad press for themselves is that there are much more Dell's in Ireland than of other brands. Their reliability has fallen a lot though in recent years. There was a time when Dell's would happily last a decade or so, whereas I think since the turn of the millennium 3 years seems to be about the average. An electronic engineer once told me though that most Dell failures are simply due to a connection on the motherboard burning out and that in many cases it's just a case of re-soldering it. Dunno the truth of that though.

There have been 5 Dell laptops in my house over the years, one failed when it was about 2 years old, an Inspiron. Currently have a Vostro (one with a dodgy Nvidia chip) and Latitude and both are going strong.

Voodu Child

denat wrote: »

A lot of problems with Dell laptops are being reported here.

Are Dells less reliable than other laptops or just more ubiquitous, thus giving rise to more reports of problems?

They are about average.

A lot of things have to be taken into account, including the number of laptops sold and the people buying them. Dell sell a lot of machines to idiot students and first time buyers (because of the price). If you gave expensive Asusteks and Apples to these same people, im sure they would manage to break them just as much. Whereas people buying high-end systems tend to be more tech-savvy, and also tend to look after their laptops better. And people buying Apples usually would praise them no matter what the reliability (because of Apples excellent warranty support).

On the whole, i'd say Dell are average. Nothing more, nothing less. To be honest most laptop brands are pretty similar these days.

When buying any laptop i'd be more concerned about warranty and after-sales support rather than some internet notion of reliability.