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Man, we have a fleet of 790's and 7010's. Haven't had any pop yet (UK based) but that's interesting to know. How many would you say you've seen fail?
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Jul 14, 2014 09:19
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I've also got a fleet of 790's here and not a single one has had a failed PSU. I'm in central Florida and I've had 3 sites take direct lightning strikes in the last week... Do you have these things plugged right in to the wall without any power protection or something? 
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Jul 14, 2014 15:56
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I admittedly haven't been dealing as much with Dell lately, but I've had great luck with them in the past. I'm a Premier-class reseller so I've probably fared better than some. My Latitude e6330 "Outlet Special" (not bought through my reseller account) was insanely cheap and my warranty carried internationally; It wasn't Next Business Day like it'd be in the states (took probably a week or so) but it was still on-site. Plus I got a processor boost because they didn't have my specific board in stock.
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Jul 14, 2014 16:37
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blackbox posted:Their tech support can't even agree amongst themselves. I bought a laptop in the UK then moved to China for work. After owning it for 3 weeks it stopped turning on, but I was pretty happy when I contacted their live chat and they gave me a phone number for their local office who sent someone out to replace my motherboard. We have a lot of issues like this being a global company. Long story short we have to make sure we buy from the local Dell or HP office to get warranty support. We once bought some systems in the US and then sent them to China and Brazil and found out that there was basically no warranty support. Now we have to deal with Dell China/India/Brazil when we buy systems to be used in those countries.
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Jul 14, 2014 18:41
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Malek posted:Out of curiosity, did you get Basic or ProSupport contracts on these? World of difference from my observations. I'm curious about this myself. We get the Mission Critical 4 hour deal and it's been great. I'm also curious if they got the basic DRAC or Enterprise DRAC because again, Enterprise is great. I've yet to be able to test iLO with a full license, so I can't compare apples to apples, but just looking at the layout, I think I prefer DRAC.
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Jul 14, 2014 19:04
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Dell tried to send me a one year warranty extension on all of my Vostro 3460s (350-400 of the frickin things) for $332 a unit. For one year. I think Dell knows something that I don't. "Please keep in mind the cost of the warranty will be a lot cheaper than the price of getting the systems repaired yourself or purchasing a new system." 
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Jul 14, 2014 19:20
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Spent close to 4k on an Alienware laptop. Got about 18 months out of it before something on the motherboard went died. As it was out of warranty by 6 months, I tried to order a replacement, because why not? I am pretty good at stuff like this, and if I go slowly and carefully it shouldn't be overly hard. Except they won't sell a motherboard to me. So I send it to them so they can replace it and I get the estimate, 2k. Since investing 3900 in a laptop was already stupid on my part, I decided that spending another 2 was even dumber so now this beautiful piece of hardware gathers dust while I decide if I want to part it out or Dell lets me buy a motherboard. It was, and will be the only Dell product I will ever buy.
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Jul 14, 2014 20:17
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Zaii posted:Man, we have a fleet of 790's and 7010's. Haven't had any pop yet (UK based) but that's interesting to know. I've had to service like 20 machines, different buildings too. Never at the same time so it wasn't a utility issue.
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Jul 14, 2014 20:41
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9axle posted:Spent close to 4k on an Alienware laptop. Got about 18 months out of it before something on the motherboard went died. As it was out of warranty by 6 months, I tried to order a replacement, because why not? I am pretty good at stuff like this, and if I go slowly and carefully it shouldn't be overly hard. Except they won't sell a motherboard to me. So I send it to them so they can replace it and I get the estimate, 2k. Since investing 3900 in a laptop was already stupid on my part, I decided that spending another 2 was even dumber so now this beautiful piece of hardware gathers dust while I decide if I want to part it out or Dell lets me buy a motherboard. It was, and will be the only Dell product I will ever buy. Go to support.dell.com and punch the service tag in and see how much it'd be to renew the warranty.
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Jul 14, 2014 20:56
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9axle posted:Spent close to 4k on an Alienware laptop. Got about 18 months out of it before something on the motherboard went died. As it was out of warranty by 6 months, I tried to order a replacement, because why not? I am pretty good at stuff like this, and if I go slowly and carefully it shouldn't be overly hard. Except they won't sell a motherboard to me. So I send it to them so they can replace it and I get the estimate, 2k. Since investing 3900 in a laptop was already stupid on my part, I decided that spending another 2 was even dumber so now this beautiful piece of hardware gathers dust while I decide if I want to part it out or Dell lets me buy a motherboard. It was, and will be the only Dell product I will ever buy. Or check on ebay for a replacement. I have a colleague at work with an Alienware as his work laptop in order to use a crazy amount of memory, the keyboard bust and Dell no longer have parts so he no scours ebay and craigslist to scavenge parts.
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Jul 15, 2014 01:44
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I spent 45 days on dell support to resolve a laptop issue last year (that never really got resolved, they just replaced my laptop with a shittier laptop with better specs) and 60 days on a dell AIO xps machine issue - dead lcd led to an lcd and motherboard replacement, which led to multiple motherboard replacements because the ethernet was non functional, which led to multiple machine replacements because they couldn't figure out how to send me a machine with equivalent specs. Over one weekend, instead of receiving the promised, correct machine, I was mailed shipping labels from multiple companies, three different ways (including in a padded, protected box). The twitter team I tried to resort to somehow ended up slower than the guys on the phone. I'm probably not going to buy another machine from them (probably)
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Jul 15, 2014 03:45
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9axle posted:Spent close to 4k on an Alienware laptop. Got about 18 months out of it before something on the motherboard went died. As it was out of warranty by 6 months, I tried to order a replacement, because why not? I am pretty good at stuff like this, and if I go slowly and carefully it shouldn't be overly hard. Except they won't sell a motherboard to me. So I send it to them so they can replace it and I get the estimate, 2k. Since investing 3900 in a laptop was already stupid on my part, I decided that spending another 2 was even dumber so now this beautiful piece of hardware gathers dust while I decide if I want to part it out or Dell lets me buy a motherboard. It was, and will be the only Dell product I will ever buy. Go to eBay and find a motherboard. I've kept my Studio XPS 13 that they manufactured for about 6 months and then never mentioned again alive for 6 years. It's pretty much the laptop of Theseus by now.
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Jul 15, 2014 07:03
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9axle posted:Spent close to 4k on an Alienware laptop. Got about 18 months out of it before something on the motherboard went died. As it was out of warranty by 6 months, I tried to order a replacement, because why not? I am pretty good at stuff like this, and if I go slowly and carefully it shouldn't be overly hard. Except they won't sell a motherboard to me. So I send it to them so they can replace it and I get the estimate, 2k. Since investing 3900 in a laptop was already stupid on my part, I decided that spending another 2 was even dumber so now this beautiful piece of hardware gathers dust while I decide if I want to part it out or Dell lets me buy a motherboard. It was, and will be the only Dell product I will ever buy. You spent $4k on a gaming laptop and got a 12 month warranty. I think we'll let that speak for itself. On the same hand, my coworker bought a Razer Blade gaming laptop two months ago and he's already had to RMA it twice  I'll never drop any amount of money on a gaming capable laptop, ever.
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Jul 15, 2014 07:28
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So many of my friends have been burned by buying gaming laptops. To tell you the truth I don't know a single person that bought one that didn't have some sort of hardware failure within the first 1.5 years of ownership, and I definitely know like 10 people that have bought one at some point in their life. It's not like a single one of them actually used it as a laptop either - ~1hr battery life if you're actually trying to use it as a gaming machine on the go. Everyone I know with one just ends up using it as a desktop (with some elaborate cooling system set up too, like balancing it on books so that the vents are suspended in air, fans blowing on it, laptop cooling pads, etc.) I mean really why the gently caress do people buy these? Why not just flush $1k down the toilet, then use the other $1k to buy a decent gaming desktop?
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Jul 15, 2014 09:40
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The key to getting whatever you want quickly from Dells (or really anyones) support is to say you tried with a known good part, and that worked. For anything they want you to try, answer "I already tried that. It didn't work." Other key phrases is it worked with an external monitor/keyboard/mouse, it doesn't work in BIOS, and it doesn't work with a Linux live CD and you tried restoring the restore partition or reinstalling Windows from the supplied CD, so it's not a software problem. Most of my support calls to Dell are less than 3 minutes.
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Jul 15, 2014 10:27
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I worked as an IT repair goon throughout university, and I can't help but remember the number of GX260 and 270 motherboards that were replaced. Entire labs, consisting of 100+ machines, easily - all needed a motherboard replacement. Why? defective capacitors. Not strictly Dell's fault, but goddamn, you'd expect some Rubycon capacitors or something of equivalent quality in business grade machines. Their laptops also got progressively shittier when they went from PIII to P4 and P-M. Those loving lovely grey plastic chassis with the cracked screen lids and poo poo hinges... gently caress Dell.
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Jul 15, 2014 13:15
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krooj posted:I worked as an IT repair goon throughout university, and I can't help but remember the number of GX260 and 270 motherboards that were replaced. Entire labs, consisting of 100+ machines, easily - all needed a motherboard replacement. Why? defective capacitors. Not strictly Dell's fault, but goddamn, you'd expect some Rubycon capacitors or something of equivalent quality in business grade machines. Their laptops also got progressively shittier when they went from PIII to P4 and P-M. Those loving lovely grey plastic chassis with the cracked screen lids and poo poo hinges... If I'm remembering correctly, they were counterfeit caps. edit: Yep. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
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Jul 15, 2014 14:01
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They still make the best monitors right?
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Jul 15, 2014 14:41
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Sephiroth_IRA posted:They still make the best monitors right? Some of the best, for sure. They certainly haven't dropped in quality there.
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Jul 15, 2014 14:41
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wilfredmerriweathr posted:So many of my friends have been burned by buying gaming laptops. To tell you the truth I don't know a single person that bought one that didn't have some sort of hardware failure within the first 1.5 years of ownership, and I definitely know like 10 people that have bought one at some point in their life. Both the wife and the old roomate have Asus gaming laptops that are upwards of...3-4 years old now that haven't given a lick of problems. They were both working rotation-based jobs in the rear end-end of nowhere and wanted something to play games on while away from home for two weeks to a month at a time - both performed admirably. That being said, for 99% of people, its a bad idea. But there are niche cases who can use it, and there are better quality units out there 
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Jul 15, 2014 14:47
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ryanbruce posted:I admittedly haven't been dealing as much with Dell lately, but I've had great luck with them in the past. I'm a Premier-class reseller so I've probably fared better than some. Do you get new reps every week? By the time we update our contact list it's usually about out of date as one of our reps has changed.
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Jul 16, 2014 05:44
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krooj posted:I worked as an IT repair goon throughout university, and I can't help but remember the number of GX260 and 270 motherboards that were replaced. Entire labs, consisting of 100+ machines, easily - all needed a motherboard replacement. Why? defective capacitors. Not strictly Dell's fault, but goddamn, you'd expect some Rubycon capacitors or something of equivalent quality in business grade machines. Their laptops also got progressively shittier when they went from PIII to P4 and P-M. Those loving lovely grey plastic chassis with the cracked screen lids and poo poo hinges... We just loaded 300-400 260s, 270s, and 280s onto the surplus truck today!  The 260s were by far the most reliable of the bunch. 270s had motherboard caps failing all the time, and 280s tended to see the power supplies fail. We got them all through donations, and all outside of Dell's "We hosed up, we'll fix it for free no questions asked" window. I don't think any of our suppliers used that window, either, when they were still under lease. Thankfully we had so many we could swap them out easily.
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Jul 16, 2014 07:09
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Maneki Neko posted:Do you get new reps every week? By the time we update our contact list it's usually about out of date as one of our reps has changed. Nope. My points of contact stayed pretty stable. There was a lot of changes earlier on, but that's because my account status kept getting upgraded so I'd be sent to different teams. Now I have a team of reps (depending on my need) and I haven't noticed a ton of churn there. Though I've stopped receiving emails from my reps; perhaps they've broken up with me? 
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Jul 16, 2014 08:54
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See you in hell, turds. Also, LOL at how rough you had to be to open those cases. Especially in light of the fact that those used traditional HDDs. SMACK.
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Jul 16, 2014 15:47
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wilfredmerriweathr posted:So many of my friends have been burned by buying gaming laptops. To tell you the truth I don't know a single person that bought one that didn't have some sort of hardware failure within the first 1.5 years of ownership, and I definitely know like 10 people that have bought one at some point in their life. I travel, and spend inordinate amounts of time in hotels so a tower is out of the question. I admit it was a mistake on my part, next time will a Lenovo or something of a higher quality.
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Jul 16, 2014 17:29
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Gaming laptops always make me start to froth but then I remember people play games like outside of their house then I calm down
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Jul 16, 2014 18:12
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Chalk up another dead power supply, this time on a 990.
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Jul 16, 2014 20:05
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9axle posted:I travel, and spend inordinate amounts of time in hotels so a tower is out of the question. I admit it was a mistake on my part, next time will a Lenovo or something of a higher quality. The most recent one was a lenovo, so they are not immune - it was a lenovo ideapad gaming laptop, overheated/drew so much current that it melted the wires connecting the AC adapter port to the power supply. Twice.
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Jul 16, 2014 21:12
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evobatman posted:The key to getting whatever you want quickly from Dells (or really anyones) support is to say you tried with a known good part, and that worked. For anything they want you to try, answer "I already tried that. It didn't work." Other key phrases is it worked with an external monitor/keyboard/mouse, it doesn't work in BIOS, and it doesn't work with a Linux live CD and you tried restoring the restore partition or reinstalling Windows from the supplied CD, so it's not a software problem. Most of my support calls to Dell are less than 3 minutes. This is practically every call I have made to ProSupport. I believe one time I had a really persistent rep who wanted me to try moving a known good memory DIMM from one slot to the other ("yeah... let me put you on hold while I do that right quick...") but otherwise my calls have all been very quick and relatively painless. The best ones are when you rattle off all of the steps you've already performed, they pause for a few seconds, and then "Well, looks like we'll have to schedule a service technician". You are god drat right son.
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Jul 16, 2014 21:48
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krooj posted:I worked as an IT repair goon throughout university, and I can't help but remember the number of GX260 and 270 motherboards that were replaced. Entire labs, consisting of 100+ machines, easily - all needed a motherboard replacement. Why? defective capacitors. Not strictly Dell's fault, but goddamn, you'd expect some Rubycon capacitors or something of equivalent quality in business grade machines. Their laptops also got progressively shittier when they went from PIII to P4 and P-M. Those loving lovely grey plastic chassis with the cracked screen lids and poo poo hinges... I've had bad experiences with every manufacturer, really. HP Elitebook support is good over the phone, but they subcontract their on-site techs to people who are hit or miss. Had a guy spend nearly two full days trying to replace a LCD on an EliteBook and left the thing scratched to hell, keyboard protruding up, none of the edges lining up... etc. It was a complete mess. The repair company deleted the ticket even after speaking with several different mangers trying to get them to replace the thing. HP eventually replaced the unit after they found out I posted a video of the thing on YouTube. I've recently just switched from EliteBooks (8570p's etc) to Dell Latitude e6540's as the EliteBooks stopped adding numpads to the keyboards and that's a deal-breaker for us. I chose it over the T540p (i think) because I hate Lenovo's current touchpad. I have an X1 Carbon and while the keyboard rocks, the touchpad is garbage. Knock on wood.
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Jul 17, 2014 00:43
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I haven't had to deal with dell servers since leaving my last job, but in my current job we have Foglight. Dell bought Foglight. Foglight is a huge steaming pile of poo poo. I have been tasked to fix this steaming pile of poo poo to make it useful because they spent tons of money in it.
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Jul 17, 2014 01:18
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krooj posted:See you in hell, turds. I never had much trouble opening them. I actually really liked the SFF design, but the latches could've had more 'feel' to them and the USB/front audio headers needed redesigning so that removing the power & data from the HDD didn't mean your hand rebounded into a sharp-edged PCB. The cable routing could've been better, too. With a little more thought and usability design, they would've been drat near perfect for SFFs.
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Jul 17, 2014 01:44
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I'd feel remiss if I didn't voice my experience - I've had the same rep for going on 10 years and she is wonderful. I get responses to my questions and issues within a few hours. If you're big enough to have to deal with 100 or more units then you are best served taking advantage of whatever the Dell Tech Direct service is currently called - online access to ordering replacement parts without any need to speak with anyone(just don't return too many good parts). I recommend Apple to everyone if they can afford it, even if they just end up running Windows in BootCamp. Otherwise buy the best deal of the week at a local store and expect to replace it every 12-18 months. I'd never recommend a non Latitude/Optiplex. Got a free test unit of one of their first forays into the laserjet market, 6-7 years ago, used almost daily at low volume, have only had to change toner once, nary a service call needed. iDRAC convinced me to switch back from HP(c3000/7000). Haven't had any fulfillment issues of any importance/worry. Hell, I buy my BackupExec licenses through them cause it's cheaper and more convenient.
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Jul 17, 2014 01:59
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krooj posted:I worked as an IT repair goon throughout university, and I can't help but remember the number of GX260 and 270 motherboards that were replaced. Entire labs, consisting of 100+ machines, easily - all needed a motherboard replacement. Why? defective capacitors. Not strictly Dell's fault, but goddamn, you'd expect some Rubycon capacitors or something of equivalent quality in business grade machines. Their laptops also got progressively shittier when they went from PIII to P4 and P-M. Those loving lovely grey plastic chassis with the cracked screen lids and poo poo hinges... I haven't had to replace a 620 motherboard, but their power supplies do consistently die. And given enough time the 745s always have the capacitor problem. Too bad the power supplies from one model never fit nicely into the other.
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Jul 17, 2014 02:14
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We use all Dell notebooks, Servers and storage. Everything is purchased with Pro-Support, mission critical for the backend and NBD onsite for the notebooks. I have never had a problem. and Pro-Support has bailed me out of many a disaster. We also have had the same reps for ages, all great at what they do. We have about 4 we deal with, locals for backend and end user and people in the office interstate for the quotes and order processing. always fast and reliable, with visits onsite for handover to new reps. Probably helps that we are a large visible agency in a state government. But I know people who have the opposite experience and rave about HP.
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Jul 17, 2014 02:28
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We (also a large government agency) have all Dell servers, and HP desktops. We don't really trust techs from either one alone with a machine that needs something replaced, but the only thing that's gone south on our servers in the last 5 years that I can remember were hard drives anyhow. Anecdata! 
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Jul 17, 2014 03:43
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goobernoodles posted:Haha god, that was a fun time. I was always happy with IBM and Lenovo ThinkPads when I needed PC laptops. The trouble I always had with HP was slogging through their awful website and nonsensical branding / configuration spectrum. I dunno where you are, but in Toronto, Lenovo repairs get sent to Flextronics, which is fast and good.
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Jul 17, 2014 13:03
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Now where am I going to tell my mom to buy her next desktop? 
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Jul 17, 2014 18:49
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Bought a Dell Inspiron 15R from some no-name amazon reseller. Screen came in with a blotch of dead pixels. I decided to try dell support instead of immediately RMA'ing the thing back. Dell support rocked my socks and sent me a new LCD panel overnight with no proof of anything. Even allowed me to install the LCD myself to save time and included return postage. 2 days later I have a working perfect laptop. Not a lot of manufactures have warrantys that good anymore. This is bringing me back to liking Dell after years.
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Jul 17, 2014 19:06
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evobatman posted:The key to getting whatever you want quickly from Dells (or really anyones) support is to say you tried with a known good part, and that worked. For anything they want you to try, answer "I already tried that. It didn't work." Other key phrases is it worked with an external monitor/keyboard/mouse, it doesn't work in BIOS, and it doesn't work with a Linux live CD and you tried restoring the restore partition or reinstalling Windows from the supplied CD, so it's not a software problem. Most of my support calls to Dell are less than 3 minutes. This needs to be quoted again. I may or may not work as a dell support guy outside the us supporting another country, but basically, yeah, if you want a new harddrive, dvd drive or memory, whatever, just say you've tried another part and it works. Laptop monitor dead? You tried an external, the external works. Laptop GPU dead? Whatever corruptions appear on external and in bios (Though we may ask for a picture just to gently caress with you and cover our asses) Also, we loving love linux live cds, if something doesn't work in windows after reinstallation and doesn't work in a linux live cd it's hosed. Usually when the more experienced guys calls it goes like this "Yo, HDD dead on my computer service tag xxxxxx" "Alright, lemme look that up. Is it a xxxx model?" "Yup." "And what's the problem?" "HDD is not detected in BIOS, test another HDD and it works." "Alright, this unit is registered to company, contact person is name lastname, phonenumber 690521412454235 and address roadroad 1?" "Yup." "Excellent, your new hard drive will be there tomorrow." "Thanks." "Bye." I can usually get all the info I need for a new hdd in a minute or so from these guys. I love it. It's that simple for the easy issues.
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