Brian H. Madsen - .Net Powered by Caffeine : Dell

Dell replaces my XPS M1710 laptop

Brian Madsen — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:30:21 GMT

As everybody knows by now (well, those reading this blog anyways) i’ve had some ups and downs with my XPS M1710 laptop over the last 9 months.

After 7 major parts failures in just 9 months, Dell has agreed to replace my laptop – since the XPS M1710 is no longer on the market, and parts to build a new system isn’t available it seems i’m getting a factory fresh laptop, rather than what the XPS Resolution Specialist informed me when we finally got to this resolution.

The laptop i’ll be receiving in the next couple of weeks is an Alienware M17x (S510605AU) and needless to say i’m stoked with this resolution.

Not only wont i have to worry about my laptop dying on me at, sometimes, inconvenient moments, but i’ll be using one of their new Alienware models.

It’s been a long and stressful time after the first graphics card failure and I have to give Dell credit (even though i’ve been frustrated with the quality of the parts and sometimes dealing with Dell’s Technical Support) for never blinking when trying to fix it.

Unfortunately the parts in the laptop was faulty to start with – the NVidia 7950GTX graphics card had some serious cooling flaws, the same goes for the fans and heatsink.

Nevertheless, when i originally bought this laptop it was an absolute powerhouse! performance on the system was extraordinarily high, compared to other laptops – shame on the faulty guts tho.

To this day, i’ve still been able to crunch code on the XPS M1710 and we all know that Visual Studio can be a tad powerhungry.

My last encounter with overheating was what caused Dell to suggest my laptop be replaced. It took some convincing, but finally the XPS Resolution Specialist could see the logic in what i was saying – it’s a recurring problem and has been for 9 months.

So, i’ve accepted the terms and conditions and are waiting for the factory to start building.

So, thanks Dell, for listening and for coming to the table with a satisfactory resolution.

Dell replacing motherboard and graphics card in my XPS M1710, again – 4th time now

Brian Madsen — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:57:58 GMT

It seems that i’m going to punted with yet another set of REFURBISHED parts from Dell for my XPS M1710.

Had recently had two major crashes, one was a certain overheating fault (again, wow, what a surprise) where i was warned that the system had shut down to protect itself due to overheating.

I contacted Dell Technical Support as i’m luckily still covered by warranty, to organise to have my parts replaced again.

this will then be the 4th motherboard this laptop has had in it – and it’s only just past 18 months old or so. The 3rd full replacement since October last year.

it’s also the 4th graphics card this laptop has had in it.

so after today i’ve had a total of:

4 motherboards
4 7950GTX graphics cards
3 1/2 sets of fans
3 heat sinks

I’ve contacted Dell customer service to get the whole unit replaced – deafening silence from their end on the topic. Also contacted an XPS Resolution Specialist – also deafening silence from that avenue. Further to that i also contacted the respective managers of both the customer service and resolution specialist..funny enough, also complete silence from that end.

I’m now going to lodge a formal complaint and i’m going to take this issue further – i’ve had enough with sub-standard and failing parts for this VERY expensive laptop. A laptop in this price range should NOT fail this often after less than 2 years.

I’ve given Dell every opportunity to fix it…on top of the technicians i’ve had out to do the parts replacement i’ve also had the whole unit sent in to a Dell lab, for a full 9 days, to be diagnosed.

It’s now seriously beyond a joke…

Dell to replace fans and graphics card on my XPS M1710 again today

Brian Madsen — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 23:40:00 GMT

I'm having Dell replace another set of fans and graphics card on my XPS M1710 today (well, it's scheduled and booked in for a replacement between 8am-12noon).

My 7950Gtx card was starting to overheat again (most likely due to the design flaws, coupled with the heat we've had here in australia lately) - 2 crashes later and suddenly having artefacts appear when playing games or objects simply just not rendering (big black blobs moving about on the screen) and Dell has sorted out getting a technician to come out and replace both the fans and the graphics card again.

This is the 3rd graphics card i've had in this laptop and the second set of fans/heatsinks - and it will most likely not be the last either considering we're again replacing 1 refurbished (and faulty card) with 1 other refurbished (and previously faulty card).

It'll be interesting to see how well (or not) this new card works and how long it'll last.

not keeping my hopes up that it'll actually be the last card that burns out - so, i'm just happy that Dell extended my warranty by another year. Historically speaking that should mean i'll have another 2-3 cards replaced during that time. It's only been 5 months since i had a total of 3 fixes - 1 set of fans/heatsinks, 1 motherboard and 1 graphics card + Dell managing to keep my laptop for nearly 9 days to check it out.

I asked Dell to provide me with the fault analysis from the last time it went away (it was in their lab for testing, which took forever, and eventually they replaced the motherboard) but so far they haven't come up with the goods. Reason for asking for this information is that i want to see what else could possibly be damaged in the laptop by these constant failures of hardware.

Dell extends my warranty...

Brian Madsen — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 22:08:00 GMT

The laptop saga is drawing to an end and as promised, Dell has extended my warranty (at no cost to me) to ensure that my laptop stays perfectly functional.

I was surprised to see two new line items in my warranty and service list:

- Priority User Phone Support (24x7)
- Plus Technical Phone Support

Haven't seen those two before, but i'm assuming that #1 means i have priority when i call technical support. The second one still baffles me a bit. "Plus Technical Phone Support"?? The Dell Technical Engineers, i've dealt with, wouldn't know a laptop if they were sleeping on it - well, that's what the impression i've gotten from the numerous times i've spoken to them anyways. Maybe there's different levels of Dell Technical Engineers (would assume they have some smart people on their corporate programs) and maybe i wont have to deal with the "less-than-knowledgeable" engineers in the future.

So i now have 1 year (360 days left it shows) with priority support and the laptop warranty is extended out to 2010. As long as i don't have to battle my way through lies and excuses if something has to be fixed i suppose the case is now closed.

It's good to see the Customer Care/Service Representative has come through with the promise he made me.

I also got one of those "Dell Customer Experience Survey Invitations" today. which was surprising as well - didn't think they could be in any doubt as to my opinion at this stage. Should have waited 3-4 months before sending that i think. Still extremely dissatisfied over how my issue was dealt with - that's not going to change. However, if it proves (with time that is) that the laptop isn't going to die on me then it's as satisfactory outcome as can be expected.

my XPS M1710 seems to have been fixed, thanks Dell

Brian Madsen — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 08:01:00 GMT

Well, after more than a months of working with Dell technicians - two seperate onsite calls and one workshop incident later and my laptop actually seems to have been fixed.

I haven't run any diagnostics...yet, but as a benchmark i installed Gears of War sunday evening and gave it a run. Seemed to run very smoothly - however, the fans are going crazy. that is to say, i actually think they are working this time as i can definitely hear them take off. Plus they're not shutting down.

So, thanks to Dell for finally fixing it and to "M" from Dell Customer Services (you know who you are) for assisting me with the outcome.

After having a look at the processes, by talking to "M" and by applying a bit of simple logic, it seems that most of the problems i had was simply communications problems between Dell and the company that does their service here in Perth.

It did take a total of 9 days (well, 8 if you dont count the day i exploded and told them to stuff the laptop etc) for the 3-4 day workshop to complete and for me to have my laptop again. It also took me driving out to the DHL depot where the laptop was stored after it was fixed to get it back, otherwise i wouldn't have gotten it till yesterday (got it Friday afternoon, last week).

Dell has graciously extended my laptop warranty with another full year - so that should really see me well and truely past it's "lifetime" so to speak.

I'm happy again, but the episode still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I'm sure that if the laptop doesn't crash on me in the near future that i'd be happy to get another Dell...well, maybe not - not entirely sure on that point yet (naturally). The hardest part will probably be to get over the fact that i'd received a terribly service for what is considered a high end product from Dell.

Lesson learned are:

1) do NOT trust Dell Technical Support - double check everything AND always call back to confirm appointments and discussions because they tend to "forget" to return phone calls they promise.
2) write down every piece of information you get, either from telephone conversations or emails, and ensure that you get the name of the technician you're talking to.
3) do NOT let the technician diagnose your problems over the phone without doing any tests (eg. if the technician states the problem is X without testing that, disregard it).
4) escalate each incident you raise with Dell Technical Support with the Customer Service department - simply call Customer Services and get hold of a service agent and state your problem - Technical Support at Dell knows absolutely nothing and will promise you the world IF it gets you off the phone quicker.
5) if they start to get snippy with you, remind them again and again who the customer is - it seems sometimes to be forgotten.

It's five simple processes to follow when dealing with Dell Technical Support and i'm going to be 100% sure that i follow them in the future. "P" from technical support was the only person that i spoke to that seemed to a) know what he was talking about and b) didn't BS you to get you off the phone. I'd spoken to 9-10 different engineers/technicians, even had one diagnosed the OS without any information other than "i get pixelation and crashes" or doing any tests.

I might be the customer from hell but it seems that it got the job done - my laptops appears to be fixed.

Another thing to take note of is this - do NOT use the Dell drivers for the 7 series GO NVidia cards - they seriously underperform and can cause more problems than what you already have. Get the latest driver from NVidia as they've just released a 32-bit forceware (still not a 64-bit version available) for the entire Dell XPS range.

Lastly, I'd been told that this was a single incident and not the norm from Dell - from what i've read on their own forums, other forums and the replies i've had here, then it does seem to be quite common.

Totally frustrated with Dell - XPS M1710 has gone AWOL

Brian Madsen — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:19:00 GMT

As you may know (or may not if you're new here) i've had a lot of dramas with Dell regarding my XPS M1710 laptop. Last october ('07) saw the M1710 as the laptop flagship from Dell and the early reviews put it miles ahead of any other laptop in terms of performance - so i bought one.

It all started here when my laptop started to overheat - luckily my laptop was still covered by warranty so things "should" have been sorted out quickly enough and i was impressed with what I was told by Dell Technical Support.

Support actioned a technician for me, 3 days later - which suddenly meant 4 days as they had to reschedule. Left me hanging for the entire day with technical support insisting/promising that the technician would definitely be turning up, just wait for the phone call for a more specific time. Yeps, he never turned up and later in the afternoon i was told he wouldn't be coming over at all. 3 calls to Dell on the same day to confirm he would definitely be there and was told that it was 100% certain he would be there. Those 100% collapsed fast into 0% after the last time i followed up on it.

Finally it was fixed - or was it? nopes, still had somewhat the same issues plus severe performance issues with the graphics card as well - so they dispatched another technician to my house to replace the graphics card (first time the motherboard, fans and heatsinks were replaced).

Fixed yet....nopes...massive problems again and i was getting tired of getting promises upon promises upon promises, till finally i had enough and called customer service instead to complain. This saw, after a very heated discussion with a technician on the line at the same time as the customer service representative was there. The technician insisted that the problems were my operating system and i said it wasn't.

Long story short, the laptop had to go in for a 3-4 day workshop - that was last week btw. We're now on day 8 after i was stood up yesterday, again after having been given 100% guarantees that it would be delivered - twice!!!

I had a call Tuesday, after i escalated the issue with the customer service representative that i'm now dealing with, to let me know that the laptop had been fixed (the motherboard had again been replaced) and that I would get it Wednesday (yesterday).

Yesterday morning (wednesday) i got a call around 9am or so to let me know they'd be dropping the laptop off between 12:30 and 14:30 - i told them it had to be delivered to our offices in perth because i simply couldn't keep taking time off to cater for them as they kept breaking their promises. Not a problem, new address given and confirmed. 2 hrs later i get another call from the same person at Dell Technical Support, who advised me that they "had a few problems at the depot where my laptop was" and that the time had to be extended to be between 12:30 and 16:30. Again, confirm the address and time and again i get a 100% guarantee that it would be delivered.

So guess what? 16:45, still no laptop..16:50, still no laptop..I was fuming...absolutely rediculous that they can keep screwing things up (note for the reader, this is when the language [may] turn ugly). How many things can they *** up? How much patience am I meant to have?

I also sent an email, straight after the second call, to the customer service representative to inform him of the development (i'd earlier sent him a massive email letting him know how dissapointed and dissatisfied i was with Dell at the moment) and asked him to look into the problem at the depot as i was getting nervous that they'd either 1) lost my laptop or 2) found out that it actually hadn't been fixed yet.

I get in to work this morning at 6:10am and place a call straight to the customer service representative - get his voice message (naturally, it's only 8:10am over east) and ask him to call me back..

Now all in all i've given Dell every damn opportunity to fix this and it's turning into a circus - i'm livid and angry now. no, that's not right..i'm absolutely fucking furious at the moment at these limp dicks fucking up again and again. How the hell do they manage to run an international corporation when they just keep fucking things up?

I wonder if i'm the only basket case that's using Dell at the moment or if i'm the dumbest person in the world (aha, no reason to comment on that one - i AM) - how much more patience and leeway should i give them?

The answer is simple - if my laptop isn't here by 10am today i'm going to go and take this to the ministry of fair trading - a resolution better bloody/fucking well be found!! Where...Is...My...Laptop???

Nuff said!!!

DELL XPS M1710 to go in for a test workshop

Brian Madsen — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 07:51:56 GMT

Yeps, that’s right, my Dell XPS M1710 is now going to go in for a 3-4 day test at a Dell workshop. Since i got my motherboard, heatsinks, fans and graphics card replaced it’s been a dogs breakfast for performance.

I finally had enough – while playing COD4 i’d get bad pixilation, shapes and forms (models?) not rendered properly and either just going black (eg. a car would be a black car shaped box) or flicker in an out of colour and black.

On other occasions Vista Aero would be extremely sluggish and i’d get a massive CPU spike whenever i did anything, such as simple thing like opening a windows explorer window. Other times the drivers would fail, crash and burn.

Then the other day, Dreamscene Content Pack 4 was released and i got hold of it via windows update – and wouldn’t you know, it kept failing on me too with graphics card errors.

Normally i’d put it down to driver errors, so i swapped drivers and tried again. No luck, same issue with both the Microsoft driver and Dell’s own driver.

Playing any game on Dell’s own driver was pointless – FPS would drop to 25 and within 1-2 minutes the fan would kick into overdrive on the laptop (doing their job??) then throttle back as if nothing was happening, all the time the laptop keyboard’s right hand side would just keep getting warmer (that’s where the graphics card sits).

Yesterday morning i called Dell Technical Support, to be told that all technicians was currently busy but i’d get a call later on in the day – yeah, right!!! but what could i do??? I give them my mobile number to ensure I am within reach all day long. Come 5pm, still no call????

So i call back and end up being on hold for a total of 57mins without getting through – they must be REAL busy.

Having been told, yet again, that they’ll call me back on that day i was naturally getting very angry with these “promises” being broken constantly. So i decide to get into contact with Dell’s Customer Service. I do that this morning.

Spoke to a guy after having been put through to technical support twice??? c’mon, my opening line, after being asked what they could do for me, was “I want to put a formal complaint forward”.

Anyways, i explain my situation and i’m naturally getting a bit annoyed with the whole thing. First thing first, he brings in a technical support technician to help him out. Not only where this technician extremely rude – kept asking me questions, then when i started to answer he’d interrupt me. He does this 5-6 times and finally i had enough and told him to back off and if he wanted an answer he should stop interrupting me. Peace, and quiet..nice. So i explain my situation again and he goes “your operating system is faulty”..

I was litterally blown away by this very direct assumption – so i inform him that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with my operating system. Nothing at all. Next step was that he wanted to know when i’d at last formatted it? again, i told him there was nothing wrong with my operating system – Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit has been extremely stable to me and have had to recover from multiple problems with the graphics card. He then continues to give me two options – me?? i’d just given the customer service guy two options, which was either to refund me the total cost of the laptop seeing as they’d tried to fix it twice without any luck or to get me a new laptop, either the same model or the new model.

So i explain to the technician that he weren’t in a position to give me options. period. I knew my rights.

Further to that i explained to the technician what my rights were – after that i was told that they’d rather prefer me not going to the Ministry of Fair Trading with my issue, but of course couldn’t stop me.

I also explain to the technician that i did not want a “refurbished” part in my laptop – i wanted it replaced with a NEW part and not a second hand part. The technician tells me that it isn’t a second hand part, that it’d at one point been replaced in a laptop, sent back to the factory to get fixed and then returned to them. I tell him that this is exactly what a second hand part is. If i smash up my car, get it fixed and then sell it, it’s a second hand car. period. He argues that it isn’t.

Regardless, i was at this stage getting into Viking mode and told him i wanted it fixed – for the last time i want it FIXED. The customer service representative then tells me it will be because they didn’t really want to give me a full refund. or rather, they couldn’t…i was like??? WTF??? i don’t care what you can and cannot do – it’s within my rights to demand it seeing as you can’t fix it.

Lastly, i tell the customer service representative that if he was going to get it fixed again, that he’d better extend my warranty on the laptop – period. He agrees, finally, to extend it.

Now i have to pull my hard drive out of the laptop as i’m certainly not giving them my data. period. Oh, and i’ll get a call from a technician to arrange for them to pick my laptop up.

It’s going in for a 3-4 day test at their workshops.

The outcome with either be:

1) my laptop will be fixed, period, and returned to me

2) i’ll get a new laptop of the same model and same specs

3) i’ll get a newer model laptop of the same specs

Now i can live with all three of those solutions, even though it does inconvenience me for nearly a week.

Since the diagnostics on the laptop itself (built in diagnostics which can be booted into by pressing F12 when it boots) passes all tests with flying colours – however, there’s no tests in there that puts load on the graphics card. none. it’ll test memory and hard drive by writing and deleting data on it and cycle through the two cores on the cpu as well – but nothing will test the graphics card under load.

The most frustrating part of this is that i’ve had two technicians out whom has both been explaining to me that there’s been a LOT of problems with this model. Great, Dell technician tells me there’s been a lot of problems, but on the other hand they’ll just keep on playing dumb.

Am i angry? yes!!! Should i be more angry? I don’t know. Should i take this further? if it isn’t fixed you can be sure i will.

DELL XPS M1710 Laptop saga continues…

Brian Madsen — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 10:54:20 GMT

Finally got a Dell technician out today (Saturday) after being fopped off all day yesterday with promises and white lies.

The technician arrived within the scheduled period as promised and started having a look at the laptop to diagnose what the problem was. Removing the keyboard to have access to the heat sink on the graphics card was the first step – he booted it up and after a few minutes it was basically too hot even to touch.

He then checked the fans as he couldn’t understand why it was running that hot. My cpu fan wasn’t running at all – great, how much damage has my cpu been taken and how much of its lifespan has been cut off because it’s been running too hot?

At first he was surprised that the package of parts didn’t contain a graphics card seeing as that would apparently have been obvious choice to replace considering where i reported the heat were coming from. Top right hand side of the keyboard. Yeps, directly below there sits the graphics card. Both fans are at the very edge of the case.

Naturally replacing the graphics card would have been more expensive for Dell so i can see where the cost saving exercise comes into play. Fair call.

The technician then started to pull the entire laptop apart as he had to replace the motherboard – the cpu fan controller sits on the motherboard and that wasn’t working at all.

At the moment i’m extremely frustrated with Dell – cannot possibly be that a laptop, less than 1 year old and at this level, is falling apart. I mean, the XPS M1710 was the top of their line and the price tag was accordingly high.

Dell’s new flagship, the M1730 would have been a serious contender to replacing this one, but at the moment i’m so disappointed with Dell that I’m starting to doubt i’ll ever recommend them again.

Luckily i’m still covered by warranty and i’m going to be damn sure that I get every single faulty part replaced…

So, onto new and shinier things – what options are available out there today that could possibly match the “supposed” performance of the XPS range?

Dell services going down hill...

Brian Madsen — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 06:56:21 GMT

Well, wasting rent here - Dell seems to be good at making promises, but can't seem to get their act together for the follow-up.

Edit: I called this morning at 8am to confirm that the technician was going to show up and was told that my parts would be arriving at 9am, ready for the technician to pick them up, where i'd then be getting a phone call from him/her to arrange a time..

Was told 2hrs ago, after i still haven't heard from the technician who was meant to fix my laptop today, that i'd be getting a call from their office as the support staff couldn't help me out.

2hrs later I decided to give them a call back and what happens - well, apparently, unbeknownst to anybody there, they ended getting more support calls today than expected and therefore couldn't return my call as promised.

Point 1: am now pissed off with Dell for not being able to keep me informed when they know i'm sitting here at home, waiting for their technician to give me a call to schedule the parts being replaced.

Point 2: the support team had no clue what i was talking about re: giving me a call back as there was nothing in their logs to indicate they had to contact me.

So, am now severely annoyed with them - get fopped off with a "We'll have a technician call you within 1hr" reply, which I stupidly decided to trust.

I'm meant to have Next Business Day Support 24/7 - arguably the fact that i've spoken to support could be deemed as having given me support within the required timeframe.

I bought this premium (Dell XPS M1710) laptop so things like this wouldn't happen..shouldn't happen and what do i get..substandard service.

So the saga continues - what was originally a VERY impressive start seems to have driveled down into a useless service.

Next point is that i now have to wait, till no later than 8pm, to get confirmation of when the technician will be coming. That's a full day of waste. Complete and utter waste.

The guy i spoke to "assured" me that i would definitely get this fixed tomorrow..i confirmed on three occasions if he was 100% absolutely certain of that and he said "yes". I then put this into perspective to him..

1) he can't give me a time - or even part of the day (morning/afternoon) - of when the technician will be coming tomorrow.

2) he doesn't know how many technicians they'll have on board tomorrow here in Perth, but know some will be working saturdays to get this influx of service issues fixed.

How was he able to absolutely, 100%, guarantee that a technician would be coming around? Logically at this point he couldn't. So, i'm now (after raising absolute hell) noted as a "priority" call so it'll be attended to.

Am definitely not impressed...But i have the 100%, guaranteed assurances of the supervisor no less, that this will be dealt with. I guess time will tell.

Technorati Tags: Dell,XPS,M1710

Dell support #1 so far

Brian Madsen — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:40:13 GMT

Damn - i have to say this..and say it loud too..DAMN!!

Called Dell support (finally got through, yay) and after some extensive tests the operator advised me that a technician would be dispatched to replace some parts in the laptop (wonder what will be replaced) for Friday.

Not quite next business day support, but beats the hell out of the support i've gotten from Austin Computers. So mock Dell all you like guys, a technician superhero is inbound to fix my laptop!! w00t w00t!

Now i just need to cross my fingers that the correct parts gets replaced and the issue is dealt with/fixed!

Kudos to Dell for owning up to their support/warranty!

My laptop is luckily still under warranty..phew

Brian Madsen — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 08:38:32 GMT

today i checked with Dell regarding warranty for my laptop which had some issues yesterday and i'm still covered for yet another 175 days on XPS premium support and next day parts and service from Dell.

So, now i've sent a support request and hopefully they'll get back to me asap so i can get it resolved.

But, fearing that the M1710 is no longer in production i'm curious as to how it's going to be fixed. Hopefully they'll still have parts for it but what exactly are they going to swap out when the entire system overheats??

It's now a waiting game i guess...but next day parts day support should be a good help. I guess i'll now see how great Dells support is (hope it's better than Austin Computer's warranty policies).

Wish me luck!!

DELL XPS M1710 gaming laptop overheating...

Brian Madsen — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:31:00 GMT

Last night i decided to play a few games of COD4 - which i do for an hour here and there, and suddenly i had a drop in FPS and a few seconds later the whole laptop just closed down.

At first my mind went OMG!!!!! a powerspike or something just as malicious has come through and fried my laptop.

then i settled a bit and had a closer look at the laptop - it was hot, even for the XPS, it was very hot yet it booted almost straight away (2-3 minutes later) and i saw an error message on the screen - it had overheated and closed down as a result.

first i felt a great deal of relief as this laptop isn't cheap - but then i became rather annoyed. This is meant to be a gaming laptop and should be equipped well enough to play games.

Now i'm going to chase down support from Dell - first to find out if i'm covered under warranty still and secondly to complain (yes, i do that from time to time, but i love this laptop and i'm rather furious that it should overheat).

Normally overheating is expected when you tamper with the system (or environmental issues, such as very hot areas or if you block the exhaust vents) - such as overclocking your hardware - but this is a stock DELL XPS M1710, with absolutely nada tampering. It should be equipped with enough heatsinks and fans to handle playing a game if the system specifications are up to par with what the game requires - and the XPS M1710 certainly does that.

And here i was, actually considering upgrading to a M1730 in the near future...fat chance at the moment!

So, i am grumpy as hell and am going to raise absolutely hell with DELL Support in the coming days!!

Dell XPS M1330 vs Lenovo Thinkpad T61

Brian Madsen — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 14:42:43 GMT

My wife has been speculating on getting a laptop and naturally asked me to look into this for her.

One of the aspects that she's been stipulating is size. She does not want a monster laptop like my Dell XPS M1710.

So, bearing in mind the size i went out to look for other options. Having heard a lot of good about Lenovo from Michael Kleef I decided to take a look at their range.

Immediately the T61 came to mind - it's small, mobile and fairly well priced at just $2,099.00.

The T61 comes, at that price range, with 2Gb of Ram..plenty for what my wife will be using it for.

I went over and looked at the specs of the T61 and started comparing it with the M1330 from Dell.

Out of the box, the M1330 has more features and it's smaller with just a 13.3" screen. It's also lighter which means a lot for my wife and being scottish, cheaper.

So on the surface it looks like the obvious choice.

But, having had previous experience with Dells from both the corporate side of things as well as on the residential side of things i know that Dell used to put a lot of unwanted software on their machines and the first thing i always did was to blow all the crap away and rebuild.

Having said that, i took a look at what the M1330 comes with...

nylon bag..yes, tick that one

but then i noticed a BIG issue for me..massive to be honest...Google Toolbar..my worst enemy and on #1 of my banned software list!! WTF? they seriously still ship with that crap.

I thought that Dell had finally understood that people that knows about computers DOES NOT WANT CRAP TO BE INSTALLED. You just want the OEM so you get a clean build, with the newest drivers and that's it.

Dell, you're seriously putting a dent into any kudos you may ever have gained in the last 1-2 years.

They also spin nearly 2Gb of drive space off for "MediaDirect" - a feature on my M1710 which i've never, ever used and are most likely never going to use. But that may be just because i'm a geek - who knows?

So, now i'm at a crossroads, literally..do I put my own personal experiences into the equation or do i advise my wife to go for the M1330. It's sleek, nice looking (good job Dell), and cheaper than the T61. Or do i advise her to get the T61 - which by all appearances is just an IBM rebadged? The Dell definitely seems like the better choice, but i'm majorly put off by the stock software that comes with a new laptop from them.

She wants to play a few "older" games that she likes, surf the net, email..etc..the usual home stuff, but will most likely also use it as a desktop replacement (she's still on the Dell 8400 we bought years ago) and do a bit of work from home.

Who uses (besides Kleef that is) the Lenovo T61 and can give me some pointers on pros and cons on the machine?