Dell Continues Its Downward Slide

[The Rogue Wolf]

Remember when "Dude, you're getting a Dell!" wasn't a threat?


TL;DW summary: An $1800 prebuilt with a terribly-designed case where Dell installed a stock Intel cooler on an AMD processor (leaving the corners of the die uncovered by the heatsink). Bonus points for false advertising of liquid cooling, no BIOS options for overclocking even though AMD processors are unlocked (though since it easily closes in on 100°C under load at stock speeds, that might be for the best), and VRAM that's likely to blow in the near future.

I've always joked that Alienware is a hyper-overclocked mid-range computer with a $600 alien badge on it. I never thought they'd try to undercut my joke....

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

The best and worst computer brands thread has just devolved into me yelling at people who say that dell is a good brand and posting video after video about the different ways they rip people off and how terrible their products and customer service are. Seriously, fuck dell.

Best/worst computer brands.

If you don't feel like building your own computer and would rather get a prebuilt, what are the best major computer brands? The worst?

forums.escapistmagazine.com

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Pretty much all major brands suck on the consumer side. Even if they aren't using any proprietary parts, they usually give you a shit power supply (like under 200W) if the machine doesn't come with a video card. It's also hard to find a machine that comes with Win10 PRO (instead of Home) on the consumer side. Anyone looking for a computer, look at the business class models, they are usually way better and usually come with Win10 PRO. We just started getting in HP Elitebook G7 laptops at work a few months back, and just about the entire team switched to them. And they're great laptops unless HP did something stupid like soldering the SSD or RAM to the board. Also, business class stuff comes in sizes/dimensions that are probably better for a lot of people like I bet most people would prefer the mini-desktops that HP and Lenovo make over a traditional looking desktop as they do everything and more most people need a PC for while barely taking up any space. And you can mount them to a monitor and barely have any cords that need to be run except the power cords if you get a wireless keyboard/mouse.

 

[lostinreality]

The best and worst computer brands thread has just devolved into me yelling at people who say that dell is a good brand and posting video after video about the different ways they rip people off and how terrible their products and customer service are. Seriously, fuck dell.

Best/worst computer brands.

If you don't feel like building your own computer and would rather get a prebuilt, what are the best major computer brands? The worst?

forums.escapistmagazine.com

I'm no computer geek, but I used to really love Dell although I don't have any experience with the computer, Dell was my first laptop in high school and it honestly kicked some ass for more than 4 years. it's sad seeing them go down. This is awful.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

I'm no computer geek, but I used to really love Dell although I don't have any experience with the computer, Dell was my first laptop in high school and it honestly kicked some ass for more than 4 years. it's sad seeing them go down. This is awful.

At least with laptops, all the brands have good and bad models. IIRC, the Dell XPS laptops compete very well in their price bracket as I was looking for a laptop about a year back and watched quite few laptop reviews. Desktops and laptops are different beasts. I once worked at a electronic recycling place were I saw like every model of laptop (like all Vista to Win7 models and a few Win8 laptops towards the end) and every brand has shit models and good models (which you can kinda tell just from touching and holding it, the build quality at least). There was this Dell 12.5 inch business class model laptop (I forget the specific model) that I just loved, great build quality, perfect size, good price that I bid on (but lost) when the company put it on eBay to sell. Just have a price point or spec point, and watch some reviews of the models in that range. I got an Asus ViviBook 14-incher because at the $400 price point I found it at with a Ryzen 5, SSD, 8 GBs of RAM, you couldn't beat it. It does everything and more I need/want it to do and plays PS3-gen games well like say Portal 2 or Fallout NV. And something like that Vivobook is all most people need, you don't need to spend $1,000 to get a good laptop.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

At least with laptops, all the brands have good and bad models. IIRC, the Dell XPS laptops compete very well in their price bracket as I was looking for a laptop about a year back and watched quite few laptop reviews. Desktops and laptops are different beasts. I once worked at a electronic recycling place were I saw like every model of laptop (like all Vista to Win7 models and a few Win8 laptops towards the end) and every brand has shit models and good models (which you can kinda tell just from touching and holding it, the build quality at least). There was this Dell 12.5 inch business class model laptop (I forget the specific model) that I just loved, great build quality, perfect size, good price that I bid on (but lost) when the company put it on eBay to sell. Just have a price point or spec point, and watch some reviews of the models in that range. I got an Asus ViviBook 14-incher because at the $400 price point I found it at with a Ryzen 5, SSD, 8 GBs of RAM, you couldn't beat it. It does everything and more I need/want it to do and plays PS3-gen games well like say Portal 2 or Fallout NV. And something like that Vivobook is all most people need, you don't need to spend $1,000 to get a good laptop.

As someone who uses a dell xps laptop for work, I honestly kind of hate it. Dell isn't great with their heat management so the CPU constantly thermal throttling on me when I have more than a couple of firefox tabs and excel docs up. It's sleek, nice and thin, is a great size and carry weight, and that means it has piss poor cooling and ventilation.

 

[Gordon_4]

As someone who uses a dell xps laptop for work, I honestly kind of hate it. Dell isn't great with their heat management so the CPU constantly thermal throttling on me when I have more than a couple of firefox tabs and excel docs up. It's sleek, nice and thin, is a great size and carry weight, and that means it has piss poor cooling and ventilation.

Yeah ultra thin laptops need to die in a fire. Preferably one of their own making. They feel fragile, are desperately lacking in I/O and as you say under all but the most basic loads will bear overheat and throttle their capability.

 

[lostinreality]

At least with laptops, all the brands have good and bad models. IIRC, the Dell XPS laptops compete very well in their price bracket as I was looking for a laptop about a year back and watched quite few laptop reviews. Desktops and laptops are different beasts. I once worked at a electronic recycling place were I saw like every model of laptop (like all Vista to Win7 models and a few Win8 laptops towards the end) and every brand has shit models and good models (which you can kinda tell just from touching and holding it, the build quality at least). There was this Dell 12.5 inch business class model laptop (I forget the specific model) that I just loved, great build quality, perfect size, good price that I bid on (but lost) when the company put it on eBay to sell. Just have a price point or spec point, and watch some reviews of the models in that range. I got an Asus ViviBook 14-incher because at the $400 price point I found it at with a Ryzen 5, SSD, 8 GBs of RAM, you couldn't beat it. It does everything and more I need/want it to do and plays PS3-gen games well like say Portal 2 or Fallout NV. And something like that Vivobook is all most people need, you don't need to spend $1,000 to get a good laptop.

Funny that you mentioned that, the Dell XPS was actually the laptop I owned during the course of high school! It was definitely something that I treasured really well (it survived the steepest parts of my academic journey during my thesis lol). The only real hiccups I found with it was that it constantly heated up after prolonged use while being plugged in (although I do know that is technically bad for laptops, the battery was dying anyway, as they do). I agree with your other points as well, most brands do have those specific models that stand out and are actually worth the price, but most of the time the "upgrades" that they do or force-production of laptops for different price points (flagship, midrange, entry-level) annually definitely has an effect on the quality of the product that they produce. It's sad seeing people fall for these tactics though, just because it's "new" doesn't mean it's good.

 

[lostinreality]

Funny that you mentioned that, the Dell XPS was actually the laptop I owned during the course of high school! It was definitely something that I treasured really well (it survived the steepest parts of my academic journey during my thesis lol). The only real hiccups I found with it was that it constantly heated up after prolonged use while being plugged in (although I do know that is technically bad for laptops, the battery was dying anyway, as they do). I agree with your other points as well, most brands do have those specific models that stand out and are actually worth the price, but most of the time the "upgrades" that they do or force-production of laptops for different price points (flagship, midrange, entry-level) annually definitely has an effect on the quality of the product that they produce. It's sad seeing people fall for these tactics though, just because it's "new" doesn't mean it's good.

Another thing, I was actually planning on starting a thread asking for input regarding a good windows laptop. I'd like your input regarding this because you actually have experience with different brands. I'm currently using the Macbook Pro M1 2020, it's a relatively good device and has a sleek design, but it's been a hurdle to get past its shortcomings. Just a short background, I work in marketing and sales automation atm (if you don't know what that is I'll paste a link here for reference: https://hyperise.com/blog/sales-automation just so you get the idea of what I do). I currently work for a startup company and in a nutshell, I use a plethora of apps and software which is why the M1 chip is a little bit problematic on my end because a lot of the apps that I use for work are malfunctioning because they don't have native M1 versions yet. At first, it was manageable. It was the occasional screen freeze or apps shutting down, but now it has gotten to the point where my productivity was severely affected and it's a headache already.

If you can suggest any good laptops within the $1.5k~$3k price range, I don't have any strict qualifications as long as they can run steam, have at least 1 TB of internal memory, and not have a loud fan (this was the selling point of the MacBook for me). Any input is highly appreciated, thanks a lot!

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Another thing, I was actually planning on starting a thread asking for input regarding a good windows laptop. I'd like your input regarding this because you actually have experience with different brands. I'm currently using the Macbook Pro M1 2020, it's a relatively good device and has a sleek design, but it's been a hurdle to get past its shortcomings. Just a short background, I work in marketing and sales automation atm (if you don't know what that is I'll paste a link here for reference: https://hyperise.com/blog/sales-automation just so you get the idea of what I do). I currently work for a startup company and in a nutshell, I use a plethora of apps and software which is why the M1 chip is a little bit problematic on my end because a lot of the apps that I use for work are malfunctioning because they don't have native M1 versions yet. At first, it was manageable. It was the occasional screen freeze or apps shutting down, but now it has gotten to the point where my productivity was severely affected and it's a headache already.

If you can suggest any good laptops within the $1.5k~$3k price range, I don't have any strict qualifications as long as they can run steam, have at least 1 TB of internal memory, and not have a loud fan (this was the selling point of the MacBook for me). Any input is highly appreciated, thanks a lot!

You don't need to spend nearly that much unless you really need a beefy GPU for work (I don't think the Apple M1 has great graphical capabilities IIRC so if that was good enough for you without app hiccups then you probably don't need a laptop with a dedicated GPU). Below is a link to a laptop with a Ryzen 7 (Radeon APU graphics), 16 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB SSD for $800. The only downside to it is the screen isn't the best so if you're Photoshopping and need more accurate colors or a brighter screen, it might not be for you. You may need a touchscreen (I personally don't like them) and it doesn't have a touchscreen. You may also want a smaller device since laptops are mobile, I personally don't like anything more than a 14" screen but if you're using it a lot, you may want the bigger screen of 15.6 or even 17.3. So filter the results on a site like Newegg to find models that fit everything you need, then check out some reviews on Youtube. I'd say you seem to probably want at least a Ryzen 5 / Core i5 or higher for the CPU (AMD does give you better graphical capabilities), at least 12 GB of RAM (16GB will be definitely enough) because you said you use a lot of apps, and you definitely want a SSD (you can get away with a smaller SSD in size if the laptop has a spot for a normal laptop HD where you can put up to a 5TB drive in). If you are doing a lot of writing to the drive like say video editing on a daily basis, SSDs only have so many writes they can do so you'd probably want a second normal mechanical hard drive in there anyway.

ASUS VivoBook 15 S513 Thin and Light Laptop, 15.6" FHD Display, AMD Ryzen 7 5700U Processor, Radeon Graphics, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 1TB PCIe SSD, Fingerprint, Windows 10 Home, Indie Black, S513UA-NS77 - Newegg.com

Buy ASUS VivoBook 15 S513 Thin and Light Laptop, 15.6" FHD Display, AMD Ryzen 7 5700U Processor, Radeon Graphics, 16GB DDR4 RAM, 1TB PCIe SSD, Fingerprint, Windows 10 Home, Indie Black, S513UA-NS77 with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

 

[Dalisclock]

Remember when "Dude, you're getting a Dell!" wasn't a threat?


TL;DW summary: An $1800 prebuilt with a terribly-designed case where Dell installed a stock Intel cooler on an AMD processor (leaving the corners of the die uncovered by the heatsink). Bonus points for false advertising of liquid cooling, no BIOS options for overclocking even though AMD processors are unlocked (though since it easily closes in on 100°C under load at stock speeds, that might be for the best), and VRAM that's likely to blow in the near future.

I've always joked that Alienware is a hyper-overclocked mid-range computer with a $600 alien badge on it. I never thought they'd try to undercut my joke....

A bit dramatic but it sounds Dell Fucking shit up is a bit of an issue.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

A bit dramatic but it sounds Dell Fucking shit up is a bit of an issue.

I already posted that in the "best/worst computer brands" thread, but it deserves to be here as well.

To be fair to dell, he had no idea what he was doing when he ordered his PC, and caused a lot of these problems himself. To be fair to him though, holy shit dell's customer service is awful, their proprietary designs are terrible, and their parts pricing is downright predatory. No one should ever buy a dell computer.

 

[Alienware]

I've had my Alienware since February 2014 and never had a single issue with it and it always ran everything smoothly. I dislike this thread and disagree with the dell bashing going on here.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

I've had my Alienware since February 2014 and never had a single issue with it and it always ran everything smoothly. I dislike this thread and disagree with the dell bashing going on here.

"I deliberately entered a thread full of things that I do not like, and now I am mad. How could this be happening to me?"
I'd argue there are better things to do than to defend a mega billion dollar corporate brand

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I've had my Alienware since February 2014 and never had a single issue with it and it always ran everything smoothly. I dislike this thread and disagree with the dell bashing going on here.

A lot can change in eight years. However, I don't expect a fanboy to recognize that.

 

[Agema]

A bit dramatic but it sounds Dell Fucking shit up is a bit of an issue.

Maybe. But if you only read the negative reviews of any company, they will all appear to be a complete clusterfuck. And computers can be very fiddly and temperamental things.

In practice the delivery of any company is likely to be on a bell curve, and one end of that bell curve is going to be in the territory of disaster. If that company sells 100 million computers a year, a mere 0.01% disaster rate is 10,000 disasters, of which plenty can end up in an angry blog post or YouTube video. Every company sells a range of products, some of which are great and others a failure - in some fast moving fields it can take one year and a new model to go from excellent to mediocre or back. Computers make trade-offs between various characteristics, and if someone really hates the trade-off the computer they bought made, they'll write a furious and disparaging comment as if the computer is objectively bad when it's really a subjective opinion.

So, Google "Dell laptops bad". Just scan through the first page on Google without bothering to click on the pages. Now repeat with HP instead of Dell, or Lenovo, or anything else. It'll all be basically the same complaints: low quality, fucked computers, shit customer service, etc. What this tells us is that it really doesn't matter who you buy your computer from, there's a chance that something about it will go horribly wrong, and the company may be atrocious at sorting it out.

 

[Alienware]

A lot can change in eight years. However, I don't expect a fanboy to recognize that.

Fanboy? lol you don't even know me. Kinda of weird for you to assume that but what ever.

 

[Alienware]

"I deliberately entered a thread full of things that I do not like, and now I am mad. How could this be happening to me?"
I'd argue there are better things to do than to defend a mega billion dollar corporate brand

I am not defending alienware, I simply said that I've own one for 7 years and I never had any issues with it. That's all...

 

[Elvis Starburst]

I am not defending alienware, I simply said that I've own one for 7 years and I never had any issues with it. That's all...

I mean...

I dislike this thread and disagree with the dell bashing going on here.

... this kinda speaks to the opposite. When someone says "I disagree with the treatment of *insert brand*" it tends to mean they're upset that people are saying bad things about a brand they like. This is what causes the perception of you being...

a fanboy

(Your username being the brand you like doesn't help matters either)

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Fanboy? lol you don't even know me. Kinda of weird for you to assume that but what ever.

Could have fooled us with your name, and your defense of dell.