Welcome To My Island

Why I don’t want to buy from Dell again

Dell is cheap, which is why I bought my Inspiron 5150 from them in the first place. This was probably the worst purchase I have ever made. Because of this laptop, I now try harder to stay away from cheap stuff, because cheap stuff is cheaply made.

Within a month and a half of me having my brand spanking new Inspiron 5150, the screen suddenly stopped working. I called Dell and went through the whole thing with the automated messages where I had to press a bunch of numbers and then was finally connected with a tech support person from India.

The person I was talking to was in India, and wow did I have a hard time understanding them. To me, it honestly sounds like they are speaking a foreign language. I know they are speaking English, but it is so hard to understand them! They also speak a mile a minute. I had to ask them several hundred times to repeat what they said. I finally managed to get past the language barrier and explained the problem. They sent a guy a month later to fix the problem. It turned out that the problem wasnt what they thought it was, so the guy couldn’t fix it. The video card was fried, there wasn’t anything wrong with the monitor. Around two weeks later they sent another guy to fix the problem. This guy couldn’t manage to unscrew the screws that were holding the video card in place.

Two weeks and a few phone calls later, Dell sent me a box to send my laptop in so that they could fix it. Around two weeks later, I got my laptop back.

It took over two months to fix that problem.

A few months later my motherboard fried, so I called tech support and then they fixed it within a few weeks.

A few months later my computer started overheating to the point it started to shut off. Then suddenly, after restarting it, the fan started to sound like a motor boat. I called tech support, I thought that it would be easy to get them to just send some guy to replace the fan… but it wasn’t. The person kept wanting me to try troubleshooting, which is what they told me to do for each of the other problems as well. I knew it was the fan that needed to be replaced, but the tech support lady wouldn’t listen so I finally said, “JUST LISTEN TO THE FAN!!!” And held my laptop up to the phone. She said, “Please hold for a moment.”

I waited 10 minutes….

Then she finally came back on and said that a guy will be calling me to come replace the fan.

FINALLY! Within the next two weeks the fan was replaced and my laptop was good to go.

Then a few months later my sound completely stopped working. I’m pretty confident it is the sound card that has gone out, but I figured it isn’t worth calling tech support to fix it. I hate the hassle of calling them so much, that I’d just rather go without sound.

Now, just recently, my Inspiron 5150 doesn’t recognize the power source, and there is a short in the power plug on my computer, so I have to keep moving it around so my laptop will stay charged. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

I’m still under warranty, so I’ll email tech support about the sound and the power problem. When I can afford it, I’m going to retire my Inspiron 5150 and buy something much, much better.

I have found that I’m not alone with these problems. So many owners of the Inspiron 5150 have had the same exact problems that I have had.

So many had problems that Dell had a lawsuit filed against them. Dell agreed to repair the Inspiron 5150s free of charge and reimburse those who had to pay to get it fixed. This doesn’t help me however, because I payed for a four year warranty.

The problem with the Inspiron 5150s is that they put the fan in a horrible spot, so the laptop gets so hot that it fries the parts, causing them to kick the bucket. Knowing this problem, I bought a laptop fan to set my laptop on. It does a great job of helping keep the laptop cooler, but I still ended up with my sound going out and the power problem.

So if I get it fixed, chances are that in another 4 months, I’ll probably have trouble again.