Agh do not buy dell!

YAYitsAndrew · Mar 27, 2006, 04:20 PM

My girlfriend got a dell 700m laptop last summer. Just recently we wanted to start using yahoo messenger's voice features to make pc-to-pc calls so we picked up a headset for her at best buy. Her microphone kept giving all this feedback and popping noise making it hard to talk. I began to troubleshoot it and fell upon a lovely little gem.

Dell released the 700m laptop series with a faulty line-in. The problem is with the motherboard itself. In fact I saw a workaround that solders a few capacitors and a resistor on to the board to fix it. Screw that. The worst part of all this? Dell has never admitted that there is a flaw in the design of an entire series, despite the fact that there are posts all over their forums and a website called www.recall700m.com outlining every facet of the problem.

That's rediculous. I can't support a company who won't admit their own mistakes and then do their best to fix it for their customers. If you call in about this you'll get the good ol' customer service run around. So I'm posting here to let you all know about this kind of consumer unfriendly shit that dell is pulling, and encouraging you to look somewhere else for your next laptop purchase.

Sandok · Mar 27, 2006, 04:34 PM

That sucks big time mate... But apart from that my dad and I both own Dell Laptop and honest to god, they haven't given me any major problems ever...

pr0digal jenius · Mar 27, 2006, 04:36 PM

wow....the most common thing I've seen with dells is the wifi being DOA, but thats not their fault so much as it is poor QC by the mobo manufacturer/NIC manufacturer

this takes the cake though.....

....and, just FYI, it exists with the inspiron 6000 as well, as my girlfriend's laptop is incapable of using Tunebite to re-record audio, and during driver sound tests on it [input to output to record] it makes this god awful loud [constant] beep and crashes/freezes the entire machine....I'm guessing now that this is the same flaw, and must be due to the SigmaTel C-Major audio card, as I've seen it in a gateway using this card as well?

BWX · Mar 27, 2006, 04:42 PM

One thing you might be able to do is use a USB headset to get around the problem, or a USB type sound card for that matter.

pr0digal jenius · Mar 27, 2006, 04:47 PM

i'm not buying her a USB sound card just to convert her music she downloads off napster...that's dumb...altho, I may have to if I don't wanna keep hearing about how I need to find her something that will work

Wonder what kinda price I can swing at CC on a PCMCIA audigy 2 ZS

YAYitsAndrew · Mar 27, 2006, 05:13 PM

Yeah there's no fix, all you can do is spend more money for a pcmcia or usb sound card.

The page with the soldering info explains what the mobo designer forgot to do, it's something like unfettered power heading to the mic port and carrying the noise from the cpu and hard drive.

I know that dell has good products, and everyone is allowed to make mistakes. But to not take responsibility for them and leave your consumers in the garbage while you walk to the bank? That's just wrong.

pr0digal jenius · Mar 27, 2006, 05:16 PM

hmm...maybe I have a different issue then, as it isn't the mic port at all...it's actually an incompatibility between tunebite and the audi input/sound card altogether

Judas · Mar 27, 2006, 05:25 PM

uh..... the wonders of prebuilts....

pr0digal jenius · Mar 27, 2006, 05:53 PM

laptops are all prebuilts

Sandok · Mar 27, 2006, 06:29 PM

Yeah... Well I never tried an inspiron... Only latitudes for me

BWX · Mar 27, 2006, 07:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pr0digal jenius

i'm not buying her a USB sound card just to convert her music she downloads off napster...that's dumb...altho, I may have to if I don't wanna keep hearing about how I need to find her something that will work

Wonder what kinda price I can swing at CC on a PCMCIA audigy 2 ZS

I was actually talking about YAYitsAndrew, but you can get a USB headset cheap, and they have a little built-in sound card type deal. (won't need a USB sound card with that)

Judas · Mar 27, 2006, 08:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pr0digal jenius

laptops are all prebuilts

you can get laptops custom build with your own specifications.... course it's going to cost more..... but there is a bit better standard for factor now then just dell and compaq and toshiba or whatever just designing there own crap..

i mean it isn't much.... but... imo, if i can even get some of it somewhat customized.... i'd rather do that then have dell sell me one of there 100,000 manufactured ones.

pr0digal jenius · Mar 27, 2006, 10:02 PM

Dell laptops are solid usually....

HP's are too, compaq's have wifi & audio issues, toshibas are solid, sony's are solid, aside from the T series, which has a high rate of return and even higher rate of touchpad failure, and so on and so forth...

none are bad altogether, every product line has it's one model flukes now and then...what sucks here is dell's unwillingness to fix it

The_Neon_Cowboy · Mar 27, 2006, 10:52 PM

never buys branded pc's , never have , probubly never will

BWX · Mar 27, 2006, 11:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by The_Neon_Cowboy

never buys branded pc's , never have , probubly never will

Laptops?

You build you own, or buy no-name brand things?

YAYitsAndrew · Mar 28, 2006, 12:55 AM

My laptop is an asus that was custom built by a small company. I haven't ever had a problem with it. But why would I? It's asus!

I don't want to have to troubleshoot my gf's laptop all the time though, so I wanted her to go with someone who makes their laptops a little more friendly to the average user. I'll always have a need for a company like that and it's not dell anymore.

EcPercy · Mar 28, 2006, 02:38 PM

They did the same thing with their custom Dell version of the SBLive! 5.1. They had creative make them a custom chip on this version of the card which (according to numerous forum complaints) offloads all of the sound processing on the CPU, but yet they market the card as a SBLive! 5.1. Oddly enough, even creative will not support this card and their regular drivers dont work. People were complaining about popping sounds in games and just crappy overall sound quality, but Dell stuck with the fact that it was in fact a true Creative SBLive! 5.1 card and not a custom version. You can pull the card and it clearly has a different number on the chip than what creative has on their cards...

Personally, I hate Dell. The company I work for uses them exclusively and after seeing the problems we have I hate them even more.

I do some IT work on the side and I recommend any other brand besides Dell, but I prefer to build my own servers. Yes, Dell's warranty and 1 hour part replacement service works, but after awhile you get tired of calling them all the time for the same stuff.

LeanWolf · Mar 28, 2006, 02:54 PM

So you haven't had any problems with your asus, and don't expect any, but you didn't get her one because you'd have to troubleshoot it all the time? You're not really making sense...
I've had a dell laptop now for what 4 years? (not sure) and never had a problem with it. Of course it was top of the line when I bought it... A lot of big companies like Dell, Nike and Sony make some nice stuff, but also fork out alot of crap, you have to do some research...
It does suck how they're denying the problem even exists though, they should be brought to account for that somehow. Can't you return the bloody thing?

Zardon · Mar 28, 2006, 02:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sandok

That sucks big time mate... But apart from that my dad and I both own Dell Laptop and honest to god, they haven't given me any major problems ever...

Nothing wrong with dell laptops. someone always ends up with a bad machine regardless of manufacturer. and when you make and sell as many as dell it will happen.....

YAYitsAndrew · Mar 28, 2006, 04:16 PM

I don't think you see the issue though Z. This is a problem not with a specific laptop that can be replaced, but with an entire series that dell released. They can swap your motherboard and replace your laptop all day and you'll still have this bug because it's a defect in the model and not a one-off error.

And LeanWolf, what I consider a problem and what she considers a problem are two different things

. A problem for me can be solved by using countless personal experience and internet resources. She always wants to make things pink cause she's a girl. Granted dell isn't going to help her with that, but there's a whole new level of problem that she's on.

Plus I can't hardware troubleshoot laptops and at the time of purchasing hers I didn't have any small vendors to trust with multi-year warrantees.

Falstaff · Mar 28, 2006, 04:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by YAYitsAndrew

My girlfriend got a dell 700m laptop last summer. Just recently we wanted to start using yahoo messenger's voice features to make pc-to-pc calls so we picked up a headset for her at best buy. Her microphone kept giving all this feedback and popping noise making it hard to talk. I began to troubleshoot it and fell upon a lovely little gem.

Dell released the 700m laptop series with a faulty line-in. The problem is with the motherboard itself. In fact I saw a workaround that solders a few capacitors and a resistor on to the board to fix it. Screw that. The worst part of all this? Dell has never admitted that there is a flaw in the design of an entire series, despite the fact that there are posts all over their forums and a website called www.recall700m.com outlining every facet of the problem.

That's rediculous. I can't support a company who won't admit their own mistakes and then do their best to fix it for their customers. If you call in about this you'll get the good ol' customer service run around. So I'm posting here to let you all know about this kind of consumer unfriendly shit that dell is pulling, and encouraging you to look somewhere else for your next laptop purchase.

ANDREW!!
its gonna be okay man...I swear its gonna be okay...

[color=red]CONTACT DELL!![/color]

I have owned three Dells so far and I purchased an XPS that does what I want, albiet with some of the Dell spyware onboard, (but hey) and I had a problem with the LCD, I noticed artifacts and I contacted the vender and within several days recieved a replacement and coupons for future purchases. I am pleases as punch so what I suggest and I am sure you already know, find a local distributer / repair site and use them to get your box fixed. I just used the code on the bottom of the machine and called in the trouble ticket, Dell will repair and replace anything under warranty, including their crappy color printers, believe me I know, we have over a thousand towers and micro ATX machines here at Buckley and they faithfully honor our requests.

YAYitsAndrew · Mar 28, 2006, 06:58 PM

What they'll do is replace a motherboard that has the architecture glitch.... with a motherboard that has the architecture glitch. It's universal. It's like if you sent a t-shirt design to a company and said print 1000 of these: "Falstaff is aweosme". And then you got them and you sold them and you refused to admit awesome was spelled wrong. *
There have been people who spent 8+ hours on the phone with dell and were able to get a pcmcia sound card for free from them (one that isn't compatible with the ti chipset in the pcmcia slot). That'd be like you sending an iron on patch that had "so" on it, but the background was a different color. So now awesome is spelled right, but you've got a whole new issue.

There may be hope that the 710m board fixes this problem and is compatible with the 700m, but the forum thread at dell has said otherwise so far.

* You may have a hard time selling 1000 shirts proclaiming your awesomeness, no matter how factual the statement is.

Falstaff · Mar 28, 2006, 08:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by YAYitsAndrew

What they'll do is replace a motherboard that has the architecture glitch.... with a motherboard that has the architecture glitch. It's universal. It's like if you sent a t-shirt design to a company and said print 1000 of these: "Falstaff is aweosme". And then you got them and you sold them and you refused to admit awesome was spelled wrong. *
There have been people who spent 8+ hours on the phone with dell and were able to get a pcmcia sound card for free from them (one that isn't compatible with the ti chipset in the pcmcia slot). That'd be like you sending an iron on patch that had "so" on it, but the background was a different color. So now awesome is spelled right, but you've got a whole new issue.

There may be hope that the 710m board fixes this problem and is compatible with the 700m, but the forum thread at dell has said otherwise so far.

* You may have a hard time selling 1000 shirts proclaiming your awesomeness, no matter how factual the statement is.

Oh come Ahnnnnnndrew..
All we are saying.....
is give Dell a chance..

Logla · Mar 28, 2006, 08:50 PM

I got my first dell laptop last week - inspiron 9400 and its superb. The only gripe I have with dell is there customer support - I ordered a 9cell high capacity battery because this being a desktop replacement it tends to chew through the power.
They didn't send the high cap battery so I emailed them on thursday night and got a reply first thing monday morning. They told me that the order I signed and returned to them listed the standard battery and so there is nothing more they can do. I dug out the order and found that it does indeed show the 9cell battery I asked for. I replied and attached the order form to show them the 9 cell battery and asked for a reply. That was Friday morning and I've heard nothing back from them. If they haven't replied by the end of the week I'll be contacting the local trading standards office and getting them involved.

Sandok · Mar 28, 2006, 08:59 PM

With dell, you gotta phone...

Logla · Mar 28, 2006, 10:06 PM

Problem is with the phone is that their call centers are in places such as india. Dont take this the wrong way - its just that they have a real problem understanding my accent. I'm from a part of the uk where people from a city just 100 miles away have a problem understanding any word I'm saying. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geordie to help you better understand my plight.

Mar 27, 2006, 04:20 PM	#1
YAYitsAndrew Anti-Piracy Poster Boy Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: NJ Posts: 2,605 Rep Power: 77 System Specs	Agh do not buy dell! My girlfriend got a dell 700m laptop last summer. Just recently we wanted to start using yahoo messenger's voice features to make pc-to-pc calls so we picked up a headset for her at best buy. Her microphone kept giving all this feedback and popping noise making it hard to talk. I began to troubleshoot it and fell upon a lovely little gem. Dell released the 700m laptop series with a faulty line-in. The problem is with the motherboard itself. In fact I saw a workaround that solders a few capacitors and a resistor on to the board to fix it. Screw that. The worst part of all this? Dell has never admitted that there is a flaw in the design of an entire series, despite the fact that there are posts all over their forums and a website called www.recall700m.com outlining every facet of the problem. That's rediculous. I can't support a company who won't admit their own mistakes and then do their best to fix it for their customers. If you call in about this you'll get the good ol' customer service run around. So I'm posting here to let you all know about this kind of consumer unfriendly shit that dell is pulling, and encouraging you to look somewhere else for your next laptop purchase. __________________ "It is because the resistance to paying for copyrighted material, although often characterized as arising from a supposed technical burden or principled concern for the public interest, arises rather from exactly the same segment of the brain that is dominant in shoplifters." - Mark Helprin, Digital Barbarism In other words, it's never okay to steal even if you think you have a good reason! www.yayitsandrew.com

Mar 27, 2006, 04:42 PM	#4
BWX unplugged Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: USNY Posts: 19,665 Rep Power: 109 System Specs	One thing you might be able to do is use a USB headset to get around the problem, or a USB type sound card for that matter. __________________

Mar 27, 2006, 05:13 PM	Thread Starter #6
YAYitsAndrew Anti-Piracy Poster Boy Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: NJ Posts: 2,605 Rep Power: 77 System Specs	Yeah there's no fix, all you can do is spend more money for a pcmcia or usb sound card. The page with the soldering info explains what the mobo designer forgot to do, it's something like unfettered power heading to the mic port and carrying the noise from the cpu and hard drive. I know that dell has good products, and everyone is allowed to make mistakes. But to not take responsibility for them and leave your consumers in the garbage while you walk to the bank? That's just wrong. __________________ "It is because the resistance to paying for copyrighted material, although often characterized as arising from a supposed technical burden or principled concern for the public interest, arises rather from exactly the same segment of the brain that is dominant in shoplifters." - Mark Helprin, Digital Barbarism In other words, it's never okay to steal even if you think you have a good reason! www.yayitsandrew.com

Mar 27, 2006, 10:52 PM	#14
The_Neon_Cowboy HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: U.S.A. Posts: 16,009 Rep Power: 90 System Specs	never buys branded pc's , never have , probubly never will __________________

Mar 28, 2006, 12:55 AM	Thread Starter #16
YAYitsAndrew Anti-Piracy Poster Boy Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: NJ Posts: 2,605 Rep Power: 77 System Specs	My laptop is an asus that was custom built by a small company. I haven't ever had a problem with it. But why would I? It's asus! I don't want to have to troubleshoot my gf's laptop all the time though, so I wanted her to go with someone who makes their laptops a little more friendly to the average user. I'll always have a need for a company like that and it's not dell anymore. __________________ "It is because the resistance to paying for copyrighted material, although often characterized as arising from a supposed technical burden or principled concern for the public interest, arises rather from exactly the same segment of the brain that is dominant in shoplifters." - Mark Helprin, Digital Barbarism In other words, it's never okay to steal even if you think you have a good reason! www.yayitsandrew.com

Mar 27, 2006, 04:34 PM	#2
Sandok DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 9,472 Rep Power: 66	That sucks big time mate... But apart from that my dad and I both own Dell Laptop and honest to god, they haven't given me any major problems ever...

Mar 27, 2006, 04:36 PM	#3
pr0digal jenius Delete Me Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 14,648 Rep Power: 0	wow....the most common thing I've seen with dells is the wifi being DOA, but thats not their fault so much as it is poor QC by the mobo manufacturer/NIC manufacturer this takes the cake though..... ....and, just FYI, it exists with the inspiron 6000 as well, as my girlfriend's laptop is incapable of using Tunebite to re-record audio, and during driver sound tests on it [input to output to record] it makes this god awful loud [constant] beep and crashes/freezes the entire machine....I'm guessing now that this is the same flaw, and must be due to the SigmaTel C-Major audio card, as I've seen it in a gateway using this card as well?

Mar 27, 2006, 04:47 PM	#5
pr0digal jenius Delete Me Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 14,648 Rep Power: 0	i'm not buying her a USB sound card just to convert her music she downloads off napster...that's dumb...altho, I may have to if I don't wanna keep hearing about how I need to find her something that will work Wonder what kinda price I can swing at CC on a PCMCIA audigy 2 ZS

Mar 27, 2006, 05:16 PM	#7
pr0digal jenius Delete Me Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 14,648 Rep Power: 0	hmm...maybe I have a different issue then, as it isn't the mic port at all...it's actually an incompatibility between tunebite and the audi input/sound card altogether

Mar 27, 2006, 05:53 PM	#9
pr0digal jenius Delete Me Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 14,648 Rep Power: 0	laptops are all prebuilts

Mar 27, 2006, 06:29 PM	#10
Sandok DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 9,472 Rep Power: 66	Yeah... Well I never tried an inspiron... Only latitudes for me

Mar 27, 2006, 10:02 PM	#13
pr0digal jenius Delete Me Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 14,648 Rep Power: 0	Dell laptops are solid usually.... HP's are too, compaq's have wifi & audio issues, toshibas are solid, sony's are solid, aside from the T series, which has a high rate of return and even higher rate of touchpad failure, and so on and so forth... none are bad altogether, every product line has it's one model flukes now and then...what sucks here is dell's unwillingness to fix it

Mar 28, 2006, 02:38 PM	#17
EcPercy HardwareHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Iraq Posts: 1,535 Rep Power: 64	They did the same thing with their custom Dell version of the SBLive! 5.1. They had creative make them a custom chip on this version of the card which (according to numerous forum complaints) offloads all of the sound processing on the CPU, but yet they market the card as a SBLive! 5.1. Oddly enough, even creative will not support this card and their regular drivers dont work. People were complaining about popping sounds in games and just crappy overall sound quality, but Dell stuck with the fact that it was in fact a true Creative SBLive! 5.1 card and not a custom version. You can pull the card and it clearly has a different number on the chip than what creative has on their cards... Personally, I hate Dell. The company I work for uses them exclusively and after seeing the problems we have I hate them even more. I do some IT work on the side and I recommend any other brand besides Dell, but I prefer to build my own servers. Yes, Dell's warranty and 1 hour part replacement service works, but after awhile you get tired of calling them all the time for the same stuff.

Mar 28, 2006, 02:54 PM	#18
LeanWolf alpha male Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Skyrim Posts: 5,702 Rep Power: 80 System Specs	So you haven't had any problems with your asus, and don't expect any, but you didn't get her one because you'd have to troubleshoot it all the time? You're not really making sense... I've had a dell laptop now for what 4 years? (not sure) and never had a problem with it. Of course it was top of the line when I bought it... A lot of big companies like Dell, Nike and Sony make some nice stuff, but also fork out alot of crap, you have to do some research... It does suck how they're denying the problem even exists though, they should be brought to account for that somehow. Can't you return the bloody thing? __________________

Mar 28, 2006, 04:16 PM	Thread Starter #20
YAYitsAndrew Anti-Piracy Poster Boy Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: NJ Posts: 2,605 Rep Power: 77 System Specs	I don't think you see the issue though Z. This is a problem not with a specific laptop that can be replaced, but with an entire series that dell released. They can swap your motherboard and replace your laptop all day and you'll still have this bug because it's a defect in the model and not a one-off error. And LeanWolf, what I consider a problem and what she considers a problem are two different things . A problem for me can be solved by using countless personal experience and internet resources. She always wants to make things pink cause she's a girl. Granted dell isn't going to help her with that, but there's a whole new level of problem that she's on. Plus I can't hardware troubleshoot laptops and at the time of purchasing hers I didn't have any small vendors to trust with multi-year warrantees. __________________ "It is because the resistance to paying for copyrighted material, although often characterized as arising from a supposed technical burden or principled concern for the public interest, arises rather from exactly the same segment of the brain that is dominant in shoplifters." - Mark Helprin, Digital Barbarism In other words, it's never okay to steal even if you think you have a good reason! www.yayitsandrew.com

Mar 28, 2006, 06:58 PM	Thread Starter #22
YAYitsAndrew Anti-Piracy Poster Boy Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: NJ Posts: 2,605 Rep Power: 77 System Specs	What they'll do is replace a motherboard that has the architecture glitch.... with a motherboard that has the architecture glitch. It's universal. It's like if you sent a t-shirt design to a company and said print 1000 of these: "Falstaff is aweosme". And then you got them and you sold them and you refused to admit awesome was spelled wrong. * There have been people who spent 8+ hours on the phone with dell and were able to get a pcmcia sound card for free from them (one that isn't compatible with the ti chipset in the pcmcia slot). That'd be like you sending an iron on patch that had "so" on it, but the background was a different color. So now awesome is spelled right, but you've got a whole new issue. There may be hope that the 710m board fixes this problem and is compatible with the 700m, but the forum thread at dell has said otherwise so far. * You may have a hard time selling 1000 shirts proclaiming your awesomeness, no matter how factual the statement is. __________________ "It is because the resistance to paying for copyrighted material, although often characterized as arising from a supposed technical burden or principled concern for the public interest, arises rather from exactly the same segment of the brain that is dominant in shoplifters." - Mark Helprin, Digital Barbarism In other words, it's never okay to steal even if you think you have a good reason! www.yayitsandrew.com

Mar 28, 2006, 08:50 PM	#24
Logla HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 3,311 Rep Power: 62	I got my first dell laptop last week - inspiron 9400 and its superb. The only gripe I have with dell is there customer support - I ordered a 9cell high capacity battery because this being a desktop replacement it tends to chew through the power. They didn't send the high cap battery so I emailed them on thursday night and got a reply first thing monday morning. They told me that the order I signed and returned to them listed the standard battery and so there is nothing more they can do. I dug out the order and found that it does indeed show the 9cell battery I asked for. I replied and attached the order form to show them the 9 cell battery and asked for a reply. That was Friday morning and I've heard nothing back from them. If they haven't replied by the end of the week I'll be contacting the local trading standards office and getting them involved.

Mar 28, 2006, 08:59 PM	#25
Sandok DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 9,472 Rep Power: 66	With dell, you gotta phone...

Mar 28, 2006, 10:06 PM	#26
Logla HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 3,311 Rep Power: 62	Problem is with the phone is that their call centers are in places such as india. Dont take this the wrong way - its just that they have a real problem understanding my accent. I'm from a part of the uk where people from a city just 100 miles away have a problem understanding any word I'm saying. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geordie to help you better understand my plight.