Taking Dell to court

[DominiConnor]

There was recently a thread on Quantnet about laptops for Quants and I mentioned that I just bought myself a nice 8 core Intel I7 & 17" LCD laptop from Dell, it's predecessor was of course famous for being the host of my C++ lectures that so many of you have watched.
It doesn't work, keeps turning itself off.
Dell can't get it to work, they've replaced the motherboard, GPU, etc still won't deliver.

Dell is flatly refusing to refund, so I'm taking them to court.

So my question is whether this is just a rogue machine or whether there is a serious design or other flw in the Precision Workstation range, which are the top of Dell's product line, my laptop cost £2K (call it about $3,000), so I had hoped it would work.

As you know Dell has history in denying that that there is a flaw in a product range, most notable the evil capacitor case where Dell screwed many of it's customers.
So if you have had issues with Precision workstation laptops let me know because not only am I suing Dell but I am talking to TheRegister, Europe's top tech website about writing my experience up. (we get 1.7 million readers a week).

 

[Barny]

Should have bought a mac.

 

[MRoss]

I do not like Dell. In fact I would say they are quickly catching up to HP. That being said I did own a m6500 Precision beast 2 years ago (a $2500+ machine) and my experience with it was very pleasant.

 

[DominiConnor]

My previous Precision has lasted 5 years, it still works, it just isn't really all that mobile any more.

 

[MRoss]

My previous Precision has lasted 5 years, it still works, it just isn't really all that mobile any more.

Precision were never meant for mobility. As much as I hate HP their Elitebook series is on par with the Dell Precision series. 2 horrible companies churn out 2 very decent products. Who would have thunk?

 

[DominiConnor]

Yes, Precision is "desktop replacement", ie low footprint, they are quite heavy and a 17" screen will never make for easy portability. Mine doesn't get out all that much but some people have mentioned the incongruity of a headhunter in a nice suit and Thomas Pink shirt occasionally seen with a rucksack with 20lb of laptop, power supply and whatever book I'm currently reading, plus a tablet.

However the reason my 5 yo Precision isn't portable is that the hinges have completely broken and the only thing connecting the screen to the base unit is the LCD cable, but it still works.

Dell are in the penultimate stage of giving in to the storm of legal that I unleashed upon them when they tried to screw me over, but that rather leaves me with a problem.

I need a heavy duty (and so heavy) laptop, big screen preferably with support for dual screening, i7 CPU, preferably nVidia GPU, at least 8Gb of RAM, etc.

I'd like a Lenovo, but they don't do screens that big and when I was Test Director at PC Mag I got to see the raw numbers for customer satisfaction for HP, or rather customer dissatisfaction and they were horrible, so I'm not minded to buy one.

That leaves Toshiba, Asus and MSI none of which grab me yet.​

 

[Barny]

Get a mac.

 

[MRoss]

Barny you troll

 

[MRoss]

I need a heavy duty (and so heavy) laptop, big screen preferably with support for dual screening, i7 CPU, preferably nVidia GPU, at least 8Gb of RAM, etc.

I'd like a Lenovo, but they don't do screens that big and when I was Test Director at PC Mag I got to see the raw numbers for customer satisfaction for HP, or rather customer dissatisfaction and they were horrible, so I'm not minded to buy one.

That leaves Toshiba, Asus and MSI none of which grab me yet.​

I am one of those HP customers

I guess your a bit peeved at Dell right now but the Alienware M18X is probably the best you will do with the possible exception of the Asus Lamborghini. (I remember when Alienware was not owned by Dell and was the undisputed king of DRs. Now Dell caps them )

http://usa.asus.com/Notebooks/Special_Edition/ASUSAutomobili_Lamborghini_VX7/#specifications

I use to dislike Asus but lately they have been churning out some very impressive products. Bear in mind the Asus is a 16" but does have a powerful Nvidia and 1080p.

 

[Barny]

Why am I trolling? I'm deadly serious. If you want a decent laptop, get a mac. You would have to pay me to buy another manufacturer's laptops these days. As they say, once you go mac you don't go back.

 

[MRoss]

Alain, you gotta shake your Mac obsession. Eitherway, there is no point of ruining another perfectly good thread with Mac-Trolling. Back to DC's issue.

If he wants to spend $2,500 on a machine with mediocre specs then yes get a Mac.

 

[Barny]

Why do you care about the specs? Do you use 4-processors, and all 3GHz of the clock-speed on each? Are you constantly using your 8GB of RAM? It's just such a naive way of looking at things. If you go and buy your dell, you get a load of hardware with a rubbish OS stuck on top. The concept of synergy and user experience is lost on you guys. You'll also use 10% of the available hardware. Most people use their laptop for surfing the web and word processing, in fact, so make that 1%.

 

[MRoss]

Out of respect for DominiConnor I will restrain myself and not feed the trolls. Lets get back on topic please.

 

[alain]

Alain, you gotta shake your Mac obsession. Eitherway, there is no point of ruining another perfectly good thread with Mac-Trolling. Back to DC's issue.

If he wants to spend $2,500 on a machine with mediocre specs then yes get a Mac.

This is my first post on this thread. I haven't made any comment. I haven't said anything wrong about Dells or Asus or Alienware so I have no idea why you are calling me a troll. On the other hand, you are the one calling people trolls while pushing your flavor of the month laptop.

Do you what Dominic wants? Maybe a Mac is exactly what he is looking for. If Dominic wants a machine that is going to give him less headaches with decent specs, a Mac will fit that bill perfectly. It doesn't seem that money is an issue in this case.

I have had bought/used multiple laptops in my life. Intel Macs and Thinkpads take the cake by a wide margin. Next in line are Dell Latitudes. The other laptops I have had (HP, Toshiba, Sony, Asus) are pretty much worthless regardless of the specs. This is just my experience. Your take could be something totally different.

 

[MRoss]

No Alain, you are certainly not a troll. I only mentioned you because you disliked my post and liked Barneys. I was referring to Barny. Every time someone wants to have a normal conversation PC related he always pipes in "Get a Mac". No logical argument, no backbone. Just those 3 words.

Wikipedia: In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

This is Barny. He is not interested in promoting intelligent discussion, just trolling.

But back to your post. Asus was worthless in the past, I agree. But I believe they have been improving and I like what I see. I agree that Macs are superior, but not worth double the price. My personal experience (and although I am certainly not the oldest member on QN I think I can safely say I have owned more laptops then anyone here) is that Samsung, Sony, Asus, and Lenovo make very decent machines. If I would rate Apple 10/10 I would give these 8.5/10. At half the price and significantly better specs which is what it sounds like DC is looking for I would say he should give these a shot; Alienware and Asus in particular. If he is wealthy and willing to drop Windows then I would recommend a Mac for him.

 

[Barny]

Clearly Dominic is wealthy. Secondly, it seems he's getting fed up of poor customer service and poor longevity and reliability with his laptops. If this the case, a mac is a no brainer. Outstanding reliability, performance, and longevity. You have to pay for it, sure, but if you have the money, they are worth it.

Your main point seems to be that macs are overpriced for the spec. My point is that the spec is irrelevant. You will not use 80% of even 1 CPU, nevermind 80% of 4-8CPUs, so why put so much weight on the hardware? The important thing is the performance. I can guarantee you that macs perform better for everyday tasks due to the outstanding operating system (Windows after all, is a piece of shit) even if their processors have 0.2GHz less. There is a reason Apple is the #1 company in the world.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Your main point seems to be that macs are overpriced for the spec. My point is that the spec is irrelevant. You will not use 80% of even 1 CPU, nevermind 80% of 4-8CPUs, so why put so much weight on the hardware?

I thought the audience here would appreciate beefier machines than the general public, given the nature of their work/study (Monte Carlo simulation, etc)

 

[MRoss]

Absolutely correct. Last semester we had to write code valuing structured securities. The average code ran approximately 45 minutes. Specs matter. I cannot tell you how many times I had to take a break while the numbers were churning...

 

[Barny]

I thought the audience here would appreciate beefier machines than the general public, given the nature of their work/study (Monte Carlo simulation, etc)

Here is a little task for you and anyone else who is interested.

Write your monte-carlo program. Plot actual performance vs N with the theoretical maximum as a horizontal line crossing the y-axis.

Post the graph here.

For those who are super keen, write a parallel monte-carlo algorithm, and plot the scaling.

Once someone (personally, I challenge MRoss since he seems to be the biggest spec fanboy here) has posted that, we can have a proper discussion. Until then, I'll continue to believe that my 2.7GHz quad-core mac is sufficient for all my computing needs, including writing monte-carlo programs.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

We are still talking about laptop, not desktop, right?