You've just got to love Dell !!

[Painless]

Just working on a case where the hard drive on a new Dell inspiron N1550 needs replacing. It's under warranty but for speed I agreed with Dell that I would fit their replacement drive.

I then found that to access the drive you have to completely strip down the laptop and remove the motherboard !! There is no other way to reach it and it is securely screwed to the underside. It's not difficult to do but take 20 mins longer than just undoing 2 screws and sliding out the drive.

Do you think that Dell are trying to monopolies the repair of their machines ?




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[morr]

....

Do you think that Dell are trying to monopolies the repair of their machines ?
....

I'd say it's more a case of being designed to a price, ie whatever helps reduce the cost of production wins, if it shaves a few pennies of the manufacturing costs do they really care about the difficulties it may cause later.

Even if it costs them extra in labour on any warranty replacements they may have to perform I'm sure the bean counters have already calculated that the productions savings on the whole product line will outweigh this.

 

[RichmondTech]

That's surprising to hear as the Dells tend to be easy to replace parts. Interesting that they would go this route.

 

[PBComputer]

I had one in a few weeks ago, for a new wifi card fitted, and it's a pain to get into them.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

IMO, IME (In My Experience)...I don't think Dell is trying to monopolize on the repairs. Heck, they benefit from someone else doing the work for them, it's less expensive to ship just a part..rather than send a Dell tech out for warranty repleacement of parts.

A lot of laptop brands are cutting back on their cheap entry level laptops...even Lenovo on some of their new Thinkpad "Edge" models.

I have many clients with fleets and fleets of laptops...a huge percentage of them are Dell Latitude series (their good business grade models)...and those are the easiest for me to support..compared to Lenovo, Toshiba, Sony, Fujitsu...to name some others. It's usually as easy as spending 15 minutes in Dells support Chat window...describe the issue...do all of this while I'm working on other things at my desk..and the replacement part is en route overnight shipping. Can't get much easier than that. And to put it straight up....the least amount of time and effort that I spend...in repairs/fixing issues with my clients hardware, the better off for me. I don't like wasting precious minutes with repairs.

 

[hondablaster]

Inspiron < Difficult.
Latitude < Awesome

I used to fully support Latitudes and Optiplexs I could get in and out in minutes if not seconds.

My wife sister has an issue on her Inspiron and its like working with a whole different manufacturer. Not just in assembly, but the flimsiness of the parts.

I am sure cost of production and engineering have something to do with it. This Inspiron felt like trying to service a Kodak disposable camera.

 

[mason]

i think thats a good thing! means that no normal person at home with a screw driver will try and replace the drive. they will start to and think this looks harder than it sounds.

My acer 4552 is the same, every screen at the bottom has to come out and the bottom then lefts off to get to the memory and the hard drive.

 

[Mr.Mike]

i think thats a good thing! means that no normal person at home with a screw driver will try and replace the drive. they will start to and think this looks harder than it sounds.

I say let the normal person at home try to take it out and: PooF! a new job for me!!