It arrived! I ordered on Friday night. It shipped on Monday. It arrived at 10:00 am Wednesday. This is all as was promised or implied. Why, oh why did Dell need to put me through the wringer? I still hate them, just for a different reason now. My son was happily using it last night when I called home.

So, was it really scratched and/or dented?

-David

Probably both. I never asked. I'll be home this weekend. I'll look it over and report back.

Thats ridiculous. Of course they don't. They get scratched automatically when they dent them at the end of the assembly line.

The only sign of damage is a scrape on the Microsoft Windows license sticker on the bottom.

It's very nice looking. I like the silver and white case. And, right now it's performing well. The 9 cell battery really holds up. BamaVol Jr #2 can get through 4 hours of note-taking in class on a charge and there's still plenty of power left.

All new genuine Microsoft CoA looks like this now. It is a new security feature to further complicated duplicating CoA:s.

Quite simply NOT TRUE. You are allowed to open the machine and do what you want with it. But in the event of a warranty claim it has to be returned in its original state or any hardware has to come directly from Dell. So, if you have an issue you just take out the hardware you put in it (a wise thing to do anyway in case they give you a replacement machine.

There are no warranty seals on Dell machines, in fact they are some of the easiest to open machines on the market.

Thanks for the update. Do you still hate Dell?

Or is it more of a love-hate thing now?

-David

LOL. I guess I have mixed feelings. I hate the poor customer service. I hate the misleading delivery information and scripted Indian CSR responses. My son is happy with the product and I hope that continues.

Under similar circumstances, I would probably do something different next time. We shopped local stores and stock, post-holidays, was low. Different time of year, I'd probably buy local. For me, I'm going to seriously consider Apple next time. Business purchase, I feel darned if I do, darned if I don't with a choice between Dell and IBM. It may well depend on how this machine holds up. My work laptop lease is up in May or June so there isn't a lot of time until I have to order a replacement.

My husband has had a Dell for 2 years and loves it. Got all the bells and whistles, somewhat pricey, but it's the best he has ever owned.

That's a GREAT recommendation: Dell uses cheap, crappy parts but sure does replace them well! Well, at least in your case.
I had an HP and they are even worse than Dell. Apple will be my next foray.

I'm not sure how you drew that conclusion from my post. Most electronic parts, regardless of quality, can be handily destroyed with a can of Pepsi (the reason for the failure of the keyboard and video card in my current laptop). And as I stated, the hard drives in both laptops were Hitachis, which are pretty highly regarded for notebook/laptop drives. The first drive in my earlier laptop was beaten to death by a train; the second one was a side effect of a cooling issue with the 5150. And the cooling issue's been rectified as well.

The only "crappy" part I could point to would be the bezel around the keyboard that developed hairline cracks a few months after I bought the laptop. The replacement (that I've had far longer than the original) is showing no such issues. My assumption is that Dell discovered a design flaw with the bezel and actually decided to fix it.

Please, order an Apple next time. You won't have any trouble with that

I don't know if I would go as far as to say never (ever see Never say Never Again) but having just switched to an Apple I would have to agree.

Again I agree 100% though I date the change back to the last few years. At the time I got my last Dell in 2000, the tech support was great, I could reach a guy in Texas 24/7 who could always fix my problem (and there were very few). But as the .coms crashed and business tanked, the surviving tech companies had to find ways to cut costs. In Dell's case, it appear the company cut back on both product quality (and I'm talking build quality) and service, as evidenced by the idiotic ICC response received by OP. Dell went so overboard with mediocre ICC that it lost a lot of business customers and had to reverse course at least for business contracts.

I don't hate Dell but I won't buy products that fall apart and I won't deal with ICCs particularly for something that costs this much.

I have to admit my last Dell Latitude has been in service 7 years and still ticking, though the keys are getting sticky and I preemptively replaced the hard drive. But I have heard horror stories about the new Dells, particularly the cheapo Inspiron line. And I think you would have a different opinion if you did not have a corporate service contract. To assume that the "vast majority" of owners get similar service is Individual owners are treated very poorly by incompetent ICC as evidenced by OP.

I will let you know after I have owned my Apple for 6 years. But after 6 days I can tell you it is already far easier to do simple things, i.e. hook up my printer, get a wireless connection, etc. than it was to do any of these things on the Dell. The Apple is also a lot quicker as I have no need to have ZoneAlarm, MacAfee Antivirus, Spysweeper, etc. running in the background, not to mention all those stupid updater programs.

From an IT perspective, I would not doubt that Dell is a good choice as they take better care of their corporate clients. But from a single user perspective, I don't regret going with Apple. And it is nice to know I can take my laptop to the Apple store down the street anytime I have a warranty issue or for that matter any questions.

I agree this gets my vote for best line of the year.

I don't have the corporate service contract. My company is fairly small, so we simply take the standard service contract with each laptop.

Not sure why this was bumped but ok....

Dell catches hell because they've diluted the service side of the equation to such a great degree. What formerly was normal service now is "gold" service. The standard warranties on the dimension/inspiron products have been watered down to nothing!

IMO they're still my preferred vendor. I buy all office machines from the outlet. We have 55-60 desktops and have gone through three refreshes since I started buying outlet machines back in 1998 or so. Back in those days you couldn't even order from the website. You called in and ordered machines over the phone and prayed the service tag ya wanted was still around.

All my *servers* are outlet machines. We have 9. None have ever failed. The oldest is a PowerEdge 2300 (rackmounted..BOY that thing takes up a buncha space). None have ever failed save the occasional HDD dying. On the desktops... in ten years we've had two failures due to power surges and four HDD deaths of attrition. Otherwise, they've been perfect. I wouldn't buy anything else. I just won't order without gold support now.