My Dell XPS 7590 has converted me...
... to a Mac user for life. Seriously. My 2013 macbook pro served me well for 5 years without a hitch until I needed to use a bunch of windows-only engineering programs for university. I used bootcamp for a year but storage was a constant issue and the performance wasn't what I would like, so I decided it was time to upgrade to a windows PC. The Dell XPS 7590 had a great keyboard and trackpad, excellent specs, and a reasonable price, so I bought it in July of 2019. Since then, it's gained many nicknames including "lemon," "the time-bomb," and "the first and last windows PC I will ever buy."
A timeline of events:
July 2019: I unbox this beauty, turn it on, everything works beautifully and it feels great. The spacebar makes squeaky noises but hey, it should go away with use, right?
November 2019: My fingerprint sensor stops working overnight, along with a USB port. I google the issue and did some type of bitlocker recovery, eventually I'm able to fix the fingerprint sensor issue.
December 2019: It's the week before finals. I get home from dinner and find my laptop, which I had put in sleep mode, is extremely hot in my backpack. I take it out in a panic, it doesn't turn on, and is flashing the blink code for "RAM error." I'm under warranty so Dell kindly sends an onsite technician who replaces the motherboard and memory (we tried swapping the memory modules, no effect). Alright, I went 3 days without a working laptop, but crisis averted.
March 2020: I plug in my laptop to charge one night and wake up to a dead battery. Other chargers work so I concluded the AC adapter failed. Another call with Dell support and they send me a new charger.
August 2020: I notice my battery dying if the laptop is left unplugged overnight in sleep mode. Turn it off with 100% and wake up to a low battery warning and 1% left. I plug the laptop in and it jumps to 34%. This happened consistently and eventually I turned off sleep mode and set my laptop to hibernate instead. My warranty has expired, this is good enough, problem solved.
October 2020: I'm working in PTC Creo (engineering software) and suddenly my laptop freezes. Ok, maybe it's just a really intensive program. I try to force quit but the laptop is completely frozen, no keys or mouse or anything. Force restart the laptop, it powers on, and freezes on the login screen. Retry with various stages of failure; doesn't boot, flashes "RAM error," boots and freezes, or logs in then freezes after a keystroke. I have a Torx wrench from the last fiasco so I reseat and swap the memory sticks, but no luck. Back on the phone with Dell, I ship my laptop to a depot, and they replace the motherboard (again). Thankfully my now 7 year old macbook was still chugging along and served me well during those 2 week. I got the Dell back with everything wiped, a loose fingerprint sensor, and an unreliable HDMI port, but for the most part it worked enough.
November 2020: The HDMI port issues were fixed with a BIOS update after some googling. I found my Dell cooking itself in my backpack last night but thankfully it turned on and I've again disabled sleep mode unless plugged into an AC adapter. Now I'm waiting to call Dell support once again to see why my "premium laptop" seems to have a death wish, and to thank them for making my next laptop purchase such an easy decision. Those M1 Macs are lookin fineeee
UPDATE: Dell support suggested another round of mail-in service to fix the battery charge issue (not fixed by their October repair) and some awful coil whine and freezing (caused by their October repair). Yeah, no, I'm not giving them any more money.
TLDR: When I first bought my XPS the Dell sales rep kept pushing me to buy the extended warranty. Now I know why.
submitted by
Tahoebagel to
Dell