Dell XPS 15

I got my first Dell laptop, the XPS15, 5 years ago. Prior to that I had a good 25 years as a Thinkpad die-hard. The XPS has been ... ok. I've had some issues with it resetting for no apparent reason over its life. Frequency varies, but sometimes it'll just blank the screens and then the BIOS comes up on the display, a few times a week, then it'll be good for a month or more. I had one issue where I needed to ship it back: it would reset and then it was running off the battery, and no matter what port I plugged a charger/docking station into it wouldn't charge until I powered it off and back on again. I got them to do a replacement under warranty a couple years ago. Around a month ago it was doing the reset fairly frequently and then wouldn't power on sometimes, and I noticed the wrist rest was a little bowed. I replaced the battery pack (kind of a pain, but not the worst I've done), and it was good for around a month, but now it has that "won't charge the battery" issue again. I believe when they did the previous repair they replaced the motherboard, but now I'm out of warranty. For my next laptop I kind of want a Framework, so I can replace the mobo if I need to. My work likes us to replace hardware no more frequently than every 5-6 years, but we get a warranty for way less than that (my laptop I pushed to get a 4 year). Meanwhile my previous Thinkpad T470s is still going strong, though the screen just developed a line through it. That's ~10 year old now. My person

The only thing I didn’t like about my XPS-15 was when the battery got pregnant and made the trackpad stop working.

The new XPS's that they just teased at CES bring back the real function keys and have a newly designed aluminum unibody. I've shied away from Dell for a bit because I had two XPS 15's that had swelling batteries. But the new machines look pretty sweet!

Seems par for the course with Dell lately. My XPS has a Wifi+ACPI firmware bug, wherein when the wifi says, hey can i go into power save mode, and the ACPI grabs its ankles, kernel panic! For years I thought It was a linux thing but after stumbling on the motherload of complaints im saddened. Its been my first linux laptop and its sad to see that the shortcommings had nothing to do with distro, rather hardware regression. Theres no plans to fix either. Luckly it happens maybe twice a year. https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/xps/xps-15-9... https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/xps/xps-15-9...

My Dell XPS-15 laptop's screen was falling off. To fix it, I drilled holes right though the border area of the screen and fitted 4 bolts so that the screen stays with the laptop. My colleagues were horrified to see large bolts at the back of the screen, but everything worked like a charm.

I had this exact same experience with a brand new Dell XPS 15 I purchased around 2018 I believe. It came with a killer branded Wi-Fi card and I noticed shortly after purchasing that it would literally bring down my entire home network at the time. I don’t remember what router I was running or the rest of my home network set up at the time, but it was definitely a really bizarre thing to witness, I ended upreplacing the Wi-Fi card.

> Realistically you might get the same mileage with a Dell, but to fans, it feels different. Not quite, and I tried. Dell laptops with bother you if your power supply is not a genuine dell one. Dell refused to repair a second-hand dell laptop (xps 15) under warranty because I did not have the receipt of original purchased. Lenovo repaired my second-hand ThinkPad no question asked, because it was still under warranty. And the laptop i bought had the pick&return warranty package, so they sent a courier to pick the laptop from my home and they delivered it back within the same week. Dell has been just unreliable in my experience. I fixed that laptop myself and sold it as soon as I could (and bought another used ThinkPad).

Have had a similar experience with Dell. Have exclusively used new and second-hand Dell Laptops (Inspiron & Latitude) for the past fifteen years with no problems. Purchased a XPS 15 directly from Dell five months ago and the battery charging circuitry has fried itself. Support ticket has been open for 40+ days awating parts...

S3 basically killed a perfectly good Dell XPS 15 a few years ago. The fan would never stop running.

i had the dell xps 15 and everytime the battery died dell would send out a repair guy to replace the motherboard. after 3 times I finally sold it and got something else. this last time (2 weeks ago) i bought an hp envy 16" with nvidia gpu. things appear to work fine on arch but i have no audio and have no idea why.

I don't understand why anybody can recommend anything from Dell. Last company I worked from had ~30 XPSs (various models). On average we had one break daily. Yes, they pick it up, and return it "fixed" within a week, but then it just breaks down 2 weeks later. One of their "docking station" brick thingies went up in flames, while nothing was plugged into it, causing an evacuation of the building. Another one "exploded". Not bad enough to hurt somebody, but the coffe mug next to it was blown off the table. My XPS 15 started to get hot, and smoke out of the keyboard while I was reading my email. Scaring the shit out of everybody in the coffee shop I was sitting in. "Dude! You're Getting a Dell!" "Nah, thanks, I'd rather get a lobotomy."

I'm curious; what external devices are you always needing connected to your laptop? What is this "extra hardware" and "accessories" that you need (and which you seem to think most people also need)? In my case, the port expander is smaller than a phone, and I rarely need it. My laptop has 2TB of drive space, so I don't need external storage except occasionally at home to do a physical backup. But my important data is frequently syncing to the cloud, so I don't need to travel with a backup drive. So more than 99% of the time, all I need is the laptop (and usually internet, which I have via wifi or mobile phone hotspot. And with one 65W Anker power adapter, I have 2 USB and 1 USB-C power so I can charge my laptop, phone, and a third small device if necessary. The MB Air is very thin, pretty light, and very rigid. That makes traveling so much more pleasant compared to the bulky heavy XPS 15 I previously had. Yes, I only have 13" display now instead of 15", but the difference in screen real estate isn't very significant.

> I did not realize Precision 55xx series is even better built than XPS15 Bought an XPS15 for an intern. I pulled the screen to open, and it remained stuck with the base, because they didn’t even tune the hinge. How can someone work with such a device, you can hear the fans and feel the heat through the keyboard: If XPS15 is in the top 3 money can buy after System76 and Precision 55xx, then Apple can double the prices and they would still have customers.

Going to add myself to the list of people Dell managed to successfully piss off. Bought a top-of-the-line XPS 15 2018 model and once the initial "wow" factor of owning a premium laptop faded away, I was bombarded with numerous issues such as: * Lack of S3 sleep state leading to battery drains and heating up while inside my bag; modern standby was trash back then * Piss-poor thermals leading to piss-poor performance with an Intel i9 processor * Horrible support service with copy-paste answers and ZERO resolutions even though I had their premium support; a lot of solutions are community initiatives * Horrendous trackpad I've since monitored future XPS releases and found it got even worse. For example, there was a common trackpad double-clicking issue that plagued the later models. The thing that really pisses me off is tech reviewers not calling out Dell even though they faced these issues with their review/retail units. This applies even for Alienware—where's the outrage on the m51 scam?[1] The times they complain, they aren't loud enough and Dell just gets away with it. I've told my friends and family to avoid buying Dell for the foreseeable future. I'd advise the folks here to do the same unless your company is expensing it. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/7/22522265/dell-alienware-ar...