Dell Inspiron 8100 Laptop - about a month after the 1 year warranty the motherboard failed

Dell Inspiron 8100 Laptop - about a month after the 1 year warranty the motherboard failed

Dell Inspiron 8100 Laptop

I purchased a refurbished Dell Inspiron 8100 Laptop for my mom to use that dosn't use computers that often and about a month after the 1 year warranty the motherboard failed. Strange, since the computer was only

used a handful of times I think to myself. As I start looking into this, I discover: -this is a common problem with these motherboards (see other internet sources), yet Dell sells the replacement motherboard for over $800 (more than the entire laptop sells for on ebay used). Thanks Dell. -there is also a "fans not turning on" overheating problem wtih these motherboards that causes them to fail that can be fixed with software. Dell does not acknowledge this nor notify its customers that they can

simply install software to control the fans to avoid this. Instead, they let your hardware break intentionally. Also, a individual user had to write an opensource app to do it, they (after a long runaround) say

that it has to do with software and so they do not support that. My question to them is, why would you make heat management software dependent in the first place? Especially Windows? Who would design

hardware that fails if Windows crashed or didn't run correctly.. nobody.. except Dell. And Windows is the only OS they support at all on this laptop. As a software developer I'm disgusted at the poor design. -My mom lives in Canada so i call Dell support from there. They are unable to help me at all and say I have to bring the laptop back to the US for support. Ok. So i bring the laptop back with me to the US. -Here is where I started getting appalled at the poor service. What happened to Dell they used to be a good company just a year before when I chose them for my Mom... Get this: I can't even get a live person on

the phone because it requires me to enter a service tag number or express service number, which I do enter but it dosn't work. Finally, after calling sales and having them transfer me around for a while I get in touch with someone who won't help me because he insists that I am not the owner because my information dosn't match. I explain to him, that I am the original owner since I am holding the reciept and after about an hour of explaining that they must not have change the information from the previous owner of the refurbished

laptop and having him check the invoice number I have so he can see for himself he finally agrees but says only customer service can change that information and I have to call back in 2 days because it was a

friday and they were closed. What was especially irritating about this is that I called during business hours, but after the hours of being transferred around customer service became closed. I am not even mentioning here that the standard tech support queue message always apologizes for the inconvenience of having excessively long hold times, and lies that this is due to unusually high call volume currently.

Every time I have ever called Dell, EVER, I have been on hold for at least 10-20 minutes, at the VERY least, and it doesn't matter what time of day or whatever you will always hear that message. I think they keep

the hold times very long to discourage users from using the tech support. What they don't realize is they will have the same amount of work sooner or later. Problems don't just go away, so this is a poor company philosophy. After getting a hold of customer service, it takes another few hours to get this info changed, just so they can help me at all. After these few days on the phone, now I discover that they'll sell me the part for more than the laptop is worth. I explain to the tech politely how unreasonable that is and he agrees 100%. I ask him what he would do if he were me. He says he would take apart the laptop and sell the parts Since that was the most useful information I got from Dell, I listened and thats exactly what I did. So, my advice to anyone else: if you have a Dell laptop and it breaks cut your losses and get what you can out of

it and never buy a Dell again. Good luck, Enis P

DZIC Enterprises Enis P

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