8600 hardware problems

Did you by chance ever do any of the heat mods that very possibly could have extended the life you your laptop? I know the common complaint of the 8600 is that the vid card runs soooooo hot (100C+).

Sorry for your problems..... My 8600 is going on 26 months without a single problem......

Specs 8600 1.7
128Mb Nvidia 5650FxGo
60Gig Hd
1 1/2Gig 333DDR Ram
4xDVDR+RW
15.4 WSXGA+
1300 Wireless

Completely happy wth mine. It's only 14 months old but I have never had a single problem.

I do not personally own an 8600, but my girlfriend's 8600, which has been on for about 12-18 hours per day (she never shuts it down) for the last year, has had zero problems aside from needing a new keyboard.

had mine for abt 18 months i think. no problems whatsover. neither with the one in my sig. (knock on wood). go dell.

Had mine for over 18 months when I sold it, never a single problem.

Stu

Had mine about 1 year - not a single problem.

Had mine for 15 months now, no problems so far here.

My one has just passed the two year mark, still working pretty much flawlessly.

John

14 months now, haven't had a problem yet.

18th month, no mobo problems so far!

I had to replace the hard drive on mine with a 5400 rpm 60GB, but it is now on its 27th month (bought it Nov 2003) and still as fast as the day I bought it.

Original 4x DVD+RW died, 2 months after warranty of course. First it stopped reading DVD's, then a week later gave up on CD's too. The rest works fine, purchased a week after the 8600 line was unveiled.

For those who don't want to read the whole explanation, my 8600 problems derive from a most likely faulty heatsink/fan (the most likely consensus reached by many a friend, tech, FAQ, and myself).

A few related i8600 posts: http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=58241
http://www.notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=92946

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I sent my old 8100 in for repairs at the end of its warranty a year ago, for just "3-5 days" of service. After 2 months of Dell employees telling me "oh it's in the shop still," "oh, it's been sent out, here is the tracking number [insert fake tracking number here]," they finally admitted "we don't have it" and replaced it with an Inspiron 8600. I can't say I was displeased at getting this, but I've been getting so much crap from this 8600 that it's not even funny.

There are a few threads that discuss the main problem, and that, depending on where you look, is either described as heat (caused by faulty design, a faulty heatsink, a faulty fan...the explanations are endless) or abrupt and unexplainable video slowdowns. I used to play BF1942 back in the day on my 8100's MR7500. If I start it today, then within three minutes it's framerate will drop to virtually nothing, literally less than 1 FPS. Perfectly smooth on max video settings, max bots, max bot-cpu time, everything. Then nothing. I can also turn everything down to the absolute lowest. Same thing.

The severity varies. Some games drop from ~100 to ~10, others from ~60 to ~15, but it happens in just about any game imaginable from the past half decade.

Dell has been absolutely NO help in fixing the problem, and I'm sure you've all had your horror stories with their "#1 support," so I won't bother getting into it.

Bottom line? Yes. I've had problems. My 8600 for one, is sucking a major load.

If your 8600 has the ATI 9600 pro 128mb, then you are experiencing the exact same problem that everyone else with an 8600 has experienced. If you have that video card, perform the heat mod which will lower your video card temps under full load by approx. 30C. I just did it to mine and it's the only way to go.