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Did Dell Screw Me?

post #1 of 5
5/13/10 at 4:31pm
Thread Starter 
I've been blown away by the activity and expertise on these
forums. I came here a lot as I was trying to figure out what to do about my broken down m1710. I ended up getting a replacement which arrived today and wanted your help in evaluating whether I was treated ok.

I bought a m1710 with the following specs:
Processor
Intel Core 2 Duo processor T7600g 2.33 GHz @ 3.16 GHZ
Display
17" Widescreen UXGA LCD Panel With Truelife - 1920x200 resolution
Memory
2 GB DDR2 SDRAM (2x1 GB) 667 Mhz
Video Card
512 Mb Nvidia GeForceGo 7950 GTX
Hard Drive
160 GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive


It never really worked well after about the first 6 months, but I was sick and very busy at work so I couldn't adequately navigate dell's tech support which always gave me the run around. It finally broke entirely a couple weeks ago. They said, "ok, send it in and we'll evaluate and fix." I did that, and really never heard anything back from them until last night, when I got an email saying everything was done and the computer would arrive today-- unprecedented turnaround time for dell. I got it today, and was glad to get a replacement but, given my reading of the forums, wondered if I had done as well as I could.

They sent a M1730 with a T7700, and 8700 gfx in sli. HD appears to be 40gig larger in volume (from 160 to 200) but it seems to access slowly and I'm worried they might have downgraded from 7200 rpm to 5400 or whatever the next standard down is. I also have seen articles suggesting the 8700 setup in sli is slower than the 7950 gtx. And the 7600G cost a huge premium through dell when I bought it so that it'd be unlocked and at least allow basic overclocking through bios, which is either not present/supported or different to access on this new cpu.

I've had absolutely 0 communication. The computer itself didn't even come with a specs sheet, I had to find the replacement exchange order online in an account I didn't know existed to even see the Dell gibberish version of the specs. It has no customer service tag or anything on it. They never even consulted me about the replacement. Not sure what to make of it. They show a totally bogus invoice for like $2700 for this thing, though of course it wouldn't sell for anything like that much. I don't even know if my warranty continues a bit longer or what.

Would love to get any thoughts or perspectives on what to do or even what to make of it. Respect and gratitude to your forums,

Ender
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post #2 of 5
5/13/10 at 5:06pm
The hard drive question would be an easy thing to figure out. You can remove it yourself and look at the drive, or run HD Tune and see what the access times are.

As for your video card question, I actually wouldn't have taken the 8700 Sli over the 7950 gtx. You might see slightly less frames if youre worried about your gaming performance. The 7950 gtx is a beefier card.
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post #3 of 5
5/13/10 at 6:56pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve View Post
The hard drive question would be an easy thing to figure out. You can remove it yourself and look at the drive, or run HD Tune and see what the access times are.

As for your video card question, I actually wouldn't have taken the 8700 Sli over the 7950 gtx. You might see slightly less frames if youre worried about your gaming performance. The 7950 gtx is a beefier card.
Yeah, they never consulted me, oddly. The 7950 gtx scores above the 8700s in sli on the benchmarks I've seen.
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post #4 of 5
5/13/10 at 9:01pm
Yes you took a hit with the GPU's and usually the warranty will transfer from your M1710 to the M1730.

You may want to see if you can extend the warranty on the m1730 if you plan on keeping it.

You can try to argue with Dell about the video cards, as request the 88xx or 98xx cards instead, but they been hard to come by, given the high failure rates of these cards.

Another option would be to sell this one, and buy a better laptop, depending on your uses there are various options to choose.
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post #5 of 5
5/13/10 at 11:26pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by EnderWiggin1347 View Post
I've been blown away by the activity and expertise on these
forums. I came here a lot as I was trying to figure out what to do about my broken down m1710. I ended up getting a replacement which arrived today and wanted your help in evaluating whether I was treated ok.

I bought a m1710 with the following specs:
Processor
Intel Core 2 Duo processor T7600g 2.33 GHz @ 3.16 GHZ
Display
17" Widescreen UXGA LCD Panel With Truelife - 1920x200 resolution
Memory
2 GB DDR2 SDRAM (2x1 GB) 667 Mhz
Video Card
512 Mb Nvidia GeForceGo 7950 GTX
Hard Drive
160 GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive


It never really worked well after about the first 6 months, but I was sick and very busy at work so I couldn't adequately navigate dell's tech support which always gave me the run around. It finally broke entirely a couple weeks ago. They said, "ok, send it in and we'll evaluate and fix." I did that, and really never heard anything back from them until last night, when I got an email saying everything was done and the computer would arrive today-- unprecedented turnaround time for dell. I got it today, and was glad to get a replacement but, given my reading of the forums, wondered if I had done as well as I could.

They sent a M1730 with a T7700, and 8700 gfx in sli. HD appears to be 40gig larger in volume (from 160 to 200) but it seems to access slowly and I'm worried they might have downgraded from 7200 rpm to 5400 or whatever the next standard down is. I also have seen articles suggesting the 8700 setup in sli is slower than the 7950 gtx. And the 7600G cost a huge premium through dell when I bought it so that it'd be unlocked and at least allow basic overclocking through bios, which is either not present/supported or different to access on this new cpu.

I've had absolutely 0 communication. The computer itself didn't even come with a specs sheet, I had to find the replacement exchange order online in an account I didn't know existed to even see the Dell gibberish version of the specs. It has no customer service tag or anything on it. They never even consulted me about the replacement. Not sure what to make of it. They show a totally bogus invoice for like $2700 for this thing, though of course it wouldn't sell for anything like that much. I don't even know if my warranty continues a bit longer or what.

Would love to get any thoughts or perspectives on what to do or even what to make of it. Respect and gratitude to your forums,

Ender

My rule is. (Now this doesn't come to selling laptops)
Whatever YOU paid for for a warranty exchange on what the laptop cost you, NOT what it's worth, is what you should get back in exchange. Think of the money as preformance points.

If you bought the m1710 back then when it was still kicking, thats well over 3 grand.
I would definately talk to them about this, and be stubborn. The 8700 in sli is only marginally better than the 7950 at high reses, but its limited 128 bit bus is unacceptable considering yours had a 256. There's one arguement,.

Another is the lack of communication, not cool for REPLACING your whole machine.

The ability to overclock is locked up apparently by a check from the bios to the chipset so it becomes cpu dependant unless it can be pin modded to fool its sspec or smth. Anyways, fight about that, you want overclocking.

There you go, fight with those arguements, you had those 2 options above before, you should rightfully have them back in an 'equal' replacement.

If they aren't budging you can negotiate a little with the cpu (no upgrade) but don't give up unless you get a 9800gtx in sli.
That would put you in the proper range of what you paid.
Plus, it'd be kickfreakingass. ftr, notebookcheck.com is an awesome place to compare mobile gpus.

Be stubborn, I've heard of ppl on here 'negotiating' with dell for a month before finally getting what they should have.
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