When I say I have nine D630s, I’m not trying to boast. Rather, I’m trying to gain some sympathy. I’ve worked in IT for years, and I’ve always had a great Dell experience. And I encourage people I know to purcahse Dells as well. Not because the machines are necessarily better than others, but because the tech support is incredible. They once sent a tech to rural Oklahoma on Christmas Eve for me.
The only problem with having nine identical laptops is if a manufacturer defect exists, your odds of being affected are massively increased. And the D630 has an almost 100% failure rate for its graphics card.
In fact, the issue was so bad that Dell went back to Nvidia and said “We need to replace these graphics cards due to a defect” and Nvidia said “Well, we don’t make them any more.” Dell must have wielded a bat in the form of a legal threat, because Nvidia quickly started the line back up. (This was relayed to me via a Dell rep with decent knowledge on the situation)
I can understand the situation from Dell’s perspective. But here is my problem – the replacement graphics cards are as bad as the originals. I’m having replacement cards getting replaced. Since the graphics card is tied to the motherboard, this means that both are being replaced. And the systems never behave correctly with the new motherboard, so you have to reinstall Windows. I don’t know about you, but I have better things to do then waiting for Dell techs to replace parts, then reinstall Windows (even if I’m doing it from an image, it still eats up time).
Of the nine D630s I have:
- Four have had the graphics card replaced.
- Three more of my machines are showing signs of the graphics cards going out.
- Of those three, one or two of them have had the card replaced before.
- Three I’ve had to order new batteries for (these die almost perfectly a month after their warranty)
And I’d like to point out that batteries are not covered by the 3 year extended service warranty you paid extra money for. But that is only listed in the small print. You don’t get to find this out until the batteries start dying and Dell makes you cough up $169 for a new one. Also, don’t get me started on how fragile the AC adapter is – barely kink that cord once and you’ll be buying a new AC adapter.
Basically:
- The graphics cards have a 100% failure rate (verified by a rep and a field rep)
- The replacement graphics cards have almost the same failure rate (from my experience)
- The batteries have a short life span, terrible reviews, and are expensive to replace
- The details of the battery warranty aren’t as apparent as they should be
- The power adapters die with ease
The bottom line:
If you need to purchase a D630, just purchase a cute puppy and shoot it in the head. It is about an equally worthwhile investment and is just as painstaking.
I’m tired of dealing with Dell and with this issue. As someone who makes a lot of purchases and has always been a major Dell supporter, I have to say that I’m quickly becoming burnt out with them. Hell, at this point I know more about the situation than the Dell reps. It reminds me of the capacitor fiasco with the GX270s, and it seems like Dell is just praying that no one gets organizes enough to bring up a class-action lawsuit.
And if you’d like to see what a failed graphics card looks like on the monitor, here are a few of the images from my sample library:
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