E4300 Nightmare

I posted here earlier this year after I had received my E4300 and I promised to come back and give more feedback once I had a little more time with the new toy. Well, I'm back and I'm afraid things are not looking very pretty.

Since I got my laptop I've had to deal with the following

1. I had to disable my fingerprint reader because it's very inconsistent at picking up my fingerprints (mind you, I used a fingerprint reader on my thinkpad for the past 5 years with very little problem)

2. I had to change my wireless card (5300) because I can't connect to my home network without doing a hardware reset of my wireless services. Unfortunately, the new card is not doing any better. I've talked to a couple of different technical service reps about this and they've mentioned to me that the 5300, despite being the most expensive card for this laptop, has a number of issues. I tried to downgrade to a cheaper card a number of times but I was politely informed that doing a downgrade on any of my components (I wasn't asking for any money back) would require me sending in my laptop for a replacement. This is still a major problem for me.

3. My optical drive is not being recognized by XP and after the technicians failed to figure out why it wasn't showing, I was sent a new DVDRW drive as a replacement. This is the second major replacement part I've had to replace on a laptop that I've owned since early May 2009.

4. And now for the worst part. My computer has started freezing up because of this purple haze thing that comes over the screen and takes away control from me. A technician tried to diagnose it and he suggested that it may be a memory issue that is affecting my integrated video but the dell diagnostics didn't find anything wrong my memory. This has made this laptop borderline unusable because it freezes up on average 10 times an hour are different intervals.

I have 3 year NBD service so I'm planning to have a technician see this in person (not hard to reproduce at this point since it's happening quite frequently) but I'm not sure I want to keep this laptop anymore. I don't know if I have that option though. I mean how many things can go wrong with a laptop in just one month?

Maybe I'm just unlucky and ended up with a bad apple but based on my experience I wouldn't buy this laptop for half the price if I had the chance to do it all over again.

 

Sounds like you need to get Dell to ship you a new one. You have enough issues to warrant that. You just have to call them up and press them for a replacement unit.

 

I agree with Theos. I would ask for replacement. It could save Dell time, and money to offer you a new replacement.

Good luck.

 

Yeah I think I'm gonna do that. I called in and a rep walked me through reseeding the display cable but I'm still having those same issues. I'll have to call on Monday and ask customer service to send me a replacement.

 

That problem you have with the Intel 5300 card is a common one and is fixable. Intel gave an explanation on why this is happening, and you can google for that. A new laptop will not fix this problem, unless you specify the Dell wireless cards.

Basically, get the latest Intel drivers, and turn off some of the power management for the wireless. It might take some time to try different things, but you can definitely fix that problem.

You said your optical drive is not being recognized in XP. It again is a common problem, and you can google for fixes. It is not a hardware issue. For starters, uninstall your CD/DVD burning programs and your ISO mounting programs.

 

Here is a Microsoft write-up on that disappearing optical drive problem:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060