E4310 Owner's Lounge

You're welcome. Can't beat the price either.

 

Unbelievable... this E4310 would be my first Dell, but the incompetence of the customer service and shipping is already making me regret the purchase.
It's been a week since I've placed my order and was promised at the latest, it would ship out by Friday. Well... it's Friday and not shipped. I called customer service again and they still cannot give me an explanation why it would take this long to ship a refurbished notebook, it should be ready to ship immediately, this is not a custom build order. The only possible explanation the manager was able to provide is that someone else may have placed an order at the same time as me, but that still doesn't explain why it would take so long to confirm that the item is not in stock and cancel my order. I asked if I could just cancel that order and place another one with the same discount, but they wouldn't do that.

Sorry for the rant
I'm about to cancel this order and go back to my original plan, HP Elitebook 8440p

 

You might find my post in this thread interesting:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...ision-m4500-owners-lounge-98.html#post6652840

I've had very bad experiences with Dell Outlet this year. Delays, DOA's, lots of equipment with problems. Too much of my valuable time used up dealing with these issues. The outlet used to be a great place to buy good product at a discount, but now it is like playing Russian Roulette.

 

Very interesting... I appreciate your input
If it wasn't for the insanely low price for my configuration with 25% off, I would not have been tempted to buy this, as I mentioned... the HP 8440p was my first choice.
That is just shady business practice by Dell, if that is true. I must say, as much as people complain about HP, I can't say enough good things about their customer service. I actually went to place an order from HP's refurb outlet a few weeks ago and minutes later, the rep notified me that the unit actually sold earlier in the day and tried to help me find a similar configuration.
When I was having issues with my HP TM2, I called and they sent me all the packaging material with prepaid label. Turns out the problem was just a loose memory module, but even their consumer notebook department provides excellent service.

edit: just got an update from the first rep that I contacted. He stated that the order has been forwarded to their "Expedite team." The order # was changed and shipping was updated to next day delivery, so I can at least give them credit for that. But I'll wait until it has actually shipped, if it ever does... and if it is in good working condition...

 

Over the years, I've purchased loads of stuff from Dell Outlet. Historically the equipment was in inventory and in my hands within four or five business days.

When pressed for an explanation, the support rep said my laptop was sold to someone else. The unit I received and subsequently returned was a different Dell service tag (serial number) from the one I purchased at the outlet. Obviously Dell's systems knew the unit I purchased was sold, but the charge remained on my credit card.

These days, a lot of people are reporting multiple delays with Dell Outlet. Makes we wonder if different shoppers see different discounts, and my unit was sold to the "highest bidder".

I was also enticed by the steep discounting. But the time spent communicating with Dell, troubleshooting, repackaging and waiting for UPS to pick up the return, getting accounts credited, etc. more than offset the money that could have been saved by using the outlet. Not to mention I had an employee without a computer for three weeks! (Can't blame Dell for this.)

At least with the airlines, you get compensated when your seat is over-sold.

Good luck.

 

Kinda like when car dealers used to do the old "bait and switch," but if what you're saying is actually being done by Dell... car dealerships are saints in comparison.

I paid with Paypal, but the funds haven't transferred yet. But I was also wondering if that may be a factor in the order being delayed. In any case, only thing I can do at this point is wait and see if the third estimated delivery date isn't complete BS...

 

Mine showed up today. I was surprised to find it has a backlit keyboard. I didnt see that option on any of them. It does have a webcam too.

I will say the system seems a bit laggy (the mouse specifically). I dont know if there are background processes with the dell crapware, but I was planning on swapping my OCZ SSD into the 4310 & seeing how it goes.

The Super pi on my M1210 (C2D 2.0) is 29, the score on the 4310 is 15 seconds for 1 meg.

The 160gig hard drive is making a loud clicking noise when starting. However, my laptop & desktop both have SSD's so it might just be me not remembering how loud the standard SATA drives are.

I also found that for some reason, the function + brightness buttons do nothing at all.

The Latitude on, gives me an error message to install it when I try it (I just want to see what its all about).

 

How much weight would it save to get rid of the DVD drive & just put a cover over that spot?

 

I'm jealous
Hopefully I'll get lucky with a backlit keyboard too, I figure chances are... if the previous owner custom ordered their E4310 with every option, the backlit keyboard was included.

Hopefully a clean install or updated drivers will solve your problems. I doubt removing the DVD drive will make a very noticeable difference... probably shave the weight from 4.0 lbs to 3.8 lbs, that's my guess. You could pick up a HDD caddy from ebay, it weighs next to nothing, at least you'll have an option for extra storage since you're running a SSD. That's what I'm doing, already got my HDD caddy and 500gb HDD ready to go.

 

I have two Dell's with 7200 rpm 160GB Seagate Momentus drives. They don't click loudly, evar.