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Ask HN: Quality of recent gens of Dell/Lenovo laptops worse than 10 years ago?

112 points ferguess_k | 1 comments | 01 Dec 25 14:47 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

I have been purchasing used/new Lenovo/Dell laptops for the last 7 years, and I have noticed that the build quality of recent models is concerning.

Lenovo: Ex-company gave me a NEW Carbon X1 around 2019, and the battery only lasted for less than a year (!). On the other side, I bought a used 2017 470S from the same company, added more RAM, didn't touch anything including the SSD, and I'm still using it in daily coding. I did buy a new battery last month so technically the old batteries lasted for about 7-8 years.

Dell: I bought 3 laptops + 1 desktop from Dell Refurbished (So the quality should be consistent). 2 laptops + 1 desktop are older models, and 1 is Precision 5550 (2021) that I bought last December. Everything works fine, except for the 5550, which has issues with battery (dropped from 31% to 4% in a few seconds) and (more deadly) charging port (doesn't charge from time to time). Even if I bought it new in 2021, I would be surprised that it only lasted for a bit over 4 years.

The other issue is that 5550 uses USB-C ports. I blame on myself not checking it closely before the purchase. I really hate those ports. Why is everyone copying from Mac?

What's my option? I can't really justify the 2,000+ CAD price point for a new laptop, especially if it lasts less than 5 years. I'd prefer a "low-end" workstation with 32GB memory, but because of the price point I can only afford a 16GB non-workstation one. I don't do gaming any more but I still prefer a good integrated video card. I can't afford Framework and other Linux laptops because they are expensive and usually don't operate in Canada so delivery is expensive too.

I did buy a used Macbook Pro M1 16GB (2021) from my current company last month. I haven't used it but I'm confident that the hardware is good. The problem is I don't really like the software, so I figured I still need a Linux box.

Did you find any sweet spot?

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brooke2k ◴[02 Dec 25 04:03 UTC] No.46117402[source]▶
I got a Dell XPS for work a couple years ago on someone's recommendation... one of my worst-ever decisions.

The touchpad sucks and routinely breaks requiring restarts, constantly having driver issues (and you have to deal with the capital-N Nightmare that is SupportAssist for drivers), graphics card is busted and makes the display driver crash once a month.

Power states are completely broken. Laptop will randomly turn on when it's in my bag and rev up to ten thousand degrees. Laptop will randomly, when on full battery and closed, decide to hard-shutoff leading to a windows recovery boot.

Decides to do BIOS updates when it's at 3% battery in the middle of the night, then when I wake up for work the next morning it has to go through a ten-minute recovery sequence.

Battery is swelling after only a couple years of use, which sometimes causes keys on the keyboard to stop working. In the middle of a slack convo I've had to type "Sorrymyspacebarstoppedworkinggottarestartmycomputer".

BSODs, hard drive corruption, you name it. Never buy Dell. Not that there's many good options out there unless you're willing to drop two week's pay on a Framework - but anything is better than Dell.

EDIT: Another I thought of - sound card is busted and sounds like it has a low pass filter on it. I know it's not a speaker issue because on occasion it magically fixes itself until the next restart.

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microtonal ◴[02 Dec 25 06:04 UTC] No.46118119[source]▶
Power states are completely broken. Laptop will randomly turn on when it's in my bag and rev up to ten thousand degrees.

If it was in sleep - Dell themselves recommend completely switching off a laptop before putting it inside a backpack:

https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/xps/faq-mode...

For somebody who has used MacBooks the last 18 years, this is insane.

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adrian_b ◴[02 Dec 25 10:49 UTC] No.46119880[source]▶
I have never understood why some people want to avoid switching off their computers.

I have stopped using Apple laptops more than 15 years ago and since then I have used only Linux laptops.

I have no idea whether hibernate worked on my laptops, because this is a feature for which I have never felt any need.

I always take care to optimize the boot time on my computers with custom built kernels and carefully selected daemons (and I do not use systemd). For decades, the boot time on my laptops had been of perhaps twenty seconds at most and the biggest delay in starting to use the computers after being powered off is entering a password to unlock them, not the start-up of the OS. Using something like hibernation instead of complete power off would speed up negligibly the process of beginning to work on the computer.

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eckelhesten ◴[02 Dec 25 12:17 UTC] No.46120495[source]▶
Pop open the lid, be right back to where you were. No amount of boot time optimizations will trump that.
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nrhrjrjrjtntbt ◴[05 Dec 25 11:18 UTC] No.46159792[source]▶
The desk to meeting room use case. Dont know how we survived pre laptop but somehow we did. Meeting room had its own PC I think back then.
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1. mattmanser ◴[07 Dec 25 19:47 UTC] No.46184501{3}[source]▶
Yeah, you'd log on with your credentials and then get the files you needed from the network share.