Are you a masochist? Then you'll love this PC.
Written: Jul 21 '04
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Pros: Makes a very nice-looking paperweight.
Cons: When you throw it off a balcony in disgust, you might hurt someone.
The Bottom Line: Do yourself a favor and avoid all things Dell--their design work on this PC was awful, and their tech support only seems to know how to do one thing..."reinstall Windows."
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| strykerbc's Full Review: Dell Inspiron 5100 (5100BS1) PC Notebook |
In March of 2003, it occurred to myself and my family that my trusty old 500 MHz desktop wouldn't be well-suited for a trip to college with me. We looked around, and found Dell's Inspiron 5100 laptop. It was a fairly-low cost PC with some good options, and was certainly worth at least a look from us. Upon seeing the features available, I drooled, and the purchase was made.
The first thing you have to understand is that Dell says these are low-cost laptops. They are, unless you like your computer to actually compute instead of just sitting there like a really expensive paperweight. The default options were a joke, and once we had a system configured to our liking it was over $1900.
I'll save you the happy-happy-joy-joy stuff about the PC, because there really isn't much. It was almost day one that I noticed the first problems--the PC would shut its screen off, as it was supposed to because of the power settings I had, but the screen would not come back on. Period. The computer had to be hard-crashed to bring the screen back. This was only an occasional occurence, but it happened nonetheless.
In September of 2003, less than six months after the computer had arrived at my doorstep, the first big problems happened. I had been playing Madden 2004, and I noticed that performance was going downhill. I did a spyware sweep, defragged the system, and uninstalled a few other games. After all that was done, I rebooted. Well, tried to anyway. Windows would not load. With the aid of a friend, I went in through DOS, and discovered that much of the file system had been corrupted. I got on the phone with Dell's tech support, who promptly told me to reinstall Windows.
So, that done, I tried again. Still nothing. The PC was toast. I called back, and was told to do a complete reformat of the hard drive. That hurt to do...all my digital pictures from high school were on that hard drive, and I had just wiped them out. Adding insult to injury? It still didn't work. Even after the wipe and reinstalled Windows, it still would not boot. I called Dell again, and was fed the worst tech support of my life.
"Ben, please reinstall the Windows once gain."
Ok, I know Dell outsourced their tech support to India to save money, but did they just not train these people? I swear, "reinstall Windows" is their answer to EVERYTHING!
"My best friend just OD'ed! What do I do?"
"Reinstall Windows."
"My girlfriend's pregnant! What do I do?"
"Reinstall Windows."
As you can probably tell, I lost it at that point, and demanded to be transferred to Dell's corporate offices. The tech support guy obliged, and I was put through to the first American voice I'd heard. The new techie was understanding, but he wanted me to run some more diagnostics first. After the results came up, he said that I could send my PC in to have the motherboard replaced, and promised that once I had sent it I would have it back within 5 business days. The mailing labels came, I sent it out, and I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
A week and a half later, I'd had enough. I called Dell's tech support, gave them my order number, and was told that my PC had arrived two days after shipping, but was still waiting in their warehouse. After more fighting my way up the food chain, I finally got a supervisor to issue a work order on my PC immediately, so that I would get it back within 3 business days.
I did. And they forgot to test it apparently, because when I turned it on, Windows still refused to boot. Another hard drive wipe, another Windows reinstall, and it STILL would not boot. My next call to Dell was the first and only time I have cried on the telephone to a tech support person. To her credit, she promptly patched me through to her supervisor, who (after asking if I'd reinstalled Windows...AAAAH!) decided to send me a replacement PC. Identical model.
So I get my new PC a couple weeks later, and as time goes by I'm seeing the same problems. By January of '04, I can't take it anymore, because Windows has once again stopped working. I called Dell, reinstalled Windows, and observed that the system was still extremely unstable and would crash constantly. Called Dell again, another hard drive wipe and reinstall. Still the same result. So after a number of diagnostics, it was determined that the problem was with one of my sticks of RAM. Dell sent me a replacement stick, and I installed it.
And the computer failed to even turn on afterwards.
That was the last straw. I called Dell again, they asked about reinstalling Windows, and I informed them that it's hard to do that when YOUR SYSTEM WON'T TURN ON. After fighting my way up the food chain once again, I finally got through to a tech support manager who offered to let me send the PC in and have the motherboard replaced. It was this manager who also made a curious admission to me: the Inspiron 5100 is a case of terrible implementation. It was designed for the Celeron processor, which generates far less heat than the Pentium 4, especially a 2.66 GHz one like I had. They forgot, however, to make the cooling system adaptable. Basically, he admitted to me that the processor itself gets ridiculously hot in there and actually melts components over time.
Yeah, that was enough of that. I asked to be transferred to corporate, and began fighting my way up the return food chain. I was connected to a very rude woman who sounded like she had no interest whatsoever in taking returns, and when I told her what the tech had told me no more than half an hour beforehand, she promptly denied everything and said that I would get the standard deal on a resale for the PC, nothing more. She also suggested that if it was overheating, it was probably my fault for not using compressed air to dust the fan. That would have been an astute observation, except that I had been using the compressed air quite often to dust the fan vents. Just as a parting shot, once she had processed the resale of the computer at 50% of its original price, she tried to sell me another Dell laptop as the replacement. This woman who has just accused me of lying about something I was told by one of her co-workers and said that it's my fault the PC they built doesn't work was now asking if I'd like to put the resale price towards a new Dell Inspiron 8100.
What I said cannot be repeated here.
I've since gotten my $800-odd dollars back (after they took out a chunk of the resale price for various "expenses" relating to the return...never mind that I paid shipping myself), and put it towards an HP laptop.
It ends up like this: if you want a really, really expensive paperweight, buy a Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop with a Pentium 4 processor, because that's what your laptop will end up as.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 1950
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 15 inches
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 31-40
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Epinions.com ID:
strykerbc
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Member: Ben C.
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Reviews written: 61
Trusted by: 12 members
About Me:
Stop reading my profile and read the dang reviews!
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