I have had two Dell laptops and one Dell desktop. I have hated every last one of them. After the first, the only reason I got two more was because they were both given to me. And I am not going to complain about the brand of a nice gift!

The first one, a laptop, lasted until exactly one day after the warranty expired, then crashed. I don’t know why. I had up to date virus software. Whatever it was, I didn’t blame Dell for it. I spent money fixing it, then it stopped charging. There was some sort of short in the battery. To fix it would have cost a ton of money. I spent quite a pretty penny buying a new charger, thinking that there was a short in the charger itself, but it wasn’t.

My desktop, similar issue. Exactly one month after the warranty expired, it just stopped working entirely. One night, I shut it off and went to bed. The next morning, I woke up, turned it on, and nothing happened. The light turned on, the fan spun, and that was it. I hooked it up to another monitor thinking maybe my monitor was broken. Nope! It still works just fine. I don’t know what the problem was, but it was Dell and not worth fixing because I knew that soon, something else would go wrong. I did spend a good chunk of money buying equipment to get my files off the drive.

Then someone gave me a shiny new Dell laptop for Christmas last year. And of course, now that there is no warranty, it is falling apart. Literally. It looks like I dropped it, but I didn’t. One day, I opened it like normal, and CRAAACK! I shuddered, and looked on the back. A crack was forming in the case. This went on for about a week. Then small chunks of it started falling off. The plastic side piece connecting the screen to the keyboard came loose. Wires are sticking out of it. I thought, maybe someone ELSE dropped it!

Here is what it looks like closed.

But this morning, I opened it up, and CRAAACK! Now the piece that holds the screen in has cracked into two as well. The entire casing is coming apart, and is loose in other places, too. So somehow, there is something in the design that when you open it, it eventually falls apart. I use my laptop every day: for school, blogging, friends, etc. I am constantly online or writing, so it gets a TON of use. I have always been careful with it, though; it’s not as if I am violently slamming it closed or carelessly tossing it open.

(You can’t really tell from this image, but the whole screen is now lopsided. Now that the casing is cracked, it can no longer support what’s inside it. The whole thing is falling apart, and it’s actually WORSE than it looks here.)

So I am going to retire my laptop into the bedroom where it will become a desktop. I will hook it up to my monitor and keyboard, and lament the loss of mobility. Stupid Dell.

(I’ve heard similar Dell horror stories so I know it’s not just me!)