I have two of them, and I think they are great. That being said, they are significantly more expensive than similar options from Dell (or Lenovo, HP, etc.) They just don’t have the volume of production needed to compete.
MAYBE you’ll end up ahead with upgradability or repairability, but honestly, you’re paying more to support good company practices.
I’m planning on keeping these laptops for a long time and upgrading when I need to, but we have to be realistic that most people aren’t going to stomach a minimum of 30% premium for options they don’t care about.
I got fucked by them over a decade ago. Naively bought an Alienware for college. Burned out two motherboards on it while it was under warranty which they replaced. Naturally it burned out a third one outside of my warranty window which they refused to help with unless I paid them half the value of the laptop. Told them no thanks, instead I’ll tell everyone I know that their hardware is garbage.
I managed to get one of the “desktop replacement” laptops before they got sold to Dell, and that fucker was a solid brick shithouse, lasted like 7 years before functional issues. Heat was definitely a problem, couldn’t rest my left hand on the keyboard (above the GPU) after a couple hours and could probably sit outside in a blizzard without pants comfortably. Miss that bad boy… Shame Dell ruined them.
I’ve run into so many people who have had Dell laptops totally crap out / burn out on them. I saw several myself years ago through an old job. Mostly bad LCD displays right out of the box, but also an assortment of other problems. I vowed never to get a Dell computer of any kind after that.
Now in my current job we are forced to use refurbished Dell laptops. And guess what? All of them are total pieces of garbage. I’ve had two of them now. The first one became inoperable so they had to get me a new one. And now I find that the audio and USB ports are faulty on the new one.
I’m not surprised Dell is screwing over their lower-level employees, considering they consistently fuck over their customers. Fuck Dell.
“Gaming laptops” are a lie anyway. You can’t generate that much heat in that small of a space without something eventually going wrong, this applies to all of them. They’re all hot and underpowered.
Yeah, I expect any gaming laptop to have a shorter lifespan, but killing three mobos in the span of 3.5 years shouldn’t happen. Now that I’m older and wiser, I wonder if I had a bad power supply, but that’s something that should have come up on my second repair.
They’ve gotten a bit better within the Nvidia 1000-3000 series, but I can’t vouch for the 4000 series. Better thermal management techniques and lower target thresholds.
That being said, I’m sure there are manufacturers that buck the trend and set higher thermal targets for more performance. I’d say monitor your temps, and target for no higher than 75c if possible.
Different hardware type. Gaming laptops have dedicated graphics cards which generate heat from an additional source, and they have to drive 1080p/1440p/4k content, whereas the steam deck is a 1280x800 screen, which is absolutely perfect for an AMD integrated GPU with reduced thermal management.
The steam deck is a single spec tightly tuned machine and software package not unlike a game console, whereas a gaming laptop is an all purpose machine with hardware all over the spectrum that you can buy what you want/need.
They are doing you a favor. I bought my kid a Dell laptop (xps13) for college and 6 months later the battery life dropped from 12 hours to 2 and Dell support said it was normal and refused to do anything about it. That was after the original order which was supposed to take 6 weeks for delivery (bad enough) actually took 14 weeks. It arrived two days before they left for school. Worst experience ever.
The replacement MacBook Air was delivered to their dorm the next day and has been flawless since (over a year now). It actually cost less too.
I think the xps is garbage. My laptops never break. They become obsolete before they break except my xps13. Broke after the warranty. It’s the only laptop I’ve had do that.
Welp, looks like my next hardware isn’t gonna be Dell 🤷♂️
If you are buying a laptop, Framework is where it is at. Huge focus on a quality product as well as repairability and interoperability between parts.
I have two of them, and I think they are great. That being said, they are significantly more expensive than similar options from Dell (or Lenovo, HP, etc.) They just don’t have the volume of production needed to compete.
MAYBE you’ll end up ahead with upgradability or repairability, but honestly, you’re paying more to support good company practices.
I’m planning on keeping these laptops for a long time and upgrading when I need to, but we have to be realistic that most people aren’t going to stomach a minimum of 30% premium for options they don’t care about.
Do Frameworks still use that goofy resolution that makes it close to impossible scale the UI properly on Linux?
Yeah, but fractional scaling works fairly well on Wayland
Wasn’t aware of this, thanks!
I got fucked by them over a decade ago. Naively bought an Alienware for college. Burned out two motherboards on it while it was under warranty which they replaced. Naturally it burned out a third one outside of my warranty window which they refused to help with unless I paid them half the value of the laptop. Told them no thanks, instead I’ll tell everyone I know that their hardware is garbage.
I managed to get one of the “desktop replacement” laptops before they got sold to Dell, and that fucker was a solid brick shithouse, lasted like 7 years before functional issues. Heat was definitely a problem, couldn’t rest my left hand on the keyboard (above the GPU) after a couple hours and could probably sit outside in a blizzard without pants comfortably. Miss that bad boy… Shame Dell ruined them.
I’ve run into so many people who have had Dell laptops totally crap out / burn out on them. I saw several myself years ago through an old job. Mostly bad LCD displays right out of the box, but also an assortment of other problems. I vowed never to get a Dell computer of any kind after that.
Now in my current job we are forced to use refurbished Dell laptops. And guess what? All of them are total pieces of garbage. I’ve had two of them now. The first one became inoperable so they had to get me a new one. And now I find that the audio and USB ports are faulty on the new one.
I’m not surprised Dell is screwing over their lower-level employees, considering they consistently fuck over their customers. Fuck Dell.
“Gaming laptops” are a lie anyway. You can’t generate that much heat in that small of a space without something eventually going wrong, this applies to all of them. They’re all hot and underpowered.
Yeah, I expect any gaming laptop to have a shorter lifespan, but killing three mobos in the span of 3.5 years shouldn’t happen. Now that I’m older and wiser, I wonder if I had a bad power supply, but that’s something that should have come up on my second repair.
They’ve gotten a bit better within the Nvidia 1000-3000 series, but I can’t vouch for the 4000 series. Better thermal management techniques and lower target thresholds.
That being said, I’m sure there are manufacturers that buck the trend and set higher thermal targets for more performance. I’d say monitor your temps, and target for no higher than 75c if possible.
Why not the steam deck then?
Different hardware type. Gaming laptops have dedicated graphics cards which generate heat from an additional source, and they have to drive 1080p/1440p/4k content, whereas the steam deck is a 1280x800 screen, which is absolutely perfect for an AMD integrated GPU with reduced thermal management.
The steam deck is a single spec tightly tuned machine and software package not unlike a game console, whereas a gaming laptop is an all purpose machine with hardware all over the spectrum that you can buy what you want/need.
My old dell server hardware is surprisingly crap as well
I’ve gone through 4 PSUs in the last 5 years
Surprisingly? Not sure.
IMO it’s a bit surprising
I’d expect a company to at least sell decent hardware to their enterprise customers but I guess not in this case
If it breaks, you can just sell them more 🤷♂️
They are doing you a favor. I bought my kid a Dell laptop (xps13) for college and 6 months later the battery life dropped from 12 hours to 2 and Dell support said it was normal and refused to do anything about it. That was after the original order which was supposed to take 6 weeks for delivery (bad enough) actually took 14 weeks. It arrived two days before they left for school. Worst experience ever.
The replacement MacBook Air was delivered to their dorm the next day and has been flawless since (over a year now). It actually cost less too.
I think the xps is garbage. My laptops never break. They become obsolete before they break except my xps13. Broke after the warranty. It’s the only laptop I’ve had do that.