Let me start by saying I have been a long time Dell Customer. I just recently purchased my 3rd Dell in the past 8 years. I currently own a Dell Dimension Desktop, Dell Latitude Laptop, and most recently a Dell XPS M1730 Gaming Laptop. My previous experiences with this company have been nothing short of amazing and that's why I have continued to buy from Dell and recommend many of my friends and family to the company. Unfortunately this experience would eventually lead to my downfall and I'll explain why...
To begin I bought my XPS M1730 laptop for $3,600 in May. This is the best true gaming laptop Dell has to offer. They market it and describe it as a hardcore gaming machine for hardcore gamers. I even took it a step further upgrading a number of the components offered to maximize its gaming potential. As you can imagine I was pretty stoked when it arrived.
Now upon receiving my Dell Gaming Laptop, the first game I decided to play on my laptop was Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. This game was awarded Game of the Year honors and has about 10 million users playing it. Now keep in mind this game came out in November. Notice that is 6 months before I purchased my Dell Gaming Laptop. After firing up the game for the first time I was immediately very disappointed in the performance of the Dell gaming laptop. I was forced to turn down many settings just to get the game to play remotely smooth. Even after setting my resolution and graphics down considerably I still get an occasional choppiness which is very annoying, especially when I am playing competitively online.
Now here is where my previous experience with Dell will come back to bite me. I should have returned this Dell gaming laptop right then while I was within my 21 day return window but I didn't.instead I insisted this had to be a problem with the software or drivers. I thought to myself, there is no way this $3,600 Dell Gaming laptop can't play a game that came out 6 months ago. My 2 other computers work great and it never crossed my mind that my most expensive computer, and one designed specifically for hardcore gaming, would have issues.
Instead of returning I began doing research to find a solution to my problems. I have read countless forums, articles, blogs, all in an effort to find a fix for my computer. I have literally tried dozens of things to improve the performance with no luck. Finally I came to the conclusion that my computer is fine but it must be the game that is the problem. I thought maybe this game doesn't correctly handle my Dual Core Processor, or my SLI video cards. I just couldn't bring myself to believe this Dell Gaming Laptop could be performing like this. So for a month or two I tolerated my crappy performance assuming it was the game's fault.
As you can probably guess I eventually bought a new game. The next game I purchased was World In Conflict. To my amazement and disappointment I experienced identical problems with this game as I had previously with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Now I was beginning to get a sick feeling, maybe I bought a $3,600 dollar lemon. To be sure though I purchased a third game to rule out any other software related problems. My third video game purchase was Frontlines: Fuel of War. Different game same crappy performance. So now I figured it was time to engage Dell Tech Support.
At this point I was thankful I got the one year warranty because I figured maybe something has to be faulty. I made the call to Dell Tech Support and began the process of troubleshooting my laptop. Now I spent a good week with Tech support running all sorts of tests and trying all sorts of configuration changes to improve performance. At the end though Dell Tech Support could not fix me problems. Finally they essentially came to this conclusion: my computer was perfectly fine and performing as it should. So basically they are telling me my laptop is working as intended and the poor gaming performance is what I paid for.
Now as you can imagine this was not what I wanted to hear. I began to ask myself, Is it really too much to ask to expect my $3,600 Dell Gaming Laptop to be able to play games with a certain level of performance when they were released months before I purchased my laptop? Of course the answer to this is No. It's not like I am asking to play games that came out a year or two after my laptop purchase. All I want is smooth game play on a medium graphics configuration on games that came out before or shortly after my laptop was purchased.
Well I still had some faith in my once trusted Dell Corporation. My last hope was that the Dell Corporation, would make things right.
So now I decided it was time to plead my case with Dell Customer Care. When I finally got to a Dell Customer Care Representative I took the time to explain my situation. After explaining my situation she essentially told me that there was nothing she could do for me. I mentioned to her that I would have to escalate this up the chain to which she replied something to this effect: "Sir, I understand that your frustrated and you would like to talk to my supervisor but he will give you the same response".
It's at this point I knew I was up against some policy and she was just reading her answers from a company policy document.instead of wasting more of her time and mine I decided to end the conversation and find other avenues to plead my case.
I still have a sliver faith in Dell to make it right, and I won't give up until they do. $3,600 is a lot of money and it will be a year or two before I have that kind of money to invest in a replacement for this laptop. Until then I will keep pressing. After all I can't enjoy the games I want to play on this laptop anyways so I have plenty of free time to keep on pressing.
Now if your asking yourself what I want here it is. My research of other XPS M1730 Owners shows that when they upgraded their video cards to the 8800 GTX video cards their performance issues went away. I don't think I should have to spend another $900 on a video card upgrade when my computer should be able to play these games fine as is. I think Dell should take my 8700 GT cards and sell them as refurbished and give me the upgrade of 8800 GTX cards at no charge. I will even put them in myself.
Since they didn't deliver on performance I think they should be held responsible for upgrading my computer, not me. If I was asking a year from now to play the next generation of games it would be different but I am not. I am asking to play games that came out months before my computer. I purchased there top of the line gaming laptop, paid top of the line type money, and I am expect top of the line performance.
I don't think I am being unreasonable and I think this is a fair conclusion to this issue. If Dell makes it right this time I will continue to be the loyal customer that I am. Dell stands to retain a great customer and gain many more. I am a big fan of Dell computers and I would like it to stay that way.
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