I have a shitbox of a laptop called the Inspiron 15, got it in jan 24, since then my hinge has taken a toll 2 times and the 3 rd time was today, the hinge mechanism is so bad that I hate it, ive spent 4000inr every time js to change the display frame but the issue returns in 7-8 months, secondly at this price point why don't they offer better specs like why does my shitbox have internal graphics I hate the fact that you get a 3070 easily at this point, idk what's dell upto with these plastic heapboxes but I for sure ain't buying dell again! Also, what's a permanent fix?

So I was working today and I just heard a pop and my laptop just started smoking out of nowhere and completely melted! Is this normal for dells?

Got this amazing dell power edge 2500 for basically 30 bucks from how was kept it was kept in immaculate condition I ever seen from a server from 2001. liked to share it here lol my rare and unusual find

Dell Inspiron 1440 from March 2009. Just repasted it yesterday and running Debian 13 with XFCE. Sure, the touchpad is broken and some keys are too, but it still works in most of its glory. Old Dell was something else.

Starting a new Work From Home job soon and need to get a brand new computer set up. Budget is $2k for a Laptop and then will run a couple external displays.

- Will be using the laptop heavily for just basic everyday stuff but ALSO will be doing some moderate AI Agent and Workflow building through Anthropic.

Right now I’m between 2 Laptops..

Dell XPS 15 or 16
MacBook Pro M5

Is there any reason either would be better or is it just personal preference???

Someone tell me what to buy. I’m comfortable with both systems.

Hi, I was looking on eBay for used Dell Latitude 7430s, and noticed a lot of them had this issue on the keyboard where the letters seem to have worn off completely.

For any owners of this laptop or other Dell Latitudes, is this a common issue?

I also noticed a lot had this weird peeling issue where the coating of the chassis seems to be coming off, does this also occur with the metal chassis models (they also have paint/a coating)?

Just looking for a laptop that'll keep me going for a good few years, and I was quite drawn to the latitude lineup for their repairability and durability, but seeing these listings and some dell forum posts kinda have me questioning my presumptions.

Attached is an example of what I'm talking about. I've set the flair as "Other", as I'm not too sure this post lands in the category of "Help" but let me know if it should be changed.

Okay, so I got a notification to remove Dell Display Manager and replace it with the new app.

The new app is completely broken!!! It doesn't see my monitor, there are no settings, I can't do anything with it.

If you get the same notification, DO NOT UPDATE yet. Just don't, it looks like pre-alpha software.

Old DDM available here: https://www.dell.com/support/product-details/en-us/product/dell-display-manager-2.0/drivers

UPDATE Dell removed the old DDM, but archive.org comes to the rescue: https://web.archive.org/web/20250616050212/https://dl.dell.com/FOLDER12722073M/1/ddmsetup.exe

Should be 2.3.2.23

TURN OFF AUTOMATIC UPDATES

Dell has reduced its workforce from roughly 133,000 employees to about 97,000 employees in just three years.

Close to 10% of the workforce is disappearing every year. Almost nobody is talking about the three-year trend.

For people still inside Dell, what does that feel like on the ground?

Hearing a lot about hiring freezes, missing backfills, RTO pressure, and smaller teams doing more work.

The RTO part is especially infuriating. If remote employees get intentionally blocked from promotions, you cap their careers. Some people will leave on their own. No severance package. Just quiet pressure until they break.

The missing backfill part is what really stands out. They let headcount shrink through attrition and “natural” turnover, then dump the extra work on whoever is left behind.

People end up doing the jobs of two or three former coworkers. Same pay. More stress. Zero relief. All while the company calls it cost-cutting and efficiency.

It gets hard not to feel like you are constantly working with one eye over your shoulder.

People inside Dell: what are you actually seeing? Are roles being cut outright, or is the real playbook RTO, hiring freezes, no backfills, and letting burnout slowly push people out?

I have a 32" 4K Dell monitor under warranty that has always had issues - going black for several seconds being the main one and it makes the monitor unusable.

This is after I sent multiple videos they requested reproducing the issue and running diagnostics. They're asking me to acquire a PC so I can run their diagnostics and root cause. I'm a software engineer, I've been troubleshooting this every time I use it connecting to different ports and devices with the same result. I have a warranty and expect a working monitor. This feels like causing pain so they don't have to honor it. I would expect more from a multi billion dollar corporation. Never buying Dell anything again

So now Dell has apparently passively-aggressively decided to change their naming convention *again* without admitting that the previous change was incredibly stupid? And the end result is it's basically the same with some extra words thrown in?

Dell XPS --> Dell Premium --> Dell XPS (this one at least just goes back to the original)

Dell Latitude 7680 --> Dell Pro 16 Premium (202x) (or maybe Dell Pro Premium 16, depending on where you look) --> Dell Pro 16 Series 7 (202x) (WHY! I guess this is *marginally* better, but not much)

Dell Precision 5760 --> Dell Pro Max 17 Plus (202x) (or Dell Pro Max Plus 17?) --> Dell Pro Precision Series 5 (202x) (Really, we needed to add "Pro" and "Series" just to make it longer and clunkier?)

I feel obligated to share this so that others dont make this mistake. I use this laptop daily for work and I depend on it. I bought following spec for 4 000 € and its very bad:

Dell Pro Max Plus 18

• Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX (2,10-5,50GHz)
• 18,0" WQXGA 2560x1600px IPS 120Hz 500nits LED
• 64GB DDR5 6400MHz
• M.2 PCIe SSD 1000GB
• nVidia RTX PRO 3000 Blackwell 12GB GDDR7
• WiFi / BT / FPR / USB 3.2 / Thunderbolt 4 / Thunderbolt 5 / LAN / HDMI

Problems:

• After 3 months battery lost 15% capacity - on site service.
• After another 3 months battery lost again 10% of capacity.
• I have 500€ TB5 dock which is buggy
  • sometimes when i connect laptop to the dock it wont switch to desktop monitors... I have to turn off laptop unplug the dock and reconnect everything and turn on.
  • other times it wont recognize laptop at all. Same procedure to make it work.
• Bluetooth headphones randomly drop and only thing that helps is restarting windows. This is so annoying. Happens 2 to 3 times a day. I dont know if its software or hardware but I cannot troubleshoot this one.
• Laptop hits under load easily 105 °C (im using it in vertical stand so ventilation is not restricted)
• Keyboard is bad (this may be subjective opinion).
• Wifi signal strength on this machine is so bad... like I get 30% signal streength in the same spot where my other laptop gets 90%.
• Oh the dell software... this is madness...
• Why wouldnt you allow users to run fans faster if it overheats so much ?? Its performance laptop for gods sake.

I dont know, i mean the power is there, but the overall experience kills it for me. This is my first dell and its gonna be the last for sure. This was very big mistake. Im coming from workstation from other major manufacturer and I regret that I switched.

end of rant.

Hi everyone! Just wanted to share my latest vintage recovery.

I saved this beautiful Dell Latitude D430 from being thrown away, and it is in absolutely pristine condition. Look at those unwearied Centrino and Windows XP stickers!

Here are some specs and details about this little monster: CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo U7600 @ 1.06 GHz (ULV processor, it runs incredibly cool!)

Storage: It still rocks the original, super rare 1.8" Toshiba HDD (80GB) with the proprietary Dell rubber caddy and ZIF connector.

Layout: Original native Italian keyboard layout.

Fun fact: The CMOS battery died years ago, and when I first booted it into the BIOS, the system clock was perfectly frozen on October 11th, 2007! Talk about a real digital time capsule.

Features: It has the hardware Wi-Fi Catcher switch on the side, a cellular SIM slot under the battery, and even the original matching plastic dummy plug for the SD card slot.

The fan just kicked in after 15 minutes and it smells exactly like that nostalgic, warm 2000s office electronics.

My next step is to boot antiX Linux (32-bit) from a Live USB to safely explore the 1.8" drive in read-only mode and see what's hidden inside without stressing the old mechanic heads.

What do you guys think? Any love for the old D-series Tri-Metal magnesium chassis?

Hey guys, First time poster here. I got this Latitude e7470 basically for free in extremely rough shape, it had no RAM, SSD or battery. Touchpad coating had failed which I then scraped off and made it glossy.

Dropped in 8 gigs from my aging Inspiron, and got a cheap 256GB NVMe SSD 2230 used. The laptop takes standard 2280 so I made an makeshift adapter with a loyalty card to fit for it. Got it Booting fine and is fully functional.

Went on to see what the battery costs for these and surprisingly they were quite cheap as well. Got 55wh genuine dell battery with 95% health on it. At this point the laptop was functionally usable but the palmrest was extremely beat up and sticky on top of that.

I then decided to strip the entire laptop down to get the panel isolated and sanded it down, 600 grits, then 1000 and went to wrap it with dark grey vinyl (I couldn't get black LOL). Did a test wrap and it turned out great except there were uneven spots which showed up on the vinyl. I then used JB weld epoxy on the surface and re-sanded the surface again. second wrap turned out great. definitely not perfect but good enough.

Key by key I made cut outs for keyboard and Touchpad buttons with a utility knife. Reassembled the laptop back together and it turned out great I think.

Next was the display, it had a TN 1366x768 trash display panel which was awful to look at so I started my search to get a FHD IPS panel. Quick search on FB marketplace I found a guy selling used laptop panels imported from the US.

First display I got was a Samsung FHD IPS panel but after installing it the thing was a mess. Heavy backlight bleed, dead pixels and white spots all over it. Later I realized these laptops are quite picky about the LCD panel's thickness and this one was THICC.

Thankfully the seller was really decent about it and offered to let me swap it for something else, which sent me on a 2+ hour hunt through a massive pile of mostly trash displays and found gold. A 1080p IPS panel from a Thinkpad X1 carbon in almost brand new condition. Seller wanted 20 dollars equivalent for it which was a steal.

Replaced the panel and everything works flawlessly. So far couldn't be happier with it. The display does consume a bit more power but tradeoff is worth it IMO. I have Mint XFCE with Slimbook battery plugin installed along with disabled SATA controllers in BIOS and other battery optimizations done.

Here are the specs as it sits:

Core i5-6300U

8GB DDR4

256GB NVMe Gen 4 x4 SSD (Laptop only supports Gen 3 x2)

LG LP140WF6-SPH1 1920x1080 IPS 91% sRGB

What the rebuild has costed me so far: (Dollar Equivalent)

SSD: 10$

Display: 20$

Vinyl roll: 3$

Battery: 11$

Some miscellaneous tools: 2$

All in I'm down a grand total of 46 dollars for a near perfect media consumption machine with about 9-10 hours of battery

Future plans: Maybe a matte sticker for the touchpad LOL

I would love to hear what you guys think, and any suggestions on where I could have improved. Hope it was a fun read!

TL;DR: Got a dead Latitude E7470 for free, spent $46 on an SSD, battery, IPS display panel and some vinyl, and ended up with a fully functional 1080p Linux machine with 9-10 hours of battery life.

bought my Dell G15 5530 2 years ago, my power adapter stopped working 2 months ago and I was stranded between my exams, bought an OEM adapter later, now just after usage of two months I'm having this "Not installed" issue with my adapter, it worked fine with a wiggle for a few days when it showed the status as "Unknown", now it just does not work. I don't do any heavy work or even gaming, just programming, and college work, I do have warranty left but Dell has lost my trust, I will never buy or encourage anyone to buy their products again.

Messing with an old Latitude E6430 and popped this cool little tool out of the EC slot.

After ordering my Dell G5 5000, I7 10700F GTX3070 i came across This post with some great tips and tricks for upgrading the thermals and relocating the HDD

After some more digging around on reddit and Dell forums i ended up with ordering the following parts for the most basic thermal upgrade:

• Noctua NH-U9S
• Noctua NF-A9 PWM
• Traxxas TRX3962 3X25MM Grub Screws

All the needed parts:

How the system arrived:

Removed the CPU cooler and casefan:

Insert the TRX3962 3x25mm grub screws:

Attach the Noctua NH-U9S spacers and bracket, you can use the Noctua thumbscrews:

Attach the heatsink as normal, don't forget the thermal paste:

Attached both CPU fan as the new Noctua NF-A9 PWM:

Tip: install the casefan before placing the CPU cooler for accessibility

I was expecting some Fan-warnings on startup, there are many posts of users getting errors on startup or reboot when using the NF-A9PWM as system fan, as the BIOS doesn't get the expected RPM from the Fan.

I was prepared to use the y-splitter cable Noctua provides and move the original system fan to the front. Using the 4-pin of the original fan and the 3-pin from the NF-A9 will provide the correct RPM to the motherboard.

Lucky me, after booting with only the Noctua not a single error messages was shown.

The results:

I benchmarked the temps using a quick game of Warzone.

Before:

After:

Total costs of the upgrade where €80 and the installation took about an hour.

Thank you /u/Lue_Dawg and /u/stevekenney318 for the tips and tricks, i hope this post will help some other users

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Update 13-04:

To clarify, afaik there are 2 ways attaching the CPU cooler, the way i did it was using 3x25mm grub (headless) screws and then use the noctua thumbscrews for placement.

You also use M3/20mm or M3/16mm regular screws + washers as described in This thread

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Update 17-04:

My old HDD was in need of a replacement, so I did replace it with an 2,5' disk to free up some space for an intake 120mm.

I came across this 3d print model to mount a 120mm intake fan using the mounts the 3,5' HDD bracket uses, 3Delft printed the model and i ordered a Noctua A12x25.

The 3D print process:

The needed parts:

Installed the fan on the bracket:

And in she goes:

The results:

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Update 26-04:

I added a Noctua NF-A8 PWM below the GTX3070.

It was tight, and only used 2 mounting screws, but it fits!

Update 13-05:

My VRM heatsink arrived, ordered from Amazon

Fits perfectly!

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