Dell XPS m1330, a most beautiful piece of shit

I remember being quite excited upon receiving my m1330.  It was a beautiful laptop.  Very sleek and original.  Relatively thin.  Powerful enough to run my WoW (at the time) by sporting an NVidia card.  I loved it.  I stopped using my Alienware desktop monstrosity almost entirely.  It was a bit pricey though, something like $1600 in '07/'08.  Perhaps the only complaint I had was that it came with Vista.

It's sad though, the innards of that thing ended up being junk.  I had to have it serviced every year.  It overheated, the video would give out, the motherboard would break. I even forked out dough for the extended warranty just to get it fixed (2nd time it died was shortly after the previous warranty expired but they let me buy the extended).  It was my main machine at the time, in particular since I had just moved and purged much of my wares, so I kept it serviced.  And a part of me wanted it to be a nice working machine because I really did like it cosmetically and feel-wise.

But at last, it just wasn't cutting it.  I'm not sure if it was the game upgrades or the vidcard or what, but WoW and other similar games became completely unplayable.  It ran a bit clunky.  It still had Vista on it just to run the games but when that stop it basically became a linux box.  So a year ago, upon getting the Alienware m11x, a machine I also love (though I still think I prefer the m11x look and feel-wise), I gave it to my sister.  Not much long after that, it started exhibiting more problems and basically quit on her.  I took it back, loaded it up with linux to find that it kept crashing.  I had good indication it was the hard drive so I bought another one.  Installed it, spent more time putting Ubuntu on it, had it just about set up the way I liked and wouldn't you know.... it completely gives up the ghost.  Won't power on or anything.  Pisses me off that I had just spent more money on it again only to have it bricked.

I've read about bad experiences with Dell and their machines.  It wasn't my experience for the most part, until now.  My previous laptop was also a Dell and although it ended up with some issues here and there, it worked for a looong time, on the order of 8 years or so.  And (having a warranty) I had fair service.  But now I'm very disappointed, doubly so because they put together a machine that I really wanted to like and they ruined it with shoddy parts and internal design and a hefty price tag.  Such is the life with gadgets I suppose.  I did try and look up how much it would cost me to fix it and I decided that I'd rather spend the money on a new netbook than sink it into an aging machine.  I did consider it though.  If I could have found a new mobo for, say, $50-70 I would have justified it as a geek hobby.

As to whether or not I'll ever trust Dell again to buy from them... Well, I probably will.  I mean, I already have with this Alienware but I'm HOPING that that subdivision of the company (acquired) has a higher standard and from what I read they mostly are.  I did have to have it serviced but it was only a fan that stopped working causing overheat and shutdown.  I'm getting good use out of it though and that's the important bit.  Also, sometimes the price is hard to ignore, I have the discount deals through my company and I have a work-issued Dell as well that is a clunky beast but is still kicking with nary a problem (other than a dead battery) in 3.5 years.

I just wish it wasn't the m1330 that ended up being the lemon.