Dell Inspiron i15R-1579sLV 15-Inch Laptop

First of all, let me state that I consider myself to be an above average PC user. I cut my teeth on mainframes and mini-computers, and bought my first PC back in the late 1970s. I have performed hardware and software support for a medium-sized company for a number of years. I am no longer actively supporting others' PCs, but am still involved in business and personal use of PCs normally providing my own basic hardware and software support.

I received my new Dell laptop about a month and a half ago. It has not been working for the past three weeks. When I turn the laptop on, the Dell logo displays, and the screen goes blank. Per Dell, I needed to contact them to work out any warranty issues. I had been on the phone with Dell, for two weeks off and on going over the same issues again and again with them. They assure me that they want to get the laptop fixed! They then sent me a boot disk (flash drive). The laptop will not recognize the flash drive. After several more days of discussion, they told me they would replace the disk drive, the motherboard, and the DVD player. This was 5 days ago. I finally got a call from the Dell authorized warranty repairman two days ago, but missed the call. I called back immediately, but he was out (I assume on another warranty repair job). After two more days with no returned calls, I called him again. He assured me I would be the first one on his list tomorrow!

I have nothing against the repairman, but I asked Dell if the parts could be sent to my local Dell authorized warranty repairman located two miles from me. Instead, they sent the parts to someone located 4 hours away!!!! Is this any way for Dell to keep warranty costs down???

I have been a fan of Dell pcs for a number of years, but I believe this will be my last dell purchase. The products seem to be great and normally reliable for a reasonable price, but if there are any warranty issues on new products where Dell needs to get involved, forget it.

Received the product Friday. Turns out a speaker is defective. Called Dell today only to be switched from one customer service guy to the next and after being on hold for a total of 1 1/2 hours they hung up on me. The last person who put me on hold said that he doesn't know what to do if a product is defective and he was going to put me on hold and find out. Phone got disconnected during my hold time and nobody bothered to call back. As if my defective computer would be magically fixed because I was passed around from one rep to the next. Tried getting back in touch with them only to get the voice response system that kept saying "sorry, I didn't understand that" and after me telling it over and over again that I want customer service I finally got a live person on the phone. That person also passed me off to another department and that voice mail said that they are only open M-F, as if the person who transferred me who works at Dell didn't know that! Then I call again and get another person who tells me the same thing and I ask to speak to manager. Some guy comes on the phone and says "sorry for the inconvenience" and that I have to call back Monday. Nobody cared that I was on the phone with them for over 2 hours at this point only to find out that I have to wait until Monday. I don't know what will happen on Monday but at this point I want to return this defective laptop and get my money back just so I never have to deal with such incompetent people again.

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The screen started to have vertical fuzzy lines and after a week, the screen showed a blank. It would work after shaking the laptop. However, the vertical lines would appear again after 10 minutes. I learned that the lcd crystal broke down. Eventually, the screen didn't show anything. Completely caput.

After calling the help desk (reaching them took me over 30 minutes), I learned that the warranty had expired a few months ago and to replace the screen, it would cost half of the amount I paid for initially to purchase this laptop.

I will never buy from DELL again. They sell cheap products that breaks down just after the warranty expires.

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I've had this for about a month, got it direct from Dell but with same specs and similar price as it's offered here. In this review I'll try to differentiate between comments on the computer itself and issues caused by Windows 8, but since I can't really review a computer without discussing the operating system, win8 inevitably affects the overall rating. A note about the 3 stars: I would probably give windows8 two stars by itself, and this computer running windows7 might have gotten 4 or even 5 stars for the reasons I'll explain below.

The pros: this is a solid everyday computer. Reboots and load times are quick, wireless connection is stable. I've run MS office suite, Matlab, and ArcGIS a fair amount, all with no hitches. Clearly not intended as a gaming PC but it handles Warcraft just fine with the addition of a wireless mouse and the screen looks good for both games and movies from various angles. It's not as cute/sexy as the Dell z-series (or certainly a Mac) but I think it looks pretty good with nice lines and some modern metallic touches and at 6 pounds it's no problem to carry anywhere.

The cons: A fair number mysterious reboots and updates both from Microsoft and Dell despite setting so that it is only supposed to do this at 3am. This is certainly not as bad as the horror of Vista and it seems a bit better recently but was pretty frustrating for the first few weeks. Two, windows 8 is just clearly not really intended to be run on this machine. It's probably best used with a touchscreen and probably least optimal with a touchpad mouse, and the main interface for this machine is...a touchpad mouse. You can read about reasons for this all over the web but basically they want you to use the OS more like a tablet or phone, flipping between different apps and screens. In my experience you really can't use this computer with the touch clicking/gesturing activated without opening new screens every time you move the mouse, so you'll need to switch it off. Easily done but if I have to lose functionality before I can use my computer, you lose a star. Third, this is probably my least favorite keyboard of computers I've used lately. Feels a bit mushy and awkward this is very much personal preference, but if you're picky maybe check it out before you buy.

Overall: quite a capable computer, but really not designed for the OS installed on it. I knew going in that win8 would be a pain and decided to put up with it because I think this is where Operating Systems are headed and I'll have to leave the Desktop someday, but this would be a system running win7.

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Ordered for myself was deliverd very quckly. Easy to read instructions. Just plug in and get started. Loved windows 8

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