Most ridiculous laptop failure ever (not clickbait)

[Celest]

So earlier this week my Dell Inspiron 15 7590 2in1 laptop (bought August 2019 for $1500) suddenly decided to start profusely vibrating and making grinding noises, followed by pretty extreme thermal throttling to the point where after a little while it would be borderline unusable. I took it to a local computer repair guy (I only know how to work with desktops and oldschool laptops and can't deal with these ultra-thin convertibles) and got a call yesterday regarding the issue. Turns out that somehow one of the plastic clips holding the motherboard in place decided to snap off, get stuck in the fan and cook said fan to death. The repair (fan replacement plus new high quality thermal paste) will cost me around $93 with labor and part shipping costs included. This kind of failure appalling as I have treated this laptop way more gently than 99% of users do (I treat my gadgets like newborn babies). I honestly expected a more sturdy build for $1500, but I guess consumer electronics today isn't what it used to be even when I was a kid (looking at you, the indestructible hand-me-down ThinkPad R51 I had until a decade ago). Now I have to wait up to 5 business days just for parts to ship to the repair shop via UPS ground... This is not the only expensive device I've had fail on me during COVID. Luckily I had some leftover CARES act money which I was hoping to save, but instead spent on buying a $600 gaming PC so that I actually have something reliable during this ZoomVID-19 pandemic, along with a basic monitor (will upgrade to a proper 4K one when I make some money in the future). I wish tech companies would care about the fact that students like me don't exactly have unlimited money and that there is no unlimited money mod for real life.

 

[aginthelaw]

If you pay dell for an extended everything warranty, starting at around $200, they can repair it and you'll be covered for as long as you want. If they don't carry that version anymore after they evaluate it, they'll send another model as a replacement. In my case i had an i5 laptop that had multiple issues. They talked me into extending the warranty and paying a small diagnostic fee. They sent a tech to the house. The repair caused more problems and I returned the laptop to them. They sent a newer refurbished replacement which was a top of the line core i7, 512gb ssd, 16gb mem touchscreen with digital pen.

 

[Celest]

I have an extended warranty and accident protection (heaven forbid I were to accidentally spill a drink or drop it) thru Best Buy, but with the nearest Best Buy being 80 miles away and this whole pandemic making a busy semester harder, it was more convenient to have the local shop do it. The repair guy claims that the Best Buy repair option would still make me pay shipping and would take 2-3 months. That is shocking if true. Wish I had known about that last year when I plunked down my hard earned $300 thinking that plan was worth it... Also, IMO, fans on laptops should have a mesh over the inlet/outflow areas to prevent exactly this kind of failure, and maybe we could also go back to using screws, however small they need to be, INSIDE the laptop instead of flimsy clips.

 

[3_gun]

Not even close to the " Most ridiculous laptop failure ever" or even just computer fail ever. I've spent a good amount of time undoing the proof that you can't make things idiot proof because the idiots just get more idiotic.

Like a $1500+ Win7 system w/after market upgrades (Win10, ram, 2 2TB HD) that was made unusable by the owner setting the max processor power level in power settings at 1%. Even a quad core @ 2.8g can't over come that kind of idiot. I bought it for parts for $10. First boot up took 45 minutes. Took the better part of 8 hrs to track down the issue, but I was successful