Dell Inspiron 9400 LCD screen problems?

[phppete]

My brother just took delivery of his new Dell Inspiron 9400, he is happy with everything apart from the screen which is says is very poor. His images look blurry and blueish on it, obviously no use for image editing.

Looking on notebook review sites I see others complaining about the crap screen on the 9400, so is this a common problem. Oh also he is getting AOL errors when he closes down... WTF are Dell doing installing such crap on a new notebook. Its cost almost £1000 - $1890 and they fill it with bloatware. I thought Dell were a decent company but reading online, between their crap LCD's, even worse Indian call centres I am now having doubts.

I get my Dell Inspiron 6400 on Monday so I hope that is better otherwise that will be going back and I'll fill every review site I can find with a bad review. So the question is, are Dell usually this useless? Family members have had desktops from them for years and up until now they have all been very happy.

[Mandi]

This is a pre-coffee, didn't-search suggestion, so just pat me on the head and say, "nice try" if that's what it amounts to :dopey: . . . but I was just thinking this morning of an old thread here that referenced a reversed monitor cable causing poor video quality. Might be worth trying before you RMA the thing.

[phppete]

This is a pre-coffee, didn't-search suggestion, so just pat me on the head and say, "nice try" if that's what it amounts to :dopey: . . . but I was just thinking this morning of an old thread here that referenced a reversed monitor cable causing poor video quality. Might be worth trying before you RMA the thing.

Thanks Mandi, I'm not sure that is the problem here because there is no monitor cable, its a notebook :) I haven't seen it yet, my brother lives 200 miles away but he might be shooting up this weekend so I can remove the bloatware and try to sort the LCD and attempt to calibate it.

If FQ bought Dell then everything would be perfect, if only everything in life was as reliable as FQ

[kitchin]

I'm down on Dell these days. They are impossible to call and get somebody who can look up your account, even when you are reading it right off the bill and calling the number on the bill. Also components are starting to fail on this laptop, used daily for about a year. I've had good experience with Compaq/HP lately, but not too much. Hope they aren't pretexting my phone calls!

[phppete]

I'm down on Dell these days. They are impossible to call and get somebody who can look up your account, even when you are reading it right off the bill and calling the number on the bill. Also components are starting to fail on this laptop, used daily for about a year. I've had good experience with Compaq/HP lately, but not too much. Hope they aren't pretexting my phone calls!

Hi Kitchin,

Thanks for the reply, I have been reading reviews on HP notebooks and they do seem to be quite good. All I am seeing from Dell reviews is issues with screen such as light leakage, polarization and other stuff. I'll be returning mine if its crap but reviews on the Inspiron 6400 seem to be quite good. I hate all this Indian call centre crap as well, I find it extremely offensive, if I wanted to talk to Indians I would move to India, but I don't. I wonder what the world is coming to, I really do!

[Mandi]

Uh, okay . . . I even OWNED an Inspiron at one point, and should have known that. Now I've just revealed exactly how coffee soaked my brain has to be, before speaking up sensically in the morning. I hope you get it sorted it!

[Jeff]

I'm down on dell lately as well. A year ago they shipped nice and clean and were stable and fast out of the box. The latest three that I saw were loaded down with bloat-ware and seemed slower than those from a year previous because of all the junk running on them as delivered. If I wanted a mess, I'd go to a used computer store and plan on reformatting what someone else threw away because it was so bogged down. A new computer should be lean and mean (and fast) and allow the customer to load the software they actually want not have the tray full of a gazillion things running that are all junk.

[phppete]

I have now seen my brothers Dell, the Inspiron 9400 and the screen being 17" does seem to have a slight haze about it. The main issue is his jewellery images, some are photographed on grey slate. On the Dell screens the grey slate looks blueish but on Mac screens and desktop LCD's we see the proper grey colour. We took a trip to the local Comet, Currys and PC World stores, some of the computers were online so we got his site up and checked. Even the HP and Toshiba glossy screen laptops all gave his images a blue tinge, the Mac 20" screen in store and the Mac Books all showed the images as true to life.

I got my Dell Inspiron 6400 this morning and the 15.4" screen does seem a little better than my brothers 9400. Overall, apart from the bloatware which I removed immediately I am happy with the performance of my new Inspiron, its 512MB RAM, 1.66 Dual Core Intel, 128MB ATI graphics card. The build seems good and so far no problems. I did put the wifi back under the management of windows, the software for the Intel wifi card kept losing my network, apart from that all is fine.

We seem to of came to the conclusion that if you are really info digital photography and design then a Mac is probably the way to go. Unfortunately a comparable MacBook Pro is £1699 compared to the Dell Inspiron which without MS software and case is £829, almost half price. In hindsight I think my brother would have been better getting the Inspiron 6400 like I have, the 17" model is rather large and a little heavier.