Dell FAIL

I was hoping to be posting one of my hardware reviews by now. After coming back from holiday a few weeks ago my trusty Media Centre PC decided to give up the ghost after a few months of erratic behaviour.

The prognosis was a deceased power supply, but given how the machine was now several years old, couldn’t play 1080p video due to a rather aged Pentium 4 chip, and was wheezing like I do after climbing a flight of stairs, it was time for the great IT graveyard in the sky. Or more specifically, I gave it to Maceie for spares for his own box. Coincidentally, a power supply for one of these computers comes in at around £70 now, which even a GCSE maths student will be able to tell you is considerably less than £400 for a new machine. Newer, faster, shinier = better.

The replacement was chosen, a Dell Studio Hybrid. The machines are small, contain all the relevant outputs and are a fairly decent price (although watch out for the voucher codes that promise to make it cheap as chips – you can buy the machines in PC World and the price is the lower one already). I grumbled considerably before ordering the unit, lashing out money is the last thing I want to be doing at the moment but this is our primary source of entertainment so needs must.

As per usual the service from Dell was exemplary, and the machine was soon on its way. However it was dispatched on a Wednesday but took until Monday to actually arrive. I’m sure given how it was in the UK by Thursday morning it could have appeared on Friday, perhaps that’s just me being spoilt. But when I can have items overnighted from the US for less than the delivery price Dell charges it does make me scratch my head a little.

The machine is lovely, small and contains some very nice design features. Stand it up and the front panel illuminates at startup displaying “Hybrid”. Turn it on its side, and it is displayed in the centre of the unit. Its little things like that which please on an aesthetics level.

Of course it’s all very well to look lovely, but it’s what’s on the inside that counts and while the machine itself performs very nicely there was one small problem with mine. It was noisy, and not noisy in the sense of “a little bit louder than silent which isn’t perfect for Little Lord Cullen”, but noisy as in “louder than an Xbox 360”. Considerably louder than a 360 in fact, and given that the Studio Hybrid is designed to be a living room media centre computer, you would have to be tone deaf not to notice the fan whining like a toddler at Disneyworld.

As with the Mac Mini, an awful lot if crammed into the case, and the processor itself is passively cooled with a single fan at the back. That is where the problem lies with mine; the fan is mind numbingly loud. Switch the machine on it and it starts off fine, and then as soon as Windows starts to boot you’re reaching for the ear plugs. Seriously, I had two Inspiron desktop computers switched on, as well as a NAS box and a Windows Home Server and this thing was louder than all of those devices put together!

Obviously that’s not right, so it was straight on to Dell support, and because it’s classed as a consumer device there’s no chance of an engineer coming out on site to look at it. No it has had to be boxed up and sent back to Dell. To their credit the support staff are always good, and this morning a City Link courier arrived to take the machine back for a full diagnostic and a replacement of the fan. Or rather I hope that is what’s going to happen.

Given that we have a four day weekend for Easter next week I can’t imagine seeing it back until at least Tuesday week (although I’m very open to surprises). I’ve been a vociferous supporter of Dell in recent times (this is now my fourth machine of theirs), but how something like this can leave the factory in this state is somewhat beyond me.

Fingers crossed I get the quiet machine I ordered when it eventually returns.

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