Benoît Dejean :
I was about to buy a XPS 1330 to replace my stolen ibook, but now i feel like i’m going to stick with Apple. Any suggestion ?

Apple is having the same issue with Nvidia graphics that Dell does (not surprising since under the skin a Apple powerbook is using the same stuff as Dell).

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1049921/inquirer-confirms-apple-macbook-pros-have-nvidia-bad-bump-material

So for a while I’d avoid buying anything with Nvidia graphics until users stop reporting issues.

wolverian :
Wow, that sucks. I have an XPS M1330 as well, and fortunately it’s still doing fine.
I did, however, experience the slowdown and overheating once. The problem was that the BIOS did not recognise the attached charger. Rebooting and replugging the charger (and perhaps removing the battery, I don’t remember) fixed it for me. Google will find more information.

Dell uses a 3-wire line to the power block. It tells the laptop the wattage of it somehow. If the connector gets damaged (say the wire got yanked on) then it can stop being able to indicate the correct voltage. In that case the laptop will throttle back the CPU to prevent instability on what it thinks is a under-powered block.

So treat that wire carefully. They are expensive to replace.

My Dell 1420 had it build up so much that it throttled the CPU due to overheating. The dust bunny was a solid mat of fuzz the shape of the heatsink opening. This has been a issue for every single other laptop I’ve ever owned.

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As for the Nvidia issue. Solder problems are going to be more and more common from now on on all hardware. Pointless environmental regulations have eliminated the lead in solder. The lead is required for proper bonding and low-heat flowing. It leads to a flexible and solid joint and with easy-to-do-properly manufacturing.

Modern lead-free solder is much more difficult, fragile, and expensive to work with. The manufacturing facilities need to heat up their hardware to much higher tempuratures and thus they are always constantly afraid of destroying parts and damaging chips. So often they do not heat it to high enough temperature.

Also the life of the equipment will be significantly shortened. The new stuff is not as flexible so in mobile devices that get a lot of movement the joints will break and crack much quicker. Also lead-free solder has a much higher amount of tin content then it should have. This leads to ‘tin whiskers’ and other such problems so that even if you don’t crack and break joints you will see much higher level of malfuctions on older equipment due to chips shorting out internally.

So instead of actually protecting the environment all it’s going to do is fill up landfills with that much more junk as computers and other equipment start having 2-4 year lifespans instead of 5-8 year ones.

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Also dedicated video cards on laptops are not a good thing unless you need to have high performance 3D acceleration. They will produce more heat and use more battery life then video graphics that are integrated into your chipsets.

@Chris
what is ECB? I am trying i paid 1400 euros for it!

@stephane.raimbault.myopenid.com/
already replaced once

@Benoît Dejean
go with anything else

Client of mine did it not two months ago on a failed M1330 that was a few months out of warranty. Just dont give up, worse comes to worse ECB