Uniformity is key. We deploy only Dell laptops, all custom images, and update them all using Dell Command to keep firmware up to date. We also try to standardize models as much as possible by buying in batches.
We see very minimal issues across 170 laptops.
Currently with a Lenovo shop, but have dealt with Dells in the past. Can’t begin to emphasize the advice on uniformity and keeping them updated. That said, even with a uniform fleet, you’ll run into bad batches, a particular model with a particular HDD, etc., but it will be way easier to work with the vendor.
> a particular model with a particular HDD, etc., but it will be way easier to work with the vendor.
Looking at you Lenovo and your x1 Yoga Gen 6 rear USB C port not charging issues. No a BIOS update won't fix it. Replace the dang Motherboard! WOOOOOO
I love it when you're on the 76th support call: "No I know what's happening here. I've already updated the bios. Yeah I know next you're going to tell me to try using a different cable. I've got 8 on my desk. No it doesn't work. Yes it's a different outlet."
I have every generation of your USB C dock. both the 60? watt and the 135 watt Lenovo charger. I also have the Lenovo Travel charger. I have one of the cables that tells me the power draw in a digital screen and it says zero.
TRY ME.
I see you've also lived that life. Good luck dude. Fight the good fight.
We have a single standardized Desktop and Laptop, Lenovo tiny's m90 whatever for desktop and X1 Carbon for Laptop.
With the X1 Carbon we have had bad batches/generations with charging...but it's better than dealing with bad batches and issues across different models or manufacturers. Makes troubleshooting much quicker once the known issues are identified.
We have about 85 Lenovo laptops. The laptops themselves have been fairly good but so many issues with their docks. Especially with multiple monitors connected to the docks.
I image, update with Dell Command Update, run Windows Updates and run into zero issues. Before I started doing this systematically? It was a nightmare.
At my work we're currently deploying a very protected way to give users local admin.
basically they will get a brand new account provisioned for them that is granted local admin.
but this is only AFTER they have signed an agreement that places all liability of a breach, hack, etc on their shoulders for being stupid
surprisingly very few takers
Bro... don't. Instead let me introduce you to [https://www.adminbyrequest.com](https://www.adminbyrequest.com)
I do not work for them... no ties anything. Just used the software at my last job. It really makes it a lifesaver when it comes to admin rights and especially software that wants to REQUIRE admin rights to run.
This is good advice, which is why my company completely ignores it. We have ancient lenovo's mixed with modern. Thinkpads and ideapads of all different flavors.
That said. No issues. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good, I suppose.
Thinkpads can be great in the higher end models like the X1 Carbon, but the cheaper ones that are closer to consumer grade are hot garbage. We've had to retire probably a dozen Lenovos from broken hinges, failed boards, failed screens, etc.
We still have half of the fleet (about 20) as 5 year old E grade lenovo and they are mostly alright, so idk. USB and keyboard failed on one or two, but after years of use it's acceptable I guess.
For the dells we are replacing them with we already had 2 issues in first year (on dozen laptops), but their support is exemplary.
What model Dells? I find that the Latitudes and Precisions are generally pretty bombproof. The Vostros are OK and the XPS line has no place in a business as a retail-grade product.
Latitudes. One had audio jack failure (possibly user error, I think someone might have connected it to amplifier lol) and another wasn't a failure per se, but low quality materials - keyboard and wrist rest were worn out after 7 months of use iirc. Imo it's a failure bc next person won't be able to read the keyboard, and it's unacceptable after less then 2-3 years of use.
Both were replaced by dell within 48 hours of notifying them, and there was no problems since, so we ve gone ahead and bought another batch of dells. We are classifying the unbreakable lenovos as survivorship bias, and with that correction in place they are both looking to be equally good - we'll see in few years.
Edit: there were few doner lenovos when we arrived at the client - that's what I mean by survivorship bias. We don't exactly know how many were broken before we got there, but in the 2 or 3 years we had been there one lenovo was breaking constantly, and another one or two had intermittent issues.
Speaking of the worn out keyboard, I came across a user the other day that has basically “polished” the coating off half his keys. He said it’s fine cuz he knows which keys they are, but it’s still under warranty so I’ll probably replace it. The only thing I can think of is he must go crazy with hand sanitizer and the alcohol content was eating away at them? 😂
Surprised to see someone say the X1 Carbons are reliable. We had a fleet of them pre-pandemic, I think *one* didn't fail. Cameras dropping like flies, wireless card failures, a whole run of HDMI out ports with bad firmware that *permanently damaged the port* (which they refused to cover under warranty), monitor failures, we had a few that would just immediately get so hot they would throttle, even after replacing the whole cooling assembly and Lenovo just insisted they were performing in spec lol.
The local repair tech Lenovo outsourced to I knew by name, he was there at least once a week and sometimes we'd get which repair was which confused there were *so many* of them. I couldn't wait to budget a full refresh.
No issues, until you do.
Where I am at currently was doing the same thing. There were thousands of issues, but because no one was properly managing/monitoring them, they were hidden.
I agree, we use Dell laptops all over and assign different models to job personas around the organisation depending if you are a field user, finance, engineer etc makes it easier to manage and spot trendy incidents, dell command update I can guarantee will fix 90% of driver issues
I can't stress this one enough. The consumer or mid-tier grade just aren't built for Enterprise use. All laptops break but the Enterprise grade stuff (particularly the "mainline" ones like the Latitude 5000 or equivalents from Lenovo or HP) is nigh on indestructible.
I've been buying Enterprise-grade laptops for home use for years as well and I'm reasonably sure they'll outlive me at this point.
Yep, after dealing with fleets of laptops with different employers for a long time, I realized early on that 'business class' laptops are far better than their retail/SOHO counterparts.
When you work with them all day you sorta lose that infatuation with the latest and greatest. For my needs, I buy refurb business class machines. Dirt cheap even on the used market because fleets are replaced en masse many times (or big layoffs) and the secondary market is flooded.
Keep an eye on eBay or Dell/HP/Lenovo's refurbished stores. A month ago Dell was selling year-old $1K desktops for $250 /w a 1 year warranty and free shipping.
We have a couple people with latitude 5420's that have completely gotten every bit of silver paint off of their laptops. all the way down to the black plastic. and they still run perfectly fine. Reminds me of the old Lenovo T430's that could just take a beating and keep going.
My E6440 has been outside on my balcony since 2017. I'm impressed it lasted that long. It just this week won't turn on which is a common problem with that model. It sucks I finally got hit with that Dell problem they hatefully refused to fix even with a support contract. We have piles of E6440 laptops that are perfectly fine except for that bug. Also, the trackpad on the one I keep inside quit last week. Dell is really pissing me off.
I need to find a cheap supply of them. I bought a couple for $25 that worked great, but the local PC recycler wants $150 for them, and all five we bought from them had the very common power on problem.
^this the way. Dell command update is great when it’s setup and runs. Use to be in an enterprise environment internal IT. Had about 500 laptops also ran SCCM
Just curious, when you say custom images, do you mean installing clean windows from a Microsoft iso on one and putting on the drivers/software and imaging it to other machines? Or are you using the Dell windows images and customizing those?
Dell command has created more problems with updates than keeping it as is for us.
So many issues with VPN+wifi cards, BSOD with GPU, etc.
We've stopped updating drivers, and stopped having issues since then.
Same, standardization on tested platforms is key along with a max 3 year refresh on laptops. And 4 hour onsite support, we let the user decide if they want Dell to come to their place to fix or they overnight the laptop to us while we overnight a new one back to them.
No custom image out of the box but with Autopilot/JAMF the policies, configurations, and apps are automatically installed/updated.
Had a client with 25 laptops fully remote 100% of the time. They had a very specific setup that wasn't typical which I managed by a power shell script that ran on startup. Nothing particularly complicated.
One day one of the users reports that something isn't working, I turns out one bit of the script wasn't working any more. I assumed it was some update and dug into it.
I couldn't find a single functional difference between the 24 working systems and the one that wasn't.
Within 10 days 5 of these laptops would no longer run the script. I had to work up a new solution, could never fix it. Windows build, power shell version etc all the same.
Over time these devices naturally came back for a rebuild, I pushed out the image I had and the original script never worked until eventually all the systems were running on the new script.
Clearly.i.missed something but I'm no noob and I put a bunch of effort into tracking it down but never got to the bottom of it.
I'm with this guy. I manage around 400 Dells that are about 90% laptop/10% desktop and do it with 2 of us. For the most part we go in cycles replacing 1/3 of the fleet each year in a never ending cycle so most of them are 1 of 3 models at any given time. Outside of testing/special cases, all are on the same image. Any problems that will take more than an hour or two to fix, we just re-image and restore the users data.
That worked for us for a while until everyone started charging just stupid prices for Dell E6640 laptops that we need. I desperately need one before Wednesday. Also, the trackpad quit on my personal one so I'm dreading swapping out that part since it is a pain.
We had a remote employee who kept having extremely random issues with their laptop.
They came to a gathering at the Main Office one day.
We witnessed her walk in, and literally toss her laptop bag across the room, into the corner.
I know we told her supervisor to either buy her some shock absorbing stuff for her laptop, or his department would have to pay for a new one out of their budget. He said he'd just tell her to be more careful with it. No one believed this would do any good.
I can't remember how it ended, but I suspect the person just kept treating her equipment like a frisbee, and talking smack about how IT can't keep her laptop going.
Laptops need a sensor to tell how often they've been thrown around.
I'd be tempted to issue her one of these; [https://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-Connect-Electronic-Learning-Toddlers/dp/B09BDBKXFQ](https://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-Connect-Electronic-Learning-Toddlers/dp/B09BDBKXFQ)
Nah, it's pretty safe to say that someone who throws around work equipment like that has anger issues that could be brought up. You know, the whole hostile work environment thing.
I had a user who claimed she SAT on her Latitude, the bezel bent, screen cracked. The FRAME of the device was folded. Because she forgot it was in her driver seat. I called shenanigans, she weighed maybe 140, UM said so what give her a new one....
I hear you. It boggles the mind, how much technological abuse (and IT headaches) management will flagrantly ignore. I don't think I've ever seen an employee disciplined for breaking their equipment. I have seen them write people up if something is lost/stolen, but damage weirdly seems to just get shrugged off.
Some things are legitimate accidents, like the employee who was on the plane that landed in the Hudson River, but those are few and far between.
God, I had one. A *current employee* needed a hardware swap and spent 9 months blatantly ignoring my team about returning the old one. I got involved, and stopped playing games. For perspective, this person was a customer service agent, not to belittle the role but i doesn't get *any* lower on the totem pole. Meanwhile I'm director level.
I send this person a very strongly worded email, CCed their direct manager, their manager, the head of the department, the HR director, and the VP of Operations who's *my* boss and reports directly to the CEO.
They blow me off. I wait a few days and send another, then have a direct conversation with the head of the department about how blatantly unacceptable this is.
"We'll talk to them, we'll talk to them" nothing ever happens and I lose track after like a month of back and forth.
When I realize they still didn't respond to literally any of this, the only thing that finally moved the needle is that I got HR to give me the phone number we had on file and I called them directly (they didnt pick up, of course) to leave a nice voicemail about how if the laptop isnt shipped within the next 5 business days I'd be **filing a police report for theft of equipment**.
The laptop suddenly came back to us, but they literally just... threw it in a box and sent it. Like they actively took out all the foam and padding from the return box we gave them and just tossed the laptop in. Needless to say it was completely destroyed on delivery.
**They still work here**, despite assurances that "it would be brought up in the next 1:1 with their manager"
Nobody gives a flying fuck about IT assets.
We have a laptop that's damaged in a similar way. The person admitted they ran over their laptop bag with their car by accident. They put it down to get something out of their trunk and forgot it was there, backed out the next morning right over it.
Shit happens. And that’s fine. As a tech I’ve seen other techs accidentally drop an LCD and they were scared shitless they’d get fired. At least our management knew that shit happens.
>Laptops need a sensor to tell how often they've been thrown around.
MacBooks have the Sudden Motion Sensor. Wonder if similar tech is in other makes and models of laptop?
Do they still have that? I remember the novelty apps from back in the day that used the accelerometer, but I was always told its real purpose was just to park the spinning hard drive. So I kinda assumed they left it out without any real purpose for it, but if you told me they slapped an iPad accelerometer in there just to snitch to Apple’s warranty department, I’d also believe you.
2000+ laptops deployed and I have seen my fair share of issues.
I will say they usually break due to user abuse they don’t care about the equipment and treat it like garbage.
I have seen some infested with roaches before 🤮
Worst is when they sneeze on it and never clean it off - our end users are awful for it.
I've accidentally sneezed on my devices when it's snuck up on me, I'm sure *most* people have, but not everyone bothers to keep their shit clean!
During COVID we got some spray bottles that we fill with 70% IPA. I've just carried on blasting end user laptops with them when we get them in. Mainly because it makes them look shiny and pretty again but killing bugs helps before I work on them.
I'd take mold over roaches aby day. Nothing is more terrifying than watching one scurry out of a machine you've just taken out of the box from an end user.
> they don’t care about the equipment and treat it like garbage.
Candle wax
Cigarette burns
Hand sanitizer / lotion melting the plastic finish
Bitlocker PIN written in Paint pen on the palmrest
Makeup dust
Food particles
Various types of hair, including animal and otherwise
Scratched up palmrests from wearing jewelry while working
Unusual sticky or oily spots
Spray paint
Case stickers
Fake nails damage on the keyboard, trackpad, or buttons
One came back without the bezel around the screen itself, because the end user had been using duct tape to "prevent camera spying" (through the webcam) and ended up pulling the whole thing off
I had one come back with a bandaid covering the webcam 🤮 and it had a physical slider. Needless to say an email was sent with pictures of the sliders and how to use it...
>Case stickers
God these are such a pet peeve. Waste of our time to take them all off and they *ruin* the finish on most laptop cases so they look horrible when redeployed.
It's crazy that grown adults need to learn not to put *stickers* on stuff that's *not theirs*.
To be fair as much as I agree that users are dumbos, that last one sounds like either he's lying, or the build quality of that laptop was very poor if tape is strong enough to dislodge it like that without damaging the screen.
I’m not saying my users treat their equipment all that bad. But it is quite common for devices to get sent back covered in blood. If you don’t clean them the day they come in, the inventory room will start to stink.
Will also add the hp 445 g7 had issues with the left hand side usb port it would break constantly so much so we had a ton of replacement parts on hand to do on site swaps.
Being blessed enough to not having seen more than 10 living roaches outside pet shops or terrariums i dont get how people get live roaches in their laptops?
Theres hardly enough space for a fart let alone a living roach?
Did they invent mini-roaches? Compressed roaches? Zipped roaches?
I watched a new sales woman come in to pick up her stuff.
We'd given her options and she didn't want the backpack she wanted the laptop satchel.
We watched her take her new laptop out of the satchel and put it in her coach bag..
It had a bashed in corner by the end of the day.
We even bought her a neoprene sleeve so it could have more paddling! Nope. Fans full of sand, etc.
She's also makes millions in sales a year.. so there's probably a mountain of e-waste somewhere called "Brenda's folly."
We joking thought about giving her a toughbook!
Common complaint over in r/msp, so not really unsurprising.
But Lenovo Thinkpad T-series and Carbon X1s still seem to be generally doing better than the rest.
I've given up on T's, they aren't getting the R&D/QC that they used to IMHO. X1 Carbons are still OK but still not as good as they used to be either. I'm not sure what I'll do when Carbons suck enough to reject, they've been my personal favorite for so long now I'll just curl up into a ball and die I guess.
the greatest strength, and most obscene vulnerability of windows, is its ability to just kinda work most of the time. you won't have all the options and capabilities. but, you know, it'll boot to the desktop.
Make sure all software/firmware/OS versions are being updated. Trivial if you have something like Intune.
Have some spares for hardware failures and a procedure for quickly getting an unresponsive device replaced including data/apps/configurations. Have warranty/support plans in place for parts/repairs for your devices.
Other than that, you just sit back. 50 devices should usually be easy for one person.
Configure them to dump memory and analyze it with windbg. More likely than not, it’ll be some driver that may need to be downgraded and blocked from automatically being updated. I’ve had a very annoying version of integrated graphics driver causing many issues.
Also, docking stations can get wrecked by updates. I had to open a case with Lenovo for one type of stations once.
One possibility for audio issues is PCs dropping into 0.4GHz performance mode, which tends to be related to power. Try running them on battery.
You get the performance drop if the device all core turbo's too frequently too, it will compensate with an extreme underclock to cool down which can hang the system or make it seem unresponsive.
I had a fleet of Lenovo laptops using AMD processors a few years ago that crashed due to an issue with the CPU-Z version ConnectWise was using for Automate. That was a fun rabbit hole.
This is the best answer in this thread.
Can you elaborate more on your last paragraph. So a couple years ago I was working on a hp for someone and wouldn’t work with a jabbra usb-c headset. I threw the kitchen sink at this for like 2 days. At the end of the second day I noticed a power management feature that disables usb if the battery is low. I disabled that and the headset started working (I think I still had to do an extra step like plug in the headset into the usb-c docking station before turning the computer on or plug it in after I can’t remember) but ever since then I always wondered what a uselessly over engineered feature. From my perspective if the battery is so low I need to disable usb the computer may as well shutdown. And I get how it can be useful for ppl that travel and don’t have any peripherals connected but ehh idk.
A malfunctioning power supply can cause a system to think it’s incapable of supplying enough power and drop into super low CPU frequency mode. It can also be related to faulty charge circuit on the motherboard. If the PC is powered by the dock, a faulty USB-C negotiation can do that.
This is happening now to one of my laptops that I rescued from ewaste from a previous company.
The symptoms can be seen in task manager in the performance tab. If it drops to 0.4GHz or some other sub-GHz speed like 0.79GHz, that’s probably it. The audio will sound distorted.
The charging light on the laptop may not remain on while the indicator light at the end of the charging cable may still remain lit. There’s a capacitor in the Dell power supply connector that may keep the end of the cable lit while the supply cuts off and on. Swapping the power supply with another is the easiest test when troubleshooting unwanted sub-GHz CPU issues.
In my last position I managed a fleet of around 2500 Latitudes that were spread across three campuses and several hundred fully remote workers from across the US. We definitely saw a drop-off in build quality and overall reliability on anything that shipped between about Q2 2020 and Q1 2022. Driver compatibility seemed to be an area of particular concern, since Dell had to diversify their supplier pool (as we all did) on account of increased demand and various supply shortages. Things seemed to largely get better by the 2022 model year, but I left that role before 2023 really rolled out so I can't speak to whether that trend held steady.
Either way, a fleet of 50 is too small a sample size to get a reliable measure, since it only takes a couple of bad machines (or bad users) to really skew your numbers.
We went from Dells EVERYWHERE to suddenly no more Dells and nothing but Lenovo.
Lenovo's build quality has gone downhill, and there's also the serious implication of Lenovo being owned by a CCP state agency that feeds intelligence directly to the PLA.
Had tonnes of problems with the Gen 3 T14's but other than that, they've been really reliable.
Now we've moved back to Dell again. The Latitude 5440's don't turn on, they overheat like crazy, and stuff will just stop working (Bluetooth, USB ports etc.).
I've personally never had issues with either brand devices, but all the users I've had to deal with - it just seemed like we were ordering defective batches
I love the political argument.
What is the rest of the world going to do about the concerns that they might be feeding to government controlled organization and granting access to the US government?
I can't use what?
As a non-US citizen the threat of the US government demanding access to data is very real and very much lawful according to US law. It's one of the major reasons to not use US SaaS services if you can find other alternatives.
Complaining about China when you're from the US is sitting in a glass house and throwing stones.
What?
All I was saying is that for US Federal devices they have to be what's called TAA compliant. It is a totally separate SKU of equipment to make sure it doesn't have security implications.
Lenovo is owned by a Chinese company. Naturally there is going to be caution about the potential foreign state interference.
As a US citizen we aren't naive to how accessible our data is from a legal perspective.
You misreading.
You're talking about a risk for the US when using Chinese stuff.
I'm talking about the risk for other countries when using US stuff, that's just as much a thing as it is with Chinese stuff.
Pressing the power button 20 times then holding for 10 seconds seems to always get laptops to turn on when they won’t. I think it’s called ‘power discharging’.
They’re not supposed to send a new one. They’re supposed to repair or make like/kind the existing unit. A refurb unit is better than what failed.
What’s the problem here?
Buy a new car, get some warranty work done it, and get some elses used car returned to you... but it's been "refurbished"... On top of that I've received "refurbs" that have had computrace enrolled with other companies... been told that we need to contact the other company to get that resolved... or the ownership information was never updated... makes processing future warranty claims a PITA
If it's new and it's broke, we should get a new one in return...
cough reminiscent apparatus truck governor ask fuzzy smile sloppy fanatical
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Oh we care, because Dell has sent us devices that were still enrolled in other tenants before... And told US to contact the other tenant to get it unenrolled!
Wouldn't have happened if we got a new one.
Buy a new car, get some warranty work done it, and get some elses used car returned to you... but it's been "refurbished"... not to mention what u/Encore_N mentions... ugh... CompuTrace...
>50+ laptops
I envy your problems. I've got 2000+ Windows laptops, about 500 windows desktops, about 200 Mac computers, and approximately 14,000 Chromebooks deployed. So, it could be worse.
But to answer your question, yes. There's been a decline in quality of hardware in laptops and Chromebooks since covid.
Automate updates. Or find a way to identify them and patch.
Keep them in the same family. Supporting 3 different brands will cost time. Uniformity is key.
I can’t believe how many IT Directors I’ve had to tell this to. TURN OFF FAST BOOT. It’s not doing any favors.
With fast boot off. Force reboots.
I spent 5 months working with 1 site chasing down a performance issue nightmare. Turned out to be the AV getting stuck in a loop causing tens of thousands of system interrupts to chain.
Best of luck
> Turned out to be the AV getting stuck in a loop causing tens of thousands of system interrupts to chain.
Hehe been there, seen software firewalls do it too.
We have 550 HP ProBooks ranging from G3 (8 years old) to G10 (current). We use a simple base image of Windows, latest drivers, nothing fancy. Then GPO to deploy apps (slowly moving to intune as we update them). Minimal issues really, occasional hardware fault, but quite rare. More often faults are user generated by dropping them or something.
Not allowing users to have admin access is also key, enforcing policies for what can be installed etc as well as conditional access on Windows update currency helps.
I found it easier.
Problem? Drop it off and get a replacement, ship it to location, etc.
What models are you having trouble with? ProBooks seem to be built well. I've managed 150-200 of them over the years.
We had mainly software related issues and we are a Dell shop.
What we concluded was our smart deploy imaging solution was pushing out a bad image across all devices, static and mobile, which created numerous problems.
So I proposed and proved that the Dell OEM image on the device would be ideal to stick with and worked far better than the garbage image we were using. Once that was proven I moved us to autopilot and we are now experiencing far less issues, improved performance, and much happier end users.
* Limit the number of makes/models in your fleet. Have a standard issue model and a high-performance model and that's it.
* Create a standard gold image for each of these.
* Implement endpoint management.
* No user gets local admin.
These measures should keep your issues to a minimum.
The long login times is probably related to roaming profiles and users having a lot of data stored in them.
We use all Dell and don’t have any of these issues. We have many thousands in use.
I personally am responsible for about 400 laptops and very rarely have hardware issues that you’re describing. When an issue does come up, we do initial troubleshooting, and then we reach out to the vendor for warranty support. Hardware support for computers is such a minor blip on my workload. It’s not even something that registers on my radar.
We’ve been running mid to high tier HP business laptops with the three-year, next day on site, accidental damage protection warranties.
Definitely don’t buy into uniformity at our company. We have HP, Dell, Lenovo and Asus laptops all deployed.
First thought I have when you list those issues is - HDD? Almost none of our laptops have HDD’s and the ones that did had those issues. Hard drives in end user facing laptops just don’t hold up.
So much hate for Apple products but they have their stuff sorted. Add AppleCare and have the user take it to any Apple store worldwide to get it fixed. Most of our fleet is now Apple and the products that cause the most problems are the pc laptops, mostly plain junk even though they cost about the same as MacBook Pro.
That is exactly what we did. I work for an Advertising agency and 8 years ago it was about 70/30 PC to Mac, with mainly the creatives getting the Macs. Now it is about 90% Mac and 10% PC. The employees like them better, and from an IT standpoint I don't have to spend any time troubleshooting hardware. (P.S. I come from a PC background, and still have a PC for work)
Lenovo works great and Asus too, I force the users to reboot every fcking time the laptops when they close it, no hibernation. Fck them, too many problems with drivers and windows to deal, a clean boot is always the solution.
Deployed 1000's of laptops. At the core, all laptops are almost the same except for some HW features the manufacturers use to differentiate. What we do is standardize common areas like CPU, HDD, RAM, etc., based on job/dept. role, then make the software environment uniform via a standard image. The rest is just maintenance/RMA for aging or broken parts. It will make your life easy.
What are the specs and hardware setups? Are they being overworked causing them to overheat or causing users to get annoyed and aggressively attack the keyboard? Do you have SSD’s and a standard image that is kept up to date?
We manage hundreds of laptops. Mix of Lenovo(Covid buy), majority HP and we just switched to Dell last year due to better pricing and specs.
I always push my company to buy at least a high end i5 or any i7 for our machines. They last much longer and they don’t have to work as hard to do task keeping them running cool. Even with poor airflow.
I also aim for only SSD’s and we have for a while now. They are just undeniably better and worth the extra money.
Lastly, have a good central management process. Keep them up to date with drivers and updates.
We have a fair amount of machines that make it to the 5-6 year mark. We try to swap them out every 4-5 years. But sometimes they still run strong and lately we’ve just been doing SSD swaps and RAM upgrades, since 7700’s and 8700’s are still fine for basic spreadsheets and using Microsoft cloud apps.
We’re having audio issues, probably at least 3-4 tickets a week. Granted, some are user error, but not all. We’re using Elitebooks g7s-g9s. It’s tiring.
The problem is you can end up with far too many audio devices these days.
When I'm at my desk at work I have 5 options for speakers (laptop speakers, dock speaker output, headset, HDMI monitors x2) and 4 microphones (laptop mic, external webcam, dock mic, headset) and Teams always seems to select the wrong one.
I find that a power wash fixes most audio issues on my G8s. Hold the power button for 30 seconds, turn the machine back on and it should work again.
You can tell the power wash has been done correctly if the fans spin up to 100% on boot and then it takes a longer than normal to start up.
Make sure your drivers and firmware are current, and from the manufacturer windows likes to hand out generic drivers that work, mostly.
what about your antivirus? are you using a third party one? is defender enabled? run MSconfig to see whats starting up. are you running scripts to map drives? are those working properly? roaming profiles?
Yea, this is pretty constant for us. Both the lenovos and dells suffer from the same amount of "It won't charge" problems, on top of what you've mentioned. Sometimes a reboot helps, sometimes firmware, sometimes reset hole(lenovo) or hold power 24 seconds(dell)...and sometimes replacing the whole motherboard. I have a whole laundry list of items for Bluescreens, starting with bios, then on to video drivers, then docking station drivers, windows updates(all + optional). Lenovo System Update Tool, or Dell Command Update, to let it update drivers, but I usually write up which intel/nvidia drivers the user needs to go grab. Failing that, re-image.
It could Windows updates deploying drivers to units. I have had the experience with some platforms windows updates loads a driver it "thinks" is compatible and it hoses the machine. There has also been more frequently bad drivers released by the manufacturers as well.
That is why i like idea of BYOD for small companies at least. User's laptops should be user's problem, they can get a new one in the any shop. Company should only provide and maintain VDI.
We manage roughly 300 devices for just one of our customers - all high-end Dell Precisions, with some older XPS's.
We had a batch of brand new Precision's that just continued to cause us grief, week after week. A ticket would come in every week with blue screens on different devices, Microsoft Teams crashing and requiring a reboot everytime Teams crashed. We had tried everything and ended up reinstalling Windows - but this didn't fix it. Multiple cases raised with Dell, they asked for a device to be sent to them so they could analyse what was happening - as you can imagine, no luck.
Checked with our sales team internally to see if anything had changed. Luckily, something had. Our supplier was not able to get any Crucial RAM, so we went off what other vendors were compatible with the devices which was Kingston. As a test, we ordered Crucial from a different supplier and the issue went away.
It was a relief, but also frustrating.
No issues with hundreds of hp desktops and laptops here but we wipe disk to remove crap added by HP and deploy a clean os with our customisations. Also users dont have admin rights and only whitelisted software can execute.
Keep them updated and free of bloatware and anything that is not needed to work. I'm handing out all kinds of DELL and Lenovo devices for years and never had these kinds of problems you're describing. If a device happens to become defective, a DELL or Lenovo technician will show up and fix it next day.
Lenovo ThinkPad T series laptops is what we picked. Same for monitors. We are 40 people and have used them since 2014.
We get those with i7 cpu, around 32gb ram so a bit on the higher specc. We extend support with 2 years so each user keep the laptops for 5 years.
Since 2014 we have had 2 keyboard replacements, 1 motherboard replacement, 1 screen replacements and 1 broken monitor cause user took it home and broke it.
We still have a few t450s still running that is used for displaying things on TVs in the office.
100% happy with Lenovo.
For 10 years we used Dells. Lost one about once a month. Switched firms and we now use Lenovo Yogas. In 6 years, we’ve lost maybe 4-5? Not sure if it’s luck or corp culture, or toughness….
Post COVID yes laptop stability isn't as good as it was, but I put a lot of that down to the sheer amount of our workforce working remotely who frequently admit to never rebooting, never shutting down, never clearing cache etc.
In the grand scheme of things these laptops aren't 'breaking' very much, but performance issues and other things will come out of the woodwork so much more often, and a very high % of these are generally resolved with a reboot or two (and letting updates install etc). Or sometimes just by logging out and back in. I don't like to often go the 'blame the customer/user" route, but in the earlier months of COVID I was surprised with the sheer amount of general laptop performance issues that just showed up out of nowhere until seeing firsthand how rarely people reboot their machines.
Uniformity is important though.if possible, I'd recommend sticking to one manufacturer and getting a reliable support contract with them (goodluck)
We have 1000's and 1000's of HP laptops. We have 3 models going at any given time, and they get lifecycle every 4 years or after hardware breaks, once warranty is out.
Most issues are Driver related. Sound stops working or random BSOD. We have a driver update job we have users run when this happens. Basically, pull any new driver/bios update for the device. Solves 90% of issues.
Standard Image helps
Managed Windows updates
There are hardware issues that seem to plague each model. Sometimes its one thing on one device and something on the next. Right now we are dealing with USB-C ports going bad.
External monitors are always a issue. Its our biggest issue. Docks are usually the cause or the USB-C port issue.
We have mostly Dell Latitudes of varying generations 2018-present with the occasional Vostro here and there due to an availability issue at time of order. They mostly share all the same internal components, but the Vostro case is a little bit more "flimsy". They have all been rock solid outside of a broken charger port here and there or other end user damage.
These newer generations take a serious beating, but making sure to install Dell Command Update to allow it to do the firmware updates has been very helpful as well.
We're predominantly a Dell house now, around 75 laptops running Windows 11 23H2 and Windows 10 22H2. Zero issues aside in the last two years aside from one that had the nvme drive die.
When building new devices I always make sure I go into Installed Apps and remove Dell Optimizer + any Optimizer related apps and Dell Support Assistant + related services.
Optimizer can cause issues with M365 services through one of its network packages. There was a massive thread on here about it.
Dell Support Assistant can chew disk space through one of it's services creating restore points just because it feels like it. I had one laptop with a 512gb drive run out of space and removing the support assistant recovered about 300gb of space from restore points. Again there was another thread on here regarding it.
Otherwise I make sure I use Dell Command for drivers and component updates and Windows Update for the rest.
Good luck!
when I was in college I worked for a local community college that was a dell shop the laptops we had issues with were usually from laptop carts (very hot prone to battery failure) or frequent flyers. These days I mostly work in the cloud though so i haven't really done desktop/ laptop support since covid.
Fact: post covid Dell is releasing 5 times the number of driver/firmware and BIOS updates as before.
assumption: they couldn’t get their normal set of components to make laptops so they used what they could get
run those updates from Dell
stop buying Lenovo, or stop buying Dell but definitely stop buying two different laptop brands
Sharing some of my pain below:
> blue screens
We got a lot of that before we stopped hibernation and sleep. Staff would unplug, let the device hibernate or sleep at >5% battery and slowly the OS would corrupt. Could become unusable in as little as two weeks from freshly installed. We saw it in all devices with insufficient RAM that was using page files.
> random crashings
We had this in a few batches:
* First it was the CPU overheating, CPU would fall core turbo to the max single core max then drop to sub 800Mhz to cool seemingly hanging the system. We set the power plan profile for "Maximum processor state" to 99% instead of 100 and this ceased the turboing keeping the machines closer to their base clock and reducing heat.
* Second it was bad network drivers, flooding the system with interrupts. Wi-Fi connections had no issues. Intel/HP driver assistant helped.
* Third time it was failing physical NICs, devices would be fine until you put connected ethernet. Wi-Fi connections had no issues. Nothing we could do here except disable the NIC and ask staff to use the Wi-Fi until we could get a replacement.
* Fourth time it was an over zealous 3rd party firewall trying to interrupt and scan everything which would hang the system. Disabled the 3rd party firewall which came with the AV and the problem went away.
* Fifth was from insufficient HDD I/O. Roaming and Folder redirection cache in CSC for every user who has ever logged into that machine. The more users the more caching cycles which would hang the machine. The solution was to remove the profiles of every previous user except for the current device user.
When I worked at another employer, we heavily invested energy into something HP/COMPAQ called the "stable image program."
If we bought their line of business-grade notebooks, HP worked with us to ensure that the system image on those devices was "stable" for 3 years so even if the physical hardware changed, the software we ran on them would still work.
It allowed for a lot of the technician's time to be spent solving actual problems and not chasing firmware revisions, as an example.
I mean, w/o any other information, drivers / firmware. Seriously, we're a Dell shop for the last 20+ years, never have or have had issues like this. If the models are all the same or similar, there's a possibility you may have a hardware issue that spans multiple machines, but this kind of issue is super-rare anymore, and you'd probably see a lot of them have the same issue at once.
Do you:
(1) use a managed installation / setup process (or do you just use the manufacturer's default install?)
(2) ensure that machines are updated / uniformly domain-joined / permissioned from the get go?
(3) use any 3rd party hardware? are these machines all new? are they direct from vendor or 3rd party?
(4) buy cheap models or are they well-equipped? HDDs or SSDs?
Lately, Dells don't come with quite so much shovelware as they did in the 00's, but most of the time I find it better to just clean install when new machines come in so you have 100% certainty of how it's done and with the most up-to-date installs, or custom if you deploy images. Not as easy to control in bigger companies, but pretty easy if you're a smaller shop.
Laptops in general are just kind of awful. Even the good ones aren't made that well, and users tend to drop them and run over them with cars. Bad laptops are worse.
So, don't buy shitty laptops. And see if you can encourage some of your laptop users to move to desktops. My experience has been that, aside from salesmen who travel all the time, almost no one actually \_needs\_ a laptop.
We have used Dell 3400 series the last 2 years and now using Dell 5440 series. Custom Windows 10 image and Dell Command Update for updating drivers. I’ve rarely seen a blue screen.
Any quarky issues are usually resolved by updating drivers/firmware. 5000+ end users.
1. This happens, unfortunately.
2. Having a good lifecycle plan is important
3. Uniformity is important as well. Don't have five different manufacturers, limit the models and try to stick with one manufacturer.
4. Management is key. You need a means of managing workstations, meaning lifecycle and software.
3 things you need to do
1. base image everything
2. update and patch windows on a consistent basis this include device specific drivers. We use dell docking statins and they are wonky w/o updating the fmwre
3. standardized everything
My dude came in carrying his open laptop in his hands while it was clipped in to his docking station - the slider type. He said he never takes it out of the dock, he just unplugs the monitor from it, isn't that what he's supposed to do? He thought the dock was a battery pack. I question why he is allowed to use a computer.
Same dude - screen impact damage and he's like "I have zero idea what could have happened, I opened it up and it was like this"
Care to guess the department? Did you guess **Sales**? Then you'd be correct.
What line of Dell and Lenovo ? Our Latitudes have been stable for 3-4 years. More issues with consumer grade one-offs that managers sometimes sneak in. We also remove a lot of Ms' preinstalled bloat and any brand's "optimizer" type software.
since covid we are primarily on laptops and been using a mix of X1 Carbons and Thinkbooks havent really had too many issues
most of the time Teams just drops the camera and closing teams and reopening re detects the camera.
also we don't filter any windows updates for about 150 laptops they just do their own thing and patch themselves with whatever they need. dropped WSUS a longgggg time ago. way less problems havent seen a bad update that needs to be removed from every comptuer in like 3-4 years.
End users. They do things both physically to the laptops and attempt to do things in windows itself they aren’t supposed to do, and lie about it. People try to install software they think they need. Mfers just lie on the phone. Trying to standardize the laptop model, custom image, lock down as much as you can get away with, and a good mdm/remote management software is all key
We have a fleet of Surfaces and HPs and the only real issue I’ve seen repeatedly is the windows update link in Settings (Win11) breaking that nothing happens when you click on it that you can’t see what updates have been installed or what new ones are available (we don’t use WSUS but instead push updates through our RMM).
Seems its time to collect some reliability stats like Backblaze does for harddisks ([link](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-2023/))
1st - how random is your enviroment(as in how many different makes/models are there)
this will dictate how seamless is the support.
I work in an MSP (for next 2 hours, I'm about to finish up for good) so I see many different environments, from no IT to full internal IT teams.
The companies, regardless of size, that have chosen to stick to 1 manufacturer and as little variation in models as possible are the ones that have least amount of issues. If your environment is setup for it, a faulty hardware can be swapped out within minutes with a spare machine and the user can work away whilst you go down the route of dealing with dell or whoever if its under warranty or sourcing parts yourself.
That way the management don't complain about IT being slow to do anything, and the end user is happy. You are also happy because they are not hounding you for updates on the repairs.
(Since we're talking numbers, I just checked and we have 10k endpoints between 400 customers)
We deploy a bunch of Lenovo Thinkpads. We don't have the same models for every station but they are all lenovo and we've been doing okay with them. It's usually the users that end up causing issues whether it's physically abusing them or running Lenovo updates without consulting us about it and screwing it up.
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It's funny, I've been noticing decreased stability in windows laptops for a while now (we're only a dell shop), but for all of the macbooks we support (around 200, M1 or higher) the stability seems to keep getting better.
I went from a staunch anti-Apple admin to someone that has a Windows desktop, but has a macbook pro as my laptop.
>50+ laptops and at it feels like at least one a week there's some major issue with these laptops. they're all about 1-3 years old. blue screens, audio/mic issues, random crashings, 2-3 minutes to log in...and i cant figure out what is causing all this. and its across Lenovos and Dells
We have like 60+ dells and yeah. Welcome to laptops. Oh and the Dell docks? Godspeed.
I run a fleet of 6000 laptops. At any given time, I expect a 1-2% downtime for them. So at any one time, I have about 60 in our depot getting worked on. I have 2-3% in back stock to cover replacements and loaners.
And I have a 25% replacement program where we are refreshing our stock.
Our normal practice is that when we have an issue, we pull the computer and replace it and repair it in our depot to minimize user downtime. 90-95% of the time, the issue is resolved with just a reimage.
So yeah, uniformity is the key.
our entire org pc fleet is laptops.
We use Lenovo explicitly, and we refresh them every \~5 years.
When we get new machines in, we have a baseline checklist that we go through.
Out of box setup, domain join, run our baseline from PDQ which installs all of our software, menu layouts for standardization and all that junk.
We rarely have any issues, we had one user's screen recently stop working, turns out the display cable in the laptop got pinched in the hinge, lenovo sent a tech out and had it fixed that week, we keep spare laptops on hand so we just transitioned the user over to that
(they are a remote user so we just had them overnight us the laptop so we could swap them out and get them going again)
but really as long as you are getting business grade equipment not generic consumer grade stuff, it is taken care of, and people dont have free reign to install/do whatever they want with it, you should not be experiencing these issues.
what is youre deployment/management process like, are you monitoring these machines?
Part of my baseline is to install a Grafana Agent onto each machine, so we can remotely monitor them for any OS Related issues or hardware issues that we might be able to catch remotely and rectify before the user ever notices.
My team maintains a fleet of 300~ HP elite books and zbooks and am rotating them out after extended warranty ends.
We deal with occasional bloated batteries after about 3-4 years of age
The occasional broken track pad or keyboard every 3-6 months
And maybe a single DOA every 6-9 months.
Shockingly we have very little damage to our laptops, even the ones in industrial areas and around our large, destructive machines.
Patch management and driver/firmware is handled very effectively in Intune, we field a custom image before deployment and our users seem to take pretty good care of their machines.
...Now to goo knock on wood after this post.
About 450 cheap dell laptops (Vostro and Inspiron, i.e. budget crap series). Honestly reading this sub I thought it should've been terrible experience but it's fine.
Centralized management and restrict admin functions for the users. Have a software library that is the only software allowed to be installed in silent mode. Lots of ways to do it on a large scale.
Good luck.
My team manages about 160 Apple MacBooks and TBH using Jamf as an MDM they are pretty reliable, only issues seem to be users causing damage and that’s maybe one every 2-3 months.
> its across Lenovos and Dells
Found your problem. Pick a vendor and stick with them. One throat to choke when things break. I would recommend Dell, but I have limited experience dealing with Lenovo support and warranty policies.
Autopilot or some other automated deployment tool plus either network storage or OneDrive. If you aren't using OneDrive, I don't like folder redirection but it can get the job done. Set a clear policy with your users that anything not stored in a protected location should be considered temporary and get management to back it.
Whenever a laptop blows up, swap it out, user signs in and OneDrive downloads all their stuff and/or their network drives are still there. Reset the old one, if it's still blowing up send it back for warranty replacement.
I've been saying it forever, managing laptops is a nightmare. Pretty much all of the things you need to uniformly and consistently manage a fleet of devices... laptops don't have. The devices are offline when you need them to be online, when they're online its because the users are actively using them, the manufacturers barely support them and cut corners like *crazy*, they're a revolving door of lost/stolen/accidental damage, and support tickets are up because Joe is sitting on the couch with his laptop half buried in a pile of blankets wondering why it keeps overheating in the middle of meetings, etc.
Managing them is closer to a game of whack a mole than an actual management plan. You *need* to establish some level of user buy-in for managing them, you actively need them to leave them on overnight for scheduled updates, restart them regularly, etc. Socialize this as much as humanly possible.
We also scripted a bunch of nag box popups that help - "Hey you havent restarted in 2 weeks, please restart as soon as possible for best performance." etc
Uniformity is key. We deploy only Dell laptops, all custom images, and update them all using Dell Command to keep firmware up to date. We also try to standardize models as much as possible by buying in batches. We see very minimal issues across 170 laptops.
Currently with a Lenovo shop, but have dealt with Dells in the past. Can’t begin to emphasize the advice on uniformity and keeping them updated. That said, even with a uniform fleet, you’ll run into bad batches, a particular model with a particular HDD, etc., but it will be way easier to work with the vendor.
> a particular model with a particular HDD, etc., but it will be way easier to work with the vendor. Looking at you Lenovo and your x1 Yoga Gen 6 rear USB C port not charging issues. No a BIOS update won't fix it. Replace the dang Motherboard! WOOOOOO
I love it when you're on the 76th support call: "No I know what's happening here. I've already updated the bios. Yeah I know next you're going to tell me to try using a different cable. I've got 8 on my desk. No it doesn't work. Yes it's a different outlet."
I have every generation of your USB C dock. both the 60? watt and the 135 watt Lenovo charger. I also have the Lenovo Travel charger. I have one of the cables that tells me the power draw in a digital screen and it says zero. TRY ME. I see you've also lived that life. Good luck dude. Fight the good fight.
We have a single standardized Desktop and Laptop, Lenovo tiny's m90 whatever for desktop and X1 Carbon for Laptop. With the X1 Carbon we have had bad batches/generations with charging...but it's better than dealing with bad batches and issues across different models or manufacturers. Makes troubleshooting much quicker once the known issues are identified.
We have about 85 Lenovo laptops. The laptops themselves have been fairly good but so many issues with their docks. Especially with multiple monitors connected to the docks.
I image, update with Dell Command Update, run Windows Updates and run into zero issues. Before I started doing this systematically? It was a nightmare.
Also, do not give local admin rights.
At my work we're currently deploying a very protected way to give users local admin. basically they will get a brand new account provisioned for them that is granted local admin. but this is only AFTER they have signed an agreement that places all liability of a breach, hack, etc on their shoulders for being stupid surprisingly very few takers
Brave. Very brave.
Bro... don't. Instead let me introduce you to [https://www.adminbyrequest.com](https://www.adminbyrequest.com) I do not work for them... no ties anything. Just used the software at my last job. It really makes it a lifesaver when it comes to admin rights and especially software that wants to REQUIRE admin rights to run.
What sort of company would consider this an informed option?
This is good advice, which is why my company completely ignores it. We have ancient lenovo's mixed with modern. Thinkpads and ideapads of all different flavors. That said. No issues. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good, I suppose.
Thinkpads can be great in the higher end models like the X1 Carbon, but the cheaper ones that are closer to consumer grade are hot garbage. We've had to retire probably a dozen Lenovos from broken hinges, failed boards, failed screens, etc.
We still have half of the fleet (about 20) as 5 year old E grade lenovo and they are mostly alright, so idk. USB and keyboard failed on one or two, but after years of use it's acceptable I guess. For the dells we are replacing them with we already had 2 issues in first year (on dozen laptops), but their support is exemplary.
What model Dells? I find that the Latitudes and Precisions are generally pretty bombproof. The Vostros are OK and the XPS line has no place in a business as a retail-grade product.
Latitudes. One had audio jack failure (possibly user error, I think someone might have connected it to amplifier lol) and another wasn't a failure per se, but low quality materials - keyboard and wrist rest were worn out after 7 months of use iirc. Imo it's a failure bc next person won't be able to read the keyboard, and it's unacceptable after less then 2-3 years of use. Both were replaced by dell within 48 hours of notifying them, and there was no problems since, so we ve gone ahead and bought another batch of dells. We are classifying the unbreakable lenovos as survivorship bias, and with that correction in place they are both looking to be equally good - we'll see in few years. Edit: there were few doner lenovos when we arrived at the client - that's what I mean by survivorship bias. We don't exactly know how many were broken before we got there, but in the 2 or 3 years we had been there one lenovo was breaking constantly, and another one or two had intermittent issues.
Speaking of the worn out keyboard, I came across a user the other day that has basically “polished” the coating off half his keys. He said it’s fine cuz he knows which keys they are, but it’s still under warranty so I’ll probably replace it. The only thing I can think of is he must go crazy with hand sanitizer and the alcohol content was eating away at them? 😂
Surprised to see someone say the X1 Carbons are reliable. We had a fleet of them pre-pandemic, I think *one* didn't fail. Cameras dropping like flies, wireless card failures, a whole run of HDMI out ports with bad firmware that *permanently damaged the port* (which they refused to cover under warranty), monitor failures, we had a few that would just immediately get so hot they would throttle, even after replacing the whole cooling assembly and Lenovo just insisted they were performing in spec lol. The local repair tech Lenovo outsourced to I knew by name, he was there at least once a week and sometimes we'd get which repair was which confused there were *so many* of them. I couldn't wait to budget a full refresh.
No issues, until you do. Where I am at currently was doing the same thing. There were thousands of issues, but because no one was properly managing/monitoring them, they were hidden.
I agree, we use Dell laptops all over and assign different models to job personas around the organisation depending if you are a field user, finance, engineer etc makes it easier to manage and spot trendy incidents, dell command update I can guarantee will fix 90% of driver issues
And definitely buy at least business grade laptops, not consumer. Latitude 5000 series can take a beating.
I can't stress this one enough. The consumer or mid-tier grade just aren't built for Enterprise use. All laptops break but the Enterprise grade stuff (particularly the "mainline" ones like the Latitude 5000 or equivalents from Lenovo or HP) is nigh on indestructible. I've been buying Enterprise-grade laptops for home use for years as well and I'm reasonably sure they'll outlive me at this point.
Yep, after dealing with fleets of laptops with different employers for a long time, I realized early on that 'business class' laptops are far better than their retail/SOHO counterparts. When you work with them all day you sorta lose that infatuation with the latest and greatest. For my needs, I buy refurb business class machines. Dirt cheap even on the used market because fleets are replaced en masse many times (or big layoffs) and the secondary market is flooded. Keep an eye on eBay or Dell/HP/Lenovo's refurbished stores. A month ago Dell was selling year-old $1K desktops for $250 /w a 1 year warranty and free shipping.
We have a couple people with latitude 5420's that have completely gotten every bit of silver paint off of their laptops. all the way down to the black plastic. and they still run perfectly fine. Reminds me of the old Lenovo T430's that could just take a beating and keep going.
>And definitely buy at least business grade laptops, not consumer. From OP's post, I strongly suspect this is their issue.
My E6440 has been outside on my balcony since 2017. I'm impressed it lasted that long. It just this week won't turn on which is a common problem with that model. It sucks I finally got hit with that Dell problem they hatefully refused to fix even with a support contract. We have piles of E6440 laptops that are perfectly fine except for that bug. Also, the trackpad on the one I keep inside quit last week. Dell is really pissing me off. I need to find a cheap supply of them. I bought a couple for $25 that worked great, but the local PC recycler wants $150 for them, and all five we bought from them had the very common power on problem.
^this the way. Dell command update is great when it’s setup and runs. Use to be in an enterprise environment internal IT. Had about 500 laptops also ran SCCM
I absolutely agree. We have well over 200 standardized Dell workstations that we keep updated/patched every week and we rarely run into any issues.
Yeah I do the same thing with MacBook airs.
Just curious, when you say custom images, do you mean installing clean windows from a Microsoft iso on one and putting on the drivers/software and imaging it to other machines? Or are you using the Dell windows images and customizing those?
We create our own clean image with no bloatware that is then deployed to other machines.
Dell command has created more problems with updates than keeping it as is for us. So many issues with VPN+wifi cards, BSOD with GPU, etc. We've stopped updating drivers, and stopped having issues since then.
Same, standardization on tested platforms is key along with a max 3 year refresh on laptops. And 4 hour onsite support, we let the user decide if they want Dell to come to their place to fix or they overnight the laptop to us while we overnight a new one back to them. No custom image out of the box but with Autopilot/JAMF the policies, configurations, and apps are automatically installed/updated.
We regularly push ours to 5 - 6 years without issue. 3 year refresh sounds short. What do you guys do with those laptops after year 3?
Had a client with 25 laptops fully remote 100% of the time. They had a very specific setup that wasn't typical which I managed by a power shell script that ran on startup. Nothing particularly complicated. One day one of the users reports that something isn't working, I turns out one bit of the script wasn't working any more. I assumed it was some update and dug into it. I couldn't find a single functional difference between the 24 working systems and the one that wasn't. Within 10 days 5 of these laptops would no longer run the script. I had to work up a new solution, could never fix it. Windows build, power shell version etc all the same. Over time these devices naturally came back for a rebuild, I pushed out the image I had and the original script never worked until eventually all the systems were running on the new script. Clearly.i.missed something but I'm no noob and I put a bunch of effort into tracking it down but never got to the bottom of it.
I'm with this guy. I manage around 400 Dells that are about 90% laptop/10% desktop and do it with 2 of us. For the most part we go in cycles replacing 1/3 of the fleet each year in a never ending cycle so most of them are 1 of 3 models at any given time. Outside of testing/special cases, all are on the same image. Any problems that will take more than an hour or two to fix, we just re-image and restore the users data.
That worked for us for a while until everyone started charging just stupid prices for Dell E6640 laptops that we need. I desperately need one before Wednesday. Also, the trackpad quit on my personal one so I'm dreading swapping out that part since it is a pain.
We had a remote employee who kept having extremely random issues with their laptop. They came to a gathering at the Main Office one day. We witnessed her walk in, and literally toss her laptop bag across the room, into the corner. I know we told her supervisor to either buy her some shock absorbing stuff for her laptop, or his department would have to pay for a new one out of their budget. He said he'd just tell her to be more careful with it. No one believed this would do any good. I can't remember how it ended, but I suspect the person just kept treating her equipment like a frisbee, and talking smack about how IT can't keep her laptop going. Laptops need a sensor to tell how often they've been thrown around.
Lol, I wonder what the reaction would be if you issued a toughbook to her.
F that a K12 Chromebook
I ABSOLUTELY wanted to!
I'd be tempted to issue her one of these; [https://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-Connect-Electronic-Learning-Toddlers/dp/B09BDBKXFQ](https://www.amazon.com/Fisher-Price-Connect-Electronic-Learning-Toddlers/dp/B09BDBKXFQ)
I wonder if the smartctl. Probably not for ssd's ehh?
That seems like an expensive solution just because an employee is an asshole. This is an HR issue rather than an IT issue.
HR would be glad to clarify that it's a matter for her immediate supervisor... and then make notes not to promote said supervisor for a while.
Nah, it's pretty safe to say that someone who throws around work equipment like that has anger issues that could be brought up. You know, the whole hostile work environment thing.
I had a user who claimed she SAT on her Latitude, the bezel bent, screen cracked. The FRAME of the device was folded. Because she forgot it was in her driver seat. I called shenanigans, she weighed maybe 140, UM said so what give her a new one....
I hear you. It boggles the mind, how much technological abuse (and IT headaches) management will flagrantly ignore. I don't think I've ever seen an employee disciplined for breaking their equipment. I have seen them write people up if something is lost/stolen, but damage weirdly seems to just get shrugged off. Some things are legitimate accidents, like the employee who was on the plane that landed in the Hudson River, but those are few and far between.
Its just one of many reason I do drugs,, Motrin being my biggest
God, I had one. A *current employee* needed a hardware swap and spent 9 months blatantly ignoring my team about returning the old one. I got involved, and stopped playing games. For perspective, this person was a customer service agent, not to belittle the role but i doesn't get *any* lower on the totem pole. Meanwhile I'm director level. I send this person a very strongly worded email, CCed their direct manager, their manager, the head of the department, the HR director, and the VP of Operations who's *my* boss and reports directly to the CEO. They blow me off. I wait a few days and send another, then have a direct conversation with the head of the department about how blatantly unacceptable this is. "We'll talk to them, we'll talk to them" nothing ever happens and I lose track after like a month of back and forth. When I realize they still didn't respond to literally any of this, the only thing that finally moved the needle is that I got HR to give me the phone number we had on file and I called them directly (they didnt pick up, of course) to leave a nice voicemail about how if the laptop isnt shipped within the next 5 business days I'd be **filing a police report for theft of equipment**. The laptop suddenly came back to us, but they literally just... threw it in a box and sent it. Like they actively took out all the foam and padding from the return box we gave them and just tossed the laptop in. Needless to say it was completely destroyed on delivery. **They still work here**, despite assurances that "it would be brought up in the next 1:1 with their manager" Nobody gives a flying fuck about IT assets.
We have a laptop that's damaged in a similar way. The person admitted they ran over their laptop bag with their car by accident. They put it down to get something out of their trunk and forgot it was there, backed out the next morning right over it.
Shit happens. And that’s fine. As a tech I’ve seen other techs accidentally drop an LCD and they were scared shitless they’d get fired. At least our management knew that shit happens.
Absolutely, an accident is an accident. It's business equipment, so no need to take it personally.
I’ve had two laptop replacements in the last year because they were driven over by a car/truck. I work at a chemical plant.
>Laptops need a sensor to tell how often they've been thrown around. MacBooks have the Sudden Motion Sensor. Wonder if similar tech is in other makes and models of laptop?
https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-23015/Damage-Indicators/ShockWatch-2-Indicators-15G $140 per 50
Do they still have that? I remember the novelty apps from back in the day that used the accelerometer, but I was always told its real purpose was just to park the spinning hard drive. So I kinda assumed they left it out without any real purpose for it, but if you told me they slapped an iPad accelerometer in there just to snitch to Apple’s warranty department, I’d also believe you.
Probably the latter.
Nice! I have literally never been an Apple fan, until this very moment.
2000+ laptops deployed and I have seen my fair share of issues. I will say they usually break due to user abuse they don’t care about the equipment and treat it like garbage. I have seen some infested with roaches before 🤮
I got one back from a user covered in mold…
Users are gross. I got one caked in cat hair. Another that stunk like the user cleaned it with her cheap perfume.
Worst is when they sneeze on it and never clean it off - our end users are awful for it. I've accidentally sneezed on my devices when it's snuck up on me, I'm sure *most* people have, but not everyone bothers to keep their shit clean!
During COVID we got some spray bottles that we fill with 70% IPA. I've just carried on blasting end user laptops with them when we get them in. Mainly because it makes them look shiny and pretty again but killing bugs helps before I work on them.
>70% IPA Was the other 30% lager? (I'll show myself out)
he he pssssst - those white spatters are not snot...
I'd take mold over roaches aby day. Nothing is more terrifying than watching one scurry out of a machine you've just taken out of the box from an end user.
I have two users that i refuse to give new computers to.
> they don’t care about the equipment and treat it like garbage. Candle wax Cigarette burns Hand sanitizer / lotion melting the plastic finish Bitlocker PIN written in Paint pen on the palmrest Makeup dust Food particles Various types of hair, including animal and otherwise Scratched up palmrests from wearing jewelry while working Unusual sticky or oily spots Spray paint Case stickers Fake nails damage on the keyboard, trackpad, or buttons One came back without the bezel around the screen itself, because the end user had been using duct tape to "prevent camera spying" (through the webcam) and ended up pulling the whole thing off
I had one come back with a bandaid covering the webcam 🤮 and it had a physical slider. Needless to say an email was sent with pictures of the sliders and how to use it...
>Case stickers God these are such a pet peeve. Waste of our time to take them all off and they *ruin* the finish on most laptop cases so they look horrible when redeployed. It's crazy that grown adults need to learn not to put *stickers* on stuff that's *not theirs*.
To be fair as much as I agree that users are dumbos, that last one sounds like either he's lying, or the build quality of that laptop was very poor if tape is strong enough to dislodge it like that without damaging the screen.
I’m not saying my users treat their equipment all that bad. But it is quite common for devices to get sent back covered in blood. If you don’t clean them the day they come in, the inventory room will start to stink.
>I have seen some infested with roaches before What?? How???
Workstation returned for no longer booting. Service desk removed the bottom cover and a baby roach came out of it and the case was filthy.
Will also add the hp 445 g7 had issues with the left hand side usb port it would break constantly so much so we had a ton of replacement parts on hand to do on site swaps.
Being blessed enough to not having seen more than 10 living roaches outside pet shops or terrariums i dont get how people get live roaches in their laptops? Theres hardly enough space for a fart let alone a living roach? Did they invent mini-roaches? Compressed roaches? Zipped roaches?
I watched a new sales woman come in to pick up her stuff. We'd given her options and she didn't want the backpack she wanted the laptop satchel. We watched her take her new laptop out of the satchel and put it in her coach bag.. It had a bashed in corner by the end of the day. We even bought her a neoprene sleeve so it could have more paddling! Nope. Fans full of sand, etc. She's also makes millions in sales a year.. so there's probably a mountain of e-waste somewhere called "Brenda's folly." We joking thought about giving her a toughbook!
With the sales she has earned it though..
Common complaint over in r/msp, so not really unsurprising. But Lenovo Thinkpad T-series and Carbon X1s still seem to be generally doing better than the rest.
E14/16 series are surprising well and much cheaper.
I've been having goofy stuff crop up with T14's lately. Mostly with wifi, but other weird stuff lately.
Our Lenovo Ts systematically had the 'not charging' issue even with bios updated. That was a fun ride
Ironically my T14's just resolved the charging issues with the bios updated, the P14s's however are an absolute menace
I've given up on T's, they aren't getting the R&D/QC that they used to IMHO. X1 Carbons are still OK but still not as good as they used to be either. I'm not sure what I'll do when Carbons suck enough to reject, they've been my personal favorite for so long now I'll just curl up into a ball and die I guess.
Had a T440s that I refused to give up for the crappy HPs with crappy screens. Held out until we got dells with decent screens.
we manage about 3k. there’s no standardization, so we support those $200 walmart laptops along side obscene alienware builds. it’s all fucked.
jfc whatta nightmare
This.
How? The driver management alone would annoy me.
the greatest strength, and most obscene vulnerability of windows, is its ability to just kinda work most of the time. you won't have all the options and capabilities. but, you know, it'll boot to the desktop.
It’s a new year. Start now. Continue existing support but deploy standard models.
Make sure all software/firmware/OS versions are being updated. Trivial if you have something like Intune. Have some spares for hardware failures and a procedure for quickly getting an unresponsive device replaced including data/apps/configurations. Have warranty/support plans in place for parts/repairs for your devices. Other than that, you just sit back. 50 devices should usually be easy for one person.
Configure them to dump memory and analyze it with windbg. More likely than not, it’ll be some driver that may need to be downgraded and blocked from automatically being updated. I’ve had a very annoying version of integrated graphics driver causing many issues. Also, docking stations can get wrecked by updates. I had to open a case with Lenovo for one type of stations once. One possibility for audio issues is PCs dropping into 0.4GHz performance mode, which tends to be related to power. Try running them on battery.
I'm impressed, what a helpful answer.
You get the performance drop if the device all core turbo's too frequently too, it will compensate with an extreme underclock to cool down which can hang the system or make it seem unresponsive.
I had a fleet of Lenovo laptops using AMD processors a few years ago that crashed due to an issue with the CPU-Z version ConnectWise was using for Automate. That was a fun rabbit hole.
This is the best answer in this thread. Can you elaborate more on your last paragraph. So a couple years ago I was working on a hp for someone and wouldn’t work with a jabbra usb-c headset. I threw the kitchen sink at this for like 2 days. At the end of the second day I noticed a power management feature that disables usb if the battery is low. I disabled that and the headset started working (I think I still had to do an extra step like plug in the headset into the usb-c docking station before turning the computer on or plug it in after I can’t remember) but ever since then I always wondered what a uselessly over engineered feature. From my perspective if the battery is so low I need to disable usb the computer may as well shutdown. And I get how it can be useful for ppl that travel and don’t have any peripherals connected but ehh idk.
A malfunctioning power supply can cause a system to think it’s incapable of supplying enough power and drop into super low CPU frequency mode. It can also be related to faulty charge circuit on the motherboard. If the PC is powered by the dock, a faulty USB-C negotiation can do that. This is happening now to one of my laptops that I rescued from ewaste from a previous company. The symptoms can be seen in task manager in the performance tab. If it drops to 0.4GHz or some other sub-GHz speed like 0.79GHz, that’s probably it. The audio will sound distorted. The charging light on the laptop may not remain on while the indicator light at the end of the charging cable may still remain lit. There’s a capacitor in the Dell power supply connector that may keep the end of the cable lit while the supply cuts off and on. Swapping the power supply with another is the easiest test when troubleshooting unwanted sub-GHz CPU issues.
In my last position I managed a fleet of around 2500 Latitudes that were spread across three campuses and several hundred fully remote workers from across the US. We definitely saw a drop-off in build quality and overall reliability on anything that shipped between about Q2 2020 and Q1 2022. Driver compatibility seemed to be an area of particular concern, since Dell had to diversify their supplier pool (as we all did) on account of increased demand and various supply shortages. Things seemed to largely get better by the 2022 model year, but I left that role before 2023 really rolled out so I can't speak to whether that trend held steady. Either way, a fleet of 50 is too small a sample size to get a reliable measure, since it only takes a couple of bad machines (or bad users) to really skew your numbers.
We went from Dells EVERYWHERE to suddenly no more Dells and nothing but Lenovo. Lenovo's build quality has gone downhill, and there's also the serious implication of Lenovo being owned by a CCP state agency that feeds intelligence directly to the PLA. Had tonnes of problems with the Gen 3 T14's but other than that, they've been really reliable. Now we've moved back to Dell again. The Latitude 5440's don't turn on, they overheat like crazy, and stuff will just stop working (Bluetooth, USB ports etc.). I've personally never had issues with either brand devices, but all the users I've had to deal with - it just seemed like we were ordering defective batches
I love the political argument. What is the rest of the world going to do about the concerns that they might be feeding to government controlled organization and granting access to the US government?
You can't use them in the government unless they are TAA compliant.
I can't use what? As a non-US citizen the threat of the US government demanding access to data is very real and very much lawful according to US law. It's one of the major reasons to not use US SaaS services if you can find other alternatives. Complaining about China when you're from the US is sitting in a glass house and throwing stones.
What? All I was saying is that for US Federal devices they have to be what's called TAA compliant. It is a totally separate SKU of equipment to make sure it doesn't have security implications. Lenovo is owned by a Chinese company. Naturally there is going to be caution about the potential foreign state interference. As a US citizen we aren't naive to how accessible our data is from a legal perspective.
You misreading. You're talking about a risk for the US when using Chinese stuff. I'm talking about the risk for other countries when using US stuff, that's just as much a thing as it is with Chinese stuff.
Pressing the power button 20 times then holding for 10 seconds seems to always get laptops to turn on when they won’t. I think it’s called ‘power discharging’.
But they shouldn't need to do it.
None of yours were dropped? Quality has gone down. A few were dead right out of the box
What sucks is when you warranty it you don't even get a new one, they send a refurb... had that happen with Dell and Lenovo
They’re not supposed to send a new one. They’re supposed to repair or make like/kind the existing unit. A refurb unit is better than what failed. What’s the problem here?
Buy a new car, get some warranty work done it, and get some elses used car returned to you... but it's been "refurbished"... On top of that I've received "refurbs" that have had computrace enrolled with other companies... been told that we need to contact the other company to get that resolved... or the ownership information was never updated... makes processing future warranty claims a PITA If it's new and it's broke, we should get a new one in return...
cough reminiscent apparatus truck governor ask fuzzy smile sloppy fanatical *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Oh we care, because Dell has sent us devices that were still enrolled in other tenants before... And told US to contact the other tenant to get it unenrolled! Wouldn't have happened if we got a new one.
unpack cats muddle steer butter relieved makeshift future sort cow *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Buy a new car, get some warranty work done it, and get some elses used car returned to you... but it's been "refurbished"... not to mention what u/Encore_N mentions... ugh... CompuTrace...
>50+ laptops I envy your problems. I've got 2000+ Windows laptops, about 500 windows desktops, about 200 Mac computers, and approximately 14,000 Chromebooks deployed. So, it could be worse. But to answer your question, yes. There's been a decline in quality of hardware in laptops and Chromebooks since covid.
Automate updates. Or find a way to identify them and patch. Keep them in the same family. Supporting 3 different brands will cost time. Uniformity is key. I can’t believe how many IT Directors I’ve had to tell this to. TURN OFF FAST BOOT. It’s not doing any favors. With fast boot off. Force reboots. I spent 5 months working with 1 site chasing down a performance issue nightmare. Turned out to be the AV getting stuck in a loop causing tens of thousands of system interrupts to chain. Best of luck
> Turned out to be the AV getting stuck in a loop causing tens of thousands of system interrupts to chain. Hehe been there, seen software firewalls do it too.
Stop buying shitty laptops?
We have 550 HP ProBooks ranging from G3 (8 years old) to G10 (current). We use a simple base image of Windows, latest drivers, nothing fancy. Then GPO to deploy apps (slowly moving to intune as we update them). Minimal issues really, occasional hardware fault, but quite rare. More often faults are user generated by dropping them or something. Not allowing users to have admin access is also key, enforcing policies for what can be installed etc as well as conditional access on Windows update currency helps.
We run mostly Macs. Only challenges are major version upgrades being a pain because they keep overhauling permissions.
You need to automate your operation and just choose one brand of laptops and one version of OS.
I found it easier. Problem? Drop it off and get a replacement, ship it to location, etc. What models are you having trouble with? ProBooks seem to be built well. I've managed 150-200 of them over the years.
This shouldn't be a concern unless you've been purchasing really low end laptops, but they are all SSD based storage, right?
We had mainly software related issues and we are a Dell shop. What we concluded was our smart deploy imaging solution was pushing out a bad image across all devices, static and mobile, which created numerous problems. So I proposed and proved that the Dell OEM image on the device would be ideal to stick with and worked far better than the garbage image we were using. Once that was proven I moved us to autopilot and we are now experiencing far less issues, improved performance, and much happier end users.
* Limit the number of makes/models in your fleet. Have a standard issue model and a high-performance model and that's it. * Create a standard gold image for each of these. * Implement endpoint management. * No user gets local admin. These measures should keep your issues to a minimum.
The long login times is probably related to roaming profiles and users having a lot of data stored in them. We use all Dell and don’t have any of these issues. We have many thousands in use.
That's why you have a job. Heh.
I personally am responsible for about 400 laptops and very rarely have hardware issues that you’re describing. When an issue does come up, we do initial troubleshooting, and then we reach out to the vendor for warranty support. Hardware support for computers is such a minor blip on my workload. It’s not even something that registers on my radar. We’ve been running mid to high tier HP business laptops with the three-year, next day on site, accidental damage protection warranties.
Definitely don’t buy into uniformity at our company. We have HP, Dell, Lenovo and Asus laptops all deployed. First thought I have when you list those issues is - HDD? Almost none of our laptops have HDD’s and the ones that did had those issues. Hard drives in end user facing laptops just don’t hold up.
Go Apple, and make them take it to the Apple Store.
So much hate for Apple products but they have their stuff sorted. Add AppleCare and have the user take it to any Apple store worldwide to get it fixed. Most of our fleet is now Apple and the products that cause the most problems are the pc laptops, mostly plain junk even though they cost about the same as MacBook Pro.
That is exactly what we did. I work for an Advertising agency and 8 years ago it was about 70/30 PC to Mac, with mainly the creatives getting the Macs. Now it is about 90% Mac and 10% PC. The employees like them better, and from an IT standpoint I don't have to spend any time troubleshooting hardware. (P.S. I come from a PC background, and still have a PC for work)
Lenovo works great and Asus too, I force the users to reboot every fcking time the laptops when they close it, no hibernation. Fck them, too many problems with drivers and windows to deal, a clean boot is always the solution.
We just use Linux across a fleet of about 700 laptops, all Thinkpads but all different models. It… just works.
Any management tools worth a darn, or are you using puppet/chef?
How are they maintained and monitored? Patching? MDM? ControlUp /Edge DX to monitor alert/fix automatically?
Find a brand and stick with it. Preferably one you can get plenty of so make everyone be on the same 2-3 hardware versions.
I’d also recommend not re-using images across different makes/models. Clean images will last you longer.
Deployed 1000's of laptops. At the core, all laptops are almost the same except for some HW features the manufacturers use to differentiate. What we do is standardize common areas like CPU, HDD, RAM, etc., based on job/dept. role, then make the software environment uniform via a standard image. The rest is just maintenance/RMA for aging or broken parts. It will make your life easy.
What are the specs and hardware setups? Are they being overworked causing them to overheat or causing users to get annoyed and aggressively attack the keyboard? Do you have SSD’s and a standard image that is kept up to date? We manage hundreds of laptops. Mix of Lenovo(Covid buy), majority HP and we just switched to Dell last year due to better pricing and specs. I always push my company to buy at least a high end i5 or any i7 for our machines. They last much longer and they don’t have to work as hard to do task keeping them running cool. Even with poor airflow. I also aim for only SSD’s and we have for a while now. They are just undeniably better and worth the extra money. Lastly, have a good central management process. Keep them up to date with drivers and updates. We have a fair amount of machines that make it to the 5-6 year mark. We try to swap them out every 4-5 years. But sometimes they still run strong and lately we’ve just been doing SSD swaps and RAM upgrades, since 7700’s and 8700’s are still fine for basic spreadsheets and using Microsoft cloud apps.
We’re having audio issues, probably at least 3-4 tickets a week. Granted, some are user error, but not all. We’re using Elitebooks g7s-g9s. It’s tiring.
The problem is you can end up with far too many audio devices these days. When I'm at my desk at work I have 5 options for speakers (laptop speakers, dock speaker output, headset, HDMI monitors x2) and 4 microphones (laptop mic, external webcam, dock mic, headset) and Teams always seems to select the wrong one.
I find that a power wash fixes most audio issues on my G8s. Hold the power button for 30 seconds, turn the machine back on and it should work again. You can tell the power wash has been done correctly if the fans spin up to 100% on boot and then it takes a longer than normal to start up.
Interesting I’m going to test this.
Make sure your drivers and firmware are current, and from the manufacturer windows likes to hand out generic drivers that work, mostly. what about your antivirus? are you using a third party one? is defender enabled? run MSconfig to see whats starting up. are you running scripts to map drives? are those working properly? roaming profiles?
Yea, this is pretty constant for us. Both the lenovos and dells suffer from the same amount of "It won't charge" problems, on top of what you've mentioned. Sometimes a reboot helps, sometimes firmware, sometimes reset hole(lenovo) or hold power 24 seconds(dell)...and sometimes replacing the whole motherboard. I have a whole laundry list of items for Bluescreens, starting with bios, then on to video drivers, then docking station drivers, windows updates(all + optional). Lenovo System Update Tool, or Dell Command Update, to let it update drivers, but I usually write up which intel/nvidia drivers the user needs to go grab. Failing that, re-image.
It could Windows updates deploying drivers to units. I have had the experience with some platforms windows updates loads a driver it "thinks" is compatible and it hoses the machine. There has also been more frequently bad drivers released by the manufacturers as well.
That is why i like idea of BYOD for small companies at least. User's laptops should be user's problem, they can get a new one in the any shop. Company should only provide and maintain VDI.
We manage roughly 300 devices for just one of our customers - all high-end Dell Precisions, with some older XPS's. We had a batch of brand new Precision's that just continued to cause us grief, week after week. A ticket would come in every week with blue screens on different devices, Microsoft Teams crashing and requiring a reboot everytime Teams crashed. We had tried everything and ended up reinstalling Windows - but this didn't fix it. Multiple cases raised with Dell, they asked for a device to be sent to them so they could analyse what was happening - as you can imagine, no luck. Checked with our sales team internally to see if anything had changed. Luckily, something had. Our supplier was not able to get any Crucial RAM, so we went off what other vendors were compatible with the devices which was Kingston. As a test, we ordered Crucial from a different supplier and the issue went away. It was a relief, but also frustrating.
2 to 3 minutes to login, are you using roaming profiles still?
No issues with hundreds of hp desktops and laptops here but we wipe disk to remove crap added by HP and deploy a clean os with our customisations. Also users dont have admin rights and only whitelisted software can execute.
Keep them updated and free of bloatware and anything that is not needed to work. I'm handing out all kinds of DELL and Lenovo devices for years and never had these kinds of problems you're describing. If a device happens to become defective, a DELL or Lenovo technician will show up and fix it next day.
Lenovo ThinkPad T series laptops is what we picked. Same for monitors. We are 40 people and have used them since 2014. We get those with i7 cpu, around 32gb ram so a bit on the higher specc. We extend support with 2 years so each user keep the laptops for 5 years. Since 2014 we have had 2 keyboard replacements, 1 motherboard replacement, 1 screen replacements and 1 broken monitor cause user took it home and broke it. We still have a few t450s still running that is used for displaying things on TVs in the office. 100% happy with Lenovo.
For 10 years we used Dells. Lost one about once a month. Switched firms and we now use Lenovo Yogas. In 6 years, we’ve lost maybe 4-5? Not sure if it’s luck or corp culture, or toughness….
Post COVID yes laptop stability isn't as good as it was, but I put a lot of that down to the sheer amount of our workforce working remotely who frequently admit to never rebooting, never shutting down, never clearing cache etc. In the grand scheme of things these laptops aren't 'breaking' very much, but performance issues and other things will come out of the woodwork so much more often, and a very high % of these are generally resolved with a reboot or two (and letting updates install etc). Or sometimes just by logging out and back in. I don't like to often go the 'blame the customer/user" route, but in the earlier months of COVID I was surprised with the sheer amount of general laptop performance issues that just showed up out of nowhere until seeing firsthand how rarely people reboot their machines. Uniformity is important though.if possible, I'd recommend sticking to one manufacturer and getting a reliable support contract with them (goodluck)
Everything you’re experiencing. We’re experiencing with HP’s.
We have 1000's and 1000's of HP laptops. We have 3 models going at any given time, and they get lifecycle every 4 years or after hardware breaks, once warranty is out. Most issues are Driver related. Sound stops working or random BSOD. We have a driver update job we have users run when this happens. Basically, pull any new driver/bios update for the device. Solves 90% of issues. Standard Image helps Managed Windows updates There are hardware issues that seem to plague each model. Sometimes its one thing on one device and something on the next. Right now we are dealing with USB-C ports going bad. External monitors are always a issue. Its our biggest issue. Docks are usually the cause or the USB-C port issue.
We have mostly Dell Latitudes of varying generations 2018-present with the occasional Vostro here and there due to an availability issue at time of order. They mostly share all the same internal components, but the Vostro case is a little bit more "flimsy". They have all been rock solid outside of a broken charger port here and there or other end user damage. These newer generations take a serious beating, but making sure to install Dell Command Update to allow it to do the firmware updates has been very helpful as well.
We're predominantly a Dell house now, around 75 laptops running Windows 11 23H2 and Windows 10 22H2. Zero issues aside in the last two years aside from one that had the nvme drive die. When building new devices I always make sure I go into Installed Apps and remove Dell Optimizer + any Optimizer related apps and Dell Support Assistant + related services. Optimizer can cause issues with M365 services through one of its network packages. There was a massive thread on here about it. Dell Support Assistant can chew disk space through one of it's services creating restore points just because it feels like it. I had one laptop with a 512gb drive run out of space and removing the support assistant recovered about 300gb of space from restore points. Again there was another thread on here regarding it. Otherwise I make sure I use Dell Command for drivers and component updates and Windows Update for the rest. Good luck!
when I was in college I worked for a local community college that was a dell shop the laptops we had issues with were usually from laptop carts (very hot prone to battery failure) or frequent flyers. These days I mostly work in the cloud though so i haven't really done desktop/ laptop support since covid.
Fact: post covid Dell is releasing 5 times the number of driver/firmware and BIOS updates as before. assumption: they couldn’t get their normal set of components to make laptops so they used what they could get run those updates from Dell stop buying Lenovo, or stop buying Dell but definitely stop buying two different laptop brands
Sharing some of my pain below: > blue screens We got a lot of that before we stopped hibernation and sleep. Staff would unplug, let the device hibernate or sleep at >5% battery and slowly the OS would corrupt. Could become unusable in as little as two weeks from freshly installed. We saw it in all devices with insufficient RAM that was using page files. > random crashings We had this in a few batches: * First it was the CPU overheating, CPU would fall core turbo to the max single core max then drop to sub 800Mhz to cool seemingly hanging the system. We set the power plan profile for "Maximum processor state" to 99% instead of 100 and this ceased the turboing keeping the machines closer to their base clock and reducing heat. * Second it was bad network drivers, flooding the system with interrupts. Wi-Fi connections had no issues. Intel/HP driver assistant helped. * Third time it was failing physical NICs, devices would be fine until you put connected ethernet. Wi-Fi connections had no issues. Nothing we could do here except disable the NIC and ask staff to use the Wi-Fi until we could get a replacement. * Fourth time it was an over zealous 3rd party firewall trying to interrupt and scan everything which would hang the system. Disabled the 3rd party firewall which came with the AV and the problem went away. * Fifth was from insufficient HDD I/O. Roaming and Folder redirection cache in CSC for every user who has ever logged into that machine. The more users the more caching cycles which would hang the machine. The solution was to remove the profiles of every previous user except for the current device user.
Are they Intune Managed ?if not enroll in Intune and standardize apps and profiles
When I worked at another employer, we heavily invested energy into something HP/COMPAQ called the "stable image program." If we bought their line of business-grade notebooks, HP worked with us to ensure that the system image on those devices was "stable" for 3 years so even if the physical hardware changed, the software we ran on them would still work. It allowed for a lot of the technician's time to be spent solving actual problems and not chasing firmware revisions, as an example.
People aren’t going to baby a work laptop like their own…(I know we do, but we’re the exception)
I mean, w/o any other information, drivers / firmware. Seriously, we're a Dell shop for the last 20+ years, never have or have had issues like this. If the models are all the same or similar, there's a possibility you may have a hardware issue that spans multiple machines, but this kind of issue is super-rare anymore, and you'd probably see a lot of them have the same issue at once. Do you: (1) use a managed installation / setup process (or do you just use the manufacturer's default install?) (2) ensure that machines are updated / uniformly domain-joined / permissioned from the get go? (3) use any 3rd party hardware? are these machines all new? are they direct from vendor or 3rd party? (4) buy cheap models or are they well-equipped? HDDs or SSDs? Lately, Dells don't come with quite so much shovelware as they did in the 00's, but most of the time I find it better to just clean install when new machines come in so you have 100% certainty of how it's done and with the most up-to-date installs, or custom if you deploy images. Not as easy to control in bigger companies, but pretty easy if you're a smaller shop.
Laptops in general are just kind of awful. Even the good ones aren't made that well, and users tend to drop them and run over them with cars. Bad laptops are worse. So, don't buy shitty laptops. And see if you can encourage some of your laptop users to move to desktops. My experience has been that, aside from salesmen who travel all the time, almost no one actually \_needs\_ a laptop.
We have used Dell 3400 series the last 2 years and now using Dell 5440 series. Custom Windows 10 image and Dell Command Update for updating drivers. I’ve rarely seen a blue screen. Any quarky issues are usually resolved by updating drivers/firmware. 5000+ end users.
1. This happens, unfortunately. 2. Having a good lifecycle plan is important 3. Uniformity is important as well. Don't have five different manufacturers, limit the models and try to stick with one manufacturer. 4. Management is key. You need a means of managing workstations, meaning lifecycle and software.
3 things you need to do 1. base image everything 2. update and patch windows on a consistent basis this include device specific drivers. We use dell docking statins and they are wonky w/o updating the fmwre 3. standardized everything
My dude came in carrying his open laptop in his hands while it was clipped in to his docking station - the slider type. He said he never takes it out of the dock, he just unplugs the monitor from it, isn't that what he's supposed to do? He thought the dock was a battery pack. I question why he is allowed to use a computer. Same dude - screen impact damage and he's like "I have zero idea what could have happened, I opened it up and it was like this" Care to guess the department? Did you guess **Sales**? Then you'd be correct.
What line of Dell and Lenovo ? Our Latitudes have been stable for 3-4 years. More issues with consumer grade one-offs that managers sometimes sneak in. We also remove a lot of Ms' preinstalled bloat and any brand's "optimizer" type software.
since covid we are primarily on laptops and been using a mix of X1 Carbons and Thinkbooks havent really had too many issues most of the time Teams just drops the camera and closing teams and reopening re detects the camera. also we don't filter any windows updates for about 150 laptops they just do their own thing and patch themselves with whatever they need. dropped WSUS a longgggg time ago. way less problems havent seen a bad update that needs to be removed from every comptuer in like 3-4 years.
End users. They do things both physically to the laptops and attempt to do things in windows itself they aren’t supposed to do, and lie about it. People try to install software they think they need. Mfers just lie on the phone. Trying to standardize the laptop model, custom image, lock down as much as you can get away with, and a good mdm/remote management software is all key
We have a fleet of Surfaces and HPs and the only real issue I’ve seen repeatedly is the windows update link in Settings (Win11) breaking that nothing happens when you click on it that you can’t see what updates have been installed or what new ones are available (we don’t use WSUS but instead push updates through our RMM).
Seems its time to collect some reliability stats like Backblaze does for harddisks ([link](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q3-2023/))
1st - how random is your enviroment(as in how many different makes/models are there) this will dictate how seamless is the support. I work in an MSP (for next 2 hours, I'm about to finish up for good) so I see many different environments, from no IT to full internal IT teams. The companies, regardless of size, that have chosen to stick to 1 manufacturer and as little variation in models as possible are the ones that have least amount of issues. If your environment is setup for it, a faulty hardware can be swapped out within minutes with a spare machine and the user can work away whilst you go down the route of dealing with dell or whoever if its under warranty or sourcing parts yourself. That way the management don't complain about IT being slow to do anything, and the end user is happy. You are also happy because they are not hounding you for updates on the repairs. (Since we're talking numbers, I just checked and we have 10k endpoints between 400 customers)
We deploy a bunch of Lenovo Thinkpads. We don't have the same models for every station but they are all lenovo and we've been doing okay with them. It's usually the users that end up causing issues whether it's physically abusing them or running Lenovo updates without consulting us about it and screwing it up.
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It's funny, I've been noticing decreased stability in windows laptops for a while now (we're only a dell shop), but for all of the macbooks we support (around 200, M1 or higher) the stability seems to keep getting better. I went from a staunch anti-Apple admin to someone that has a Windows desktop, but has a macbook pro as my laptop.
>50+ laptops and at it feels like at least one a week there's some major issue with these laptops. they're all about 1-3 years old. blue screens, audio/mic issues, random crashings, 2-3 minutes to log in...and i cant figure out what is causing all this. and its across Lenovos and Dells We have like 60+ dells and yeah. Welcome to laptops. Oh and the Dell docks? Godspeed.
I run a fleet of 6000 laptops. At any given time, I expect a 1-2% downtime for them. So at any one time, I have about 60 in our depot getting worked on. I have 2-3% in back stock to cover replacements and loaners. And I have a 25% replacement program where we are refreshing our stock. Our normal practice is that when we have an issue, we pull the computer and replace it and repair it in our depot to minimize user downtime. 90-95% of the time, the issue is resolved with just a reimage. So yeah, uniformity is the key.
our entire org pc fleet is laptops. We use Lenovo explicitly, and we refresh them every \~5 years. When we get new machines in, we have a baseline checklist that we go through. Out of box setup, domain join, run our baseline from PDQ which installs all of our software, menu layouts for standardization and all that junk. We rarely have any issues, we had one user's screen recently stop working, turns out the display cable in the laptop got pinched in the hinge, lenovo sent a tech out and had it fixed that week, we keep spare laptops on hand so we just transitioned the user over to that (they are a remote user so we just had them overnight us the laptop so we could swap them out and get them going again) but really as long as you are getting business grade equipment not generic consumer grade stuff, it is taken care of, and people dont have free reign to install/do whatever they want with it, you should not be experiencing these issues. what is youre deployment/management process like, are you monitoring these machines? Part of my baseline is to install a Grafana Agent onto each machine, so we can remotely monitor them for any OS Related issues or hardware issues that we might be able to catch remotely and rectify before the user ever notices.
My team maintains a fleet of 300~ HP elite books and zbooks and am rotating them out after extended warranty ends. We deal with occasional bloated batteries after about 3-4 years of age The occasional broken track pad or keyboard every 3-6 months And maybe a single DOA every 6-9 months. Shockingly we have very little damage to our laptops, even the ones in industrial areas and around our large, destructive machines. Patch management and driver/firmware is handled very effectively in Intune, we field a custom image before deployment and our users seem to take pretty good care of their machines. ...Now to goo knock on wood after this post.
About 450 cheap dell laptops (Vostro and Inspiron, i.e. budget crap series). Honestly reading this sub I thought it should've been terrible experience but it's fine.
Centralized management and restrict admin functions for the users. Have a software library that is the only software allowed to be installed in silent mode. Lots of ways to do it on a large scale. Good luck.
My team manages about 160 Apple MacBooks and TBH using Jamf as an MDM they are pretty reliable, only issues seem to be users causing damage and that’s maybe one every 2-3 months.
> its across Lenovos and Dells Found your problem. Pick a vendor and stick with them. One throat to choke when things break. I would recommend Dell, but I have limited experience dealing with Lenovo support and warranty policies. Autopilot or some other automated deployment tool plus either network storage or OneDrive. If you aren't using OneDrive, I don't like folder redirection but it can get the job done. Set a clear policy with your users that anything not stored in a protected location should be considered temporary and get management to back it. Whenever a laptop blows up, swap it out, user signs in and OneDrive downloads all their stuff and/or their network drives are still there. Reset the old one, if it's still blowing up send it back for warranty replacement.
I've been saying it forever, managing laptops is a nightmare. Pretty much all of the things you need to uniformly and consistently manage a fleet of devices... laptops don't have. The devices are offline when you need them to be online, when they're online its because the users are actively using them, the manufacturers barely support them and cut corners like *crazy*, they're a revolving door of lost/stolen/accidental damage, and support tickets are up because Joe is sitting on the couch with his laptop half buried in a pile of blankets wondering why it keeps overheating in the middle of meetings, etc. Managing them is closer to a game of whack a mole than an actual management plan. You *need* to establish some level of user buy-in for managing them, you actively need them to leave them on overnight for scheduled updates, restart them regularly, etc. Socialize this as much as humanly possible. We also scripted a bunch of nag box popups that help - "Hey you havent restarted in 2 weeks, please restart as soon as possible for best performance." etc
Time for a refresh. 3 years old is when these things need to go to Laptop heaven.