For a company that prides itself on building customized computers and hopefully getting them out to customers in a timely fashion seems to be taking some kind of a break.  The past several weeks have seen delays in laptops shipping out, especially the relatively new M1330 series.  Dell blames problems during the manufacturing process, especially for those custom colors.

The company has been relatively quiet about the delays but it has admitted that there is a problem with the M1330 due to quality control issues, component shortages and problems with the paint jobs.

Other models are affected as well with the Inspiron 1420, 1520 and 1720 all seeing delays because Dell can’t keep up with the amount of orders that have come in and it only gets worse if you want one of those custom colors.

These delays are so bad that NoteBookReview says there are over 9,000 responses to this issue on its forums, a record for the site.

According to one poster, delays for the Inspiron 1520 depend on which color lid you want:

Black, white = no delays

Brown lid = 5 days extra

Yellow lid = 6 days extra

Blue lid = 8 days extra

Red, green, pink lid = 11 days extra

Want one with a dedicated graphics card?  That’ll be a couple more days wait time.  It has gotten so bad that users are making concessions such as taking a different color that has no wait time such as white or black in most cases, or taking a laptop with reduced specs just to get it in a timely fashion.

If you’re lucky maybe Dell will make some concessions to you.  My recommendation, don’t buy a Dell at all, if you don’t care about color (or make) head on over to Newegg and buy any number of ready-made laptops shipped to your door in 72 hours (in most cases, excluding weekends and US holidays).

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Entry was posted on Friday, August 10th, 2007 at 6:12 am under Notebook.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
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