Laptop Hardware Failures

Users discuss reliability issues with premium laptops like Dell XPS and Lenovo ThinkPads, including battery swelling, touchpad problems, motherboard failures, sleep malfunctions, and poor support, often under Linux.

📉 Falling 0.4x Hardware
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#8597
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Keywords

SSD ThinkPad X1 XKCD W530 Z170 TB15 PlanetComputers PDA ACPI xps laptops laptop dell xps 13 motherboard thinkpad battery touchpad keyboard

Sample Comments

dmm Feb 20, 2015 View on HN

Thanks for the feedback. I've had problems with this in HP and Levovo laptops before.

pawelduda Dec 10, 2025 View on HN

Unfortunately same about my XPS, looked promising but turned to shit faster than I'd expect

bloqs Jun 14, 2021 View on HN

Similar experience with dell xps except touchpad froze intermittently. Had 2 engineer visits and two motherboards and no fix. Hilarious to think they want to throw hands with apple.

paulie_a Aug 9, 2020 View on HN

I thought my new xps 13 was good. Guess not

AYBABTME Jun 29, 2024 View on HN

Is the 13in model suffering the same issues? How about under Linux? Would love a solid machine to replace the Apple MBP but I'm very skeptical.

cashewchoo Dec 11, 2020 View on HN

My last 2 laptops: T440s and an XPS 13 (9310) have both not had this issue, and that accounts for about the last 6 years of linux laptop usage for me. Several crummy laptops (the 300-700 dollar range at best buy) prior to that have had it, though.

grapesodaaaaa Feb 9, 2025 View on HN

I have always had issues with this on my Lenovo X1 series laptops. Why is that?

gentleman11 Apr 15, 2022 View on HN

I had an xps. The battery swells and the charger stopped working, then the replacement charger stopped working. The keyboard and trackpad werent great either

baz00 Oct 31, 2023 View on HN

yeah Lenovo support is shit. It's why I just buy two of them most of the time :)

thegeomaster Oct 26, 2022 View on HN

I got a 1200€ XPS 13 Developer Edition (with Linux) a few years ago. Sleep did not work well from the start and it would randomly drain battery while sleeping. About 9 months in, the battery swelled up and outright died, and was replaced under warranty with a week+ wait. 9 months after that, so just after the 1.5yrs warranty expired, the motherboard died. 500€ to replace. Got a ThinkPad X1 Carbon for about the same price instead and never looked back - will not buy Dell again.