My (almost) seventeen year old daughter’s current notebook computer is a Dell Inspiron 7375. Nothing wrong with it – it’s treated her fine. Except for the charging adaptor, which stopped working after just a few months. We ordered a compatible one from Amazon. Didn’t work. Not because the product failed to produce voltage, but rather because Dell has a circuit in their battery which communicates with a circuit in the charger and refuses to charge the battery unless the charger is “genuine Dell.”

Ok, well, shame on me – looks like Dell cornered me into buying chargers from them, for most of double the price. I ordered one. A few days later I got an email announcing delivery would be delayed. A few days later I got another such email. I’ve received three estimated delivery dates from them, and all of them were garbage. It’s clear they don’t have this charger on hand.

So, that’s it for me and Dell. I’ll never buy another product from them, and I advise all of you not to as well. That sort of underhanded behavior just turns my stomach. I’ve now ordered a charger from an eBay vendor that claims to be genuine Dell – we’ll see. I also ordered my daughter an external battery pack that’s capable of of powering her notebook – it has about twice the watt-hour rating of the unit’s internal battery. Worse comes to worse she can just abandon the internal battery and carry the external one around.

Dell, very poor. Very poor indeed. Shame on you!