If you have a Dell laptop with failing parts, go to https://www.dell.com/support/incidents-online/en-us/SrSearch, search up your device, choose “hardware related” as your issue, and when given a list of solutions, scroll down and pick “email”. My laptop is a Dell XPS 15 9560 from the spring of 2017, and it only had a 1 year warranty.

Dell’s initial response was to suggest I mail the laptop to them for a diagnosis and repair, but in my reply I explained that I (a) knew exactly what the problem was and (b) had stripped the computer down to its bare components before, so it would be a waste of everyone’s time for me to mail my laptop out and back just for one itty bitty cable.

Dell actually agreed to this, but they required I tell them the Product ID of the component I needed. Every part in my laptop has a unique ID sticker on it. This was totally fair: Dell needed me to prove that (a) I really could do the repair, (b) I actually had a damaged laptop and wasn’t just a scalper, and (c) I was asking for the exact right product.

I needed a new barrel jack port, and I could supply the product ID for that, but I had previously replaced my keyboard with an awful Amazon knockoff. Fortunately, Dell just added me onto the order, no ID needed and no questions asked.

Dell’s public online "support" store is awful: it only sells external accessories and at absurd prices. I did not expect Dell’s secret store, visible to employees only, to have everything I needed at a reasonable price. $10 for the charge port, $40 for the keyboard, and $10 for shipping? That's a deal.

Before shipping, Dell forced me to write my name and the current date on a piece of paper, then take a picture of it next to the laptop, which was a bit overkill in my opinion, but maybe they have scalper issues.

Genuine parts are absolutely worth it. My Amazon knockoff keyboard had incredibly bad backlighting, a spacebar that wouldn’t press down correctly, and within a year the paint on the keys was rubbing off. Arguably the knockoff’s bad lighting and spacebar problems were caused by Dell’s atrocious ribbon cable placement, (It's folded over onto itself and taped to the back of the keyboard!) but the genuine replacement feels like it’s fresh from the factory. The only reason my first Dell keyboard failed was my extremely overzealous use of the left arrow key for proofreading and programming.

Would I recommend Dell laptops as a BIFL product? Absolutely not, for three reasons:

#1: The repairability of my Dell XPS 9560 is technically all there on paper: (ram, battery, ssd, power port, keyboard, speakers) but nearly every internal cable is held down by tape or sticky tack and there are a few daughter boards that are adhered permanently to the chassis. The battery is the only part truly “designed” to be taken out and replaced more than once. My next portable machine will probably be a Framework Laptop.

#2: Dell’s power and thermal management is decidedly bad, at least in 2017. Thermal throttling doesn’t just dial back the clocks to compensate, it’ll instantly kick you down to 800 MHz (slower than a Raspberry Pi 2 from 2015) until the system goes below 50 or 55 degrees C. Of course, the system fan curve isn’t informed of this, so they’ll slow back to a crawl while you’re still waiting for your system to cool down. I thought this was just a thing all laptop owners had to deal with, but my shiny new Steam Deck can handle high power and high temps, so... no.

#3: Unless you absolutely need the portability, it’s better to buy or build a desktop. https://youtu.be/RRY1jrIDhvU