Hello there.
I own an Inspiron 7520 SE, AMD Radeon HD 7730M graphics card, purchased in Nov 2012.
The very first day after delivery. After charging it fully, when I powered it up, the Catalyst Control refused to load. Downloaded and installed the latest drivers and the laptop functioned well for some time. Then after a few months, the problem resurfaced so downloaded an AMD utility to check card load. The Catalyst Control used to crash on being fired up but the AMD utility correctly showed the load on the card when playing games.
In Dec 2013, the laptop switched off on its own under battery power. When I connected it to the adapter, the green light on the adapter came on momentarily and then switched off. The laptop did not charge. So, I replaced the adapter but to no avail. When I took it to the local Dell showroom in Rajkot (Gujarat), the customer rep tested my battery and adapter on a demo machine. Both were fine. The verdict was that there was a problem with the motherboard.
I gave the laptop to a Dell service centre in Pune (Maharashtra). The rep here tested it and pronounced a power reversal issue - the centre's power adapter had a blue ring around the power plug which switched off when connected to my laptop but was illuminated when connected to a different one.
I got a call from the rep today and he stated that the graphics card is fried causing the power reversal issue. Per the rep, this necessitates a replacement of the complete mother board entailing an expenditure of Rs 12,000.
I spend Rs 58,000 on this laptop. I had to keep maintaining it throughout this short ownership period. After more than a year of nursing this expensive investment, I completely regret purchasing a Dell machine. If this is the state of affairs after barely a year and a month of ownership, I have no doubts that Dell is the very worst laptop name in the world. For no fault of mine, I am staring at an additional cost of Rs 12,000 just because this useless company cannot implement quality control.
I will appreciate any help from the community. I cannot but curse the day I trusted Michael Dell's company.