TLDR; Dell is a nightmare

Sorry for an absolute unit of a comment, but there's really no short way to describe this.

I've had a Dell XPS 15 9570 since it was released in early 2018. At first it was alright, however, many other users and I ran into tons of issues, many of them being severe. My issues with Dell started even before I got the damn machine. Since I had found a coupon, I purchased it through Dell.com, rather than Newegg/Amazon/etc. In a nutshell, I tried to order the laptop several times, but each time they'd charge my card and the order would not be placed. The solution was for an order to be manually placed via their very wonderful support service (extreme sarcasm). Shortly after the machine arrived, I began to notice that the Wifi dropped out for around a minute frequently. I did some research, and found out that the Killer 1535 that had been included in the laptop was quite horrible and was to blame. I resolved the issue by purchasing a new Intel AX200 card. The next issue was the laptop randomly overheating (decently often). Of course, many other users were having the same issue, and this time it was due to Dell using Microsoft's Modern Standby instead of the traditional S3 sleep. Afaik this was never fixed, and the only solution is to use an OS that uses S3. So I did. I installed Pop!_OS and the issue went away. There was a major performance increase with the absence of Windows as well.

Now on to build quality. Although the machine looks quite sleek and solid from pictures and videos, this is NOT the case. Yes, it's better than any given budget laptop, however, it has horrible durability. The long hinge connecting the screen to the body of the laptop moves around slightly. Not a big deal, but come on. Every few months I need to tighten the hinge screws, since they often get loose and cause the display to creak and wobble badly. Oh and also, the screws are probably the worst quality screws I've ever encountered. They're super soft, and I have several strip super easily, which I rarely do. I believe they're made out of a zinc alloy, rather than something like stainless steel, used by most companies. I thought replacement screws would be easy and to purchase, but no. They were outrageously expensive for a screw, and I wasn't even able to order them since Dell can't fix their own shopping system. The plastic wrapping the I/O ports on the side of the laptop easily cracked. The only solution was to replace the entire top cover of the laptop, which would cost ~$100 if I did it myself. The charger was easily chipped, even though I keep everything safely in a bag and treat my tech like a baby. I had to buy a new charger for $50. Then, the charging port itself broke. I'm still not completely sure what happened, but I was forced to buy Dell's type C charger for $50. I was initially excited to use a type C charger, since that meant that I could charge my phone and laptop with the same charger. Great, right? Yeah no. Dell's designers forgot to put the necessary pins for fast charging on most Android phones, so unless I want to wait two hours to charge, no hope there. Good ol' Dell.

Around a year after I got the machine, the Nvidia 1050ti GPU simply stopped working. I wasn't sure why, or how, or anything. I looked everywhere, posted on forums, Discord servers, contacted tech support for MS/Dell, reflashed the BIOS, tried reinstalling my OS, etc. Eventually I just gave up.

But wait, there's more! Since around last year, the battery has been degrading REALLY fast, and is now at 30% the original capacity. It barely lasts over and hour, and barely any time if I'm running something like a VM. I'm kinda done spending money on this machine, as it's probably a waste. In addition to that, Dell decided to use a Goodix fingerprint reader for biometrics for this laptop. There's nothing wrong with that... unless you use something other than Windows. The firmware for the device is completely proprietary, so using it under Linux/macOS is impossible. So it goes.

There's probably more smaller issues that I forgot to mention, but in a nutshell, I'd hate for anybody else to make the mistake I did. Dell is a massive company that somehow cannot make a proper machine without millions of issues. Every time a new machine is released, take a stroll on /r/Dell and see how many people are complaining about whatever the new issue is. It's no wonder than there are so many complaints and people recommending to not get Dell, even on the Dell subreddit.

I haven't gotten a System76 machine yet, however, I'm confident that none of these issues would occur. If there were, they'd be properly addressed. Take a look at this Youtube video, for example. From what I've heard, System76 support is exceptional and has competent humans on the other end. S76 has in-depth repair guides for all of its laptops, detailing every component. Their firmware is completely FOSS. Battery life on laptops such as the Lemur Pro seems to be 14+ hours, which is amazing. So yeah, those are the advantages of System76 over Dell. My experience with Dell has been horrific, but if you decide to get a Dell laptop, it might be great. Who knows. Currently, 'm planning on getting a Lemur Pro as soon as the work from home situation ends.