Dell customers unhappy with BIOS band-aid for faulty NVIDIA GPUs

Dell customers are unhappy with the BIOS patch released by Dell to counter the problem with faulty NVIDIA GPUs, and quite rightly so!

Here's just a small selection of comments left by Dell customers on the Direct2Dell blog:

"IMHO having the BIOS activate the fans sooner to compensate for a defective chipset is a band aid solution."

"Well, since this BIOS update won't mysteriously change the die packaging material, the only real thing you can do is to extent warranty or premium support to the amount of years you wanna use the computer, and still then live with the fact that your computer could die on you any time."

"So rather than replacing the faulty parts you are going to just turn up the fans, at the expense of battery life and noise.  I would rather just leave the bios as it is and get a proper fix if the problem occurs.  Even if the problem occurs out of warranty I think there is a strong case for Dell fixing it for free since there is an admitted manufacturing defect."

"With this solution, you try to push the issue outside the customers warranty-time.. but what's after that time? will you repair the notebooks for free?"

"nice to see that a hardware issue is fixed by software update.   how is a physical defect suppose to be fixed by software? time to step up to the plate dell and start offering a replacement device."

"I tend to agree with some of the other comments. A bios update to turn on cooling fans is not the appropriate response when I have spent approx. $2000 on an XPS that I now fear will have a shortened life span."

I think that customers are right to be worried. If there's a problem with the GPUs in a range of Dell notebooks then a BIOS update is little more than a band-aid and isn't going to fix the underlying problem. If I'd shelled out $1,000+ on a notebook and discovered that the GPU had a problem, with it where it could go dead at any time, I think it'd get pretty emotional about it.

Affected Dell notebooks are as follows:

• Inspiron 1420
• Latitude D630
• Latitude D630c
• Dell Precision M2300
• Vostro Notebook 1310
• Vostro Notebook 1400
• Vostro Notebook 1510
• Vostro Notebook 1710
• XPS M1330
• XPS M1530

Thoughts? Anyone here own an affected Dell notebook? What do you think of Dell's handling of this issue?