Well... on a year or so, the heatsink turned out to be cactus and was replaced, as was the palmrest and underside (paint had peeled from excess heat), and finally like 10 days ago the hinges on both sides were cracked, which needed fixing.
So Dell came out and did it, bless them, when I came to the following realization.
Replaced:
LCD panel
LCD hinge / frame / back
entire casing
motherboard
cpu
gpu
battery
Not replaced:
hard disk
RAM
keyboard
optical drive
remote control
Its almost a completely new laptop as of 2009.
How do Dell make money out of these things? The GPU is going to fail again, its only a matter of time, meaning that the motherboard is going to be replaced again.
The warranty I took out covers accidental damage (which is what the hinge was) and yea, they've basically given me 1.8 laptops by now.
I give them a bit of crap for some of their design defects (the heat, the bad cooling system, the bad nvidia chip) but I must say, the 3 year XPS completecare warranty was worth the extra $400 it cost. Still a year left, with the option to pay to extend it.
People like me never let their laptop's leave their side, I'm sure Gizmo is much like that, maybe Aidan as I figure he travels a bit. Old school Thinkpads built like tanks could stand that but I doubt any modern laptops are designed for that type of heavy computer user, constant use, constant travel abuse. When I'm home, the laptop stays on 24/7 just so I can hear when I get an email or message while I'm sleeping. Does Dell know people like me exist? And do they know that people like me are the reason the $400 warranty costs them probably $1500 to service due to the computer not being up to it?