Amaranthian

oh those are really kewl

And just what is wrong with Dell?

Well seeing as I have a slight personal interest in Dell, I'll answer a few of those concerns:

So lets say prior to 2000, Dell made some very good quality products and provided better than your average customer service(tallest midget is probably a better statement).

At this point some of the product quality began to slip in a quest to provide the most product to the most customers. A lot of this was driven by the fact that Dell wasn't really listening to the customer at this point just providing what they felt the market wanted as well as what marketing geniuses said they wanted.

Around this same time the idea boys thought hey...wouldn't it be great if the tech support could be farmed out to places like India. Cheaper labor, smart people etc. To mask this effort from our stock holders and employees, it will be sold as a globalization of the infrastructure.

And then the corporate issues started showing up, playing funny business with the books and then getting caught. This is about the time that Michael decided to come back in and fire everyone in the top executive structure. Can't really fire the people below because they were just doing what they were told and in many cases the financial books were broken in pieces so that the fudging wouldn't be noticed (hence the year or two years it took to unravel the mess).

So now there's been some improvements in quality and design of the products and more focus on what the customer says as well as an investment in the customer service/tech support side of things. Doesn't mean Dell is perfect but there are strides to improve the impression of Dell.

The only PC company that kind of manufactures their own stuff(that I can think of) is apple. But even that is fairly limited. Every other company buys much of their product and puts their stamp on it.

And I've always built my boxes so I think that everyone is overpriced for what you get.

I'm also not defending Dell, because for the most part what you've detailed is exactly whats happend. But at the same time I've seen a general improvement in the product , support, and corporate practices.

Doc

As for customer support, when my comp got stuck at the loading screen I called them (and was on hold for like 15min) then got a person who sounded like they were from India (which i guess they probably were) their foreign accent over the phone was a bit hard to understand, but after talking to him and giving him my computer's numbers he transferred me to an American, by the sound of it. He instructed me to do one of the safe mode start ups, had me let him take control of my comp, updated the video card, and thus fixed the problem.
I'd call that pretty good customer support (or as doc put it, the tallest midget)

I wonder if tech support people ever get Brambles and are like "what the hell is this guy saying?! I can't understand a word of it!"

>.>

<.<

Sadly you get all types of customers. Some that are the nicest people in the world and some that are just dicks. Can be very trying on a persons patience. Tech support in the corporate space is much easier as the companies typically want thier users to touch the computers as little as possible. Consumer is just a nightmare.

IBM doesn't do PC's any more, just servers and workstations.

Lenovo doesn't make their motherboards.

Fujitsu might create their own stuff but your better off buying someone else. Junk and takes forever to get parts. I haven't had a real good experience from them.

Sony still makes computers? Thought they got out of that market a few years ago. But looking it up the motherboards are made by someone else.

Anyway, my point is that Dell may have had some issues in the past but they are moving forward in trying to improve system quality, and provide a better customer experience in all avenues.

Unfortunately they have to climb out of the hole they dug themselves to right the perception of the company overall.

Doc

Apple's customer service / tech support has in recent years been consistently at the top of the ratings by a large margin; I wonder how much (or what kind) of a connection there is between that and them making their own machines?

Is the support better because they have tighter control over the hardware? Is it better because of the same differences in their business model that lead them to make their own systems? Or is it just that since they make the OS they have an edge on troubleshooting?

Probably some of all three, but it would be very interesting to see a Gartner-style in-depth analysis of the situation based in part on some hard data. (Which I guess will probably never happen, since Apple is unlikely to provide publishable access to the kind of internal data needed.)

FUCK LINUX!!!

Korean, Chinese, Irish, whatever...Dell has plants all over the place but they are generally not the OEM of their products, they just slap them together at the customization stage. At least that's what I've always been lead to believe.

At any rate, Dell's had it's ups and downs but I have generally not had fabulous experiences with them and thus don't have any desire to use their products.

<3 HP printers....had one that we didn't use for about years--our dell printer broke, and thus I had to use the old HP one (or attempt to use it)--Tried printing with it, and the paper came out perfectly ^.^
(that dell printer I don't trust, but the Dell comps seem to work well)