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Posted: 10/19/2004 2:45:34 PM EDT
[#1]
I's say go for it. No answer is as good as a go ahead. At least you asked. |
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Posted: 10/19/2004 2:47:31 PM EDT
[#2]
+1 cough it up! |
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Posted: 10/19/2004 2:48:30 PM EDT
[#3]
um...tag...
I hope this isn't a scam... 
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Posted: 10/19/2004 2:52:03 PM EDT
[#4]
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Posted: 10/19/2004 2:56:01 PM EDT
[#5]
ah...hell! go for it.
all they can do is ban me for giving you the ok. |
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Posted: 10/19/2004 2:59:09 PM EDT
[#6]
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Posted: 10/19/2004 3:00:33 PM EDT
[#7]
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Posted: 10/19/2004 3:02:32 PM EDT
[#8]
tagged i am sitting here looking at laptops now
IM it to me if ya would |
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Posted: 10/19/2004 3:11:36 PM EDT
[#9]
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Posted: 10/19/2004 3:16:05 PM EDT
[#10]
 I've had nothing but great experiences with my Dell computer. Zero problems. And seeing their profits continually grow, my guess is that I'm not alone on this opinion. |
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Posted: 10/19/2004 3:17:10 PM EDT
[#11]
+1 I wouldn't trust a Dell desktop computer, I prefer to build my own. That being said, Dell laptops are top notch. I wouldn't trade mine for anything. |
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Posted: 10/19/2004 3:27:31 PM EDT
[#12]
dell laptops are complete crap. take this from a tech that rebuilds them frequently. I won't let my freinds and family buy one. The support structure for the consumer division is a joke and service is not far behind.
Do a search on dell in gd. Buyer beware. mike |
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Posted: 10/19/2004 3:33:24 PM EDT
[#13]
Yep, it was for Dells. I had it from www.gotapex.com/ but according to the SlickDeals site it's been pulled.
I haven't had experience with Dells support structure, but would assume it sucks. All computer retailers support is basically farmed out overseas now. As for the laptops themselves, I own two, and have three more at work I'm in charge of. Aside from a failed hard drive in one, I have had zero problems with them. Can't really blame the hard drive on the manufacturer itself. Anyway, it looks like a couple computers remain. |
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Posted: 10/19/2004 3:35:29 PM EDT
[#14]
But, does the laptop have the "nipple" type mouse? Don't post a picture of it!!!!
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Posted: 10/19/2004 4:39:49 PM EDT
[#15]
+1 for dell history. Most dell laptops I have carried have been in my check baggage due to reliability problems. No need to hand carry a POS that WONT fcuking work. It is not very efficient to have to send company emails from the field using hotmail. dell sucks. |
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Posted: 10/19/2004 4:43:11 PM EDT
[#16]
I wonder why their company continues to have consistent profit and sales growth if they suck so bad?
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Posted: 10/19/2004 4:46:53 PM EDT
[#17]
it's called goverment contracts and a marketing department that makes HK look like amatures. It has NOTHING to do with quality systems. Go ahead and enjoy yours i hope it serves you well. Try a search here for dell and see what horror stories are just in this forum. I deal with it everyday. Uneducated masses buy dell because they are cheap plain and simple. They are cheap for a reason. |
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Posted: 10/19/2004 4:48:37 PM EDT
[#18]
Thanks. It has so far.  |
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Posted: 10/19/2004 4:53:46 PM EDT
[#19]
give it time  j/k
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Posted: 10/20/2004 5:10:18 AM EDT
[#20]
Dell is the Packard Bell of the new millennium. Cheapest parts money can buy, cheapest customer support money can buy. Yeah, they have lots of profits because Americans NEVER LEARN from their mistakes; they always want the cheapest deal, especially if they are not informed on the product. So Dell sells a bunch of cheap products, made of cheap parts. How long you guys had your Dells?
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Posted: 10/20/2004 5:12:46 AM EDT
[#21]
Nothing happens when I click "lock user"!  Maybe I need silver bullets...Seriously if it's just some good deal you found and aren't involved in go ahead and post it. Oh and my girlfriend's Dell laptop has already croaked and been brouught back to life once. Their support SUCKED! Some guy from india or somewhere was trying to get her to take the thing apart and diagnose it over the phone. |
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Posted: 10/20/2004 5:28:10 AM EDT
[#22]
So what brand of laptop would you recommend? |
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Posted: 10/20/2004 8:58:25 AM EDT
[#23]
Cheap? Toshiba. Tough? Panasonic Best all-around? Alienware |
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Posted: 10/20/2004 9:28:57 AM EDT
[#24]
The Dell bashing astounds me. I've been in I.T. for 9 years. I've worked as a service tech, a network engineer, a programmer, and more recently as an engineer designing and implementing Cisco Avvid (VoIP) solutions. I don't care who makes the machine, or what somebody says about it. Somebody that owns one says it sucks. It doesn't matter. Compaq (now HP), Gateway, Toshiba, Packard Bell (remember those?), Acer, and yes even Alienware. It's all anecdotal bullshit. Since anecdotal evidence seems to be good enough for so many, try this:
I have two customers that come to mind who use Dell workstations and laptops exclusively. The first has over 700 of them, the other has at leat 400. In both cases, hardware failures are a rare occurence (easily less than 5%). My own laptop is a Dell that I've owned for 2 years. I have had ZERO problems with it. None. I've never called support. I don't understand how THAT many machines can hum along all day without any hardware failures and still be considered junk. As for support - I don't know. I don't call Dell support, but I'm told that the consumer support sucks. I couldn't tell you. My customers tell me that the business support is fantastic. The tech support people speak English and don't try to troubleshoot the problem if they aren't asked to. They just send the requested parts. I get asked constantly for advice on what BRAND of computer somebody should buy. My answer: If you're not a gamer and just want to surf, send email and use a word processor like most people, buy something modern and don't spend too much money. That's it. Oh, and install Fedora Core 2 ETA: I need more coffee, yes I know my spelling sucks, no I'm not going to fix it. |
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Posted: 10/20/2004 9:57:20 AM EDT
[#25]
+1 for their marketing. DELL seem very good at getting large cmpany contracts. The university uses DELL - and DELL has such a stranglehold on the university that even if we buy different hardware (like IBM or HP) the university will not provide support. Assholes. Meanwhile, so when I was looking for a new DELL laptop, I went online to price it (with all the specs I wanted). I figured everything out, and then called the tech guy and asked him if I should just order it online - since I already had everything set up. The guy practically yelled at me, telling me that if I did that, we woudl lose the HUGE institutional ddiscount we get from DELL, because DELL supplies the entire university. I certainly felt chastened, because it must been a very big discount. After I got the laptop, and saw how much my research account had been charged, I compared it to the price I could have bought it on-line for as a regular individual consumer. The different was TEN DOLLARS !!!! Thanks DELL - we sure got a big fucking discount for buying thousands of computers from you. Assholes.  Combine that sort of money-making with spending little money on customer support and service, and I can see how DELL makes good profits. |
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Posted: 10/20/2004 9:59:06 AM EDT
[#26]
I've used DELL laptops for the past four years (two different ones). I've had to have the fan replaced THREE TIMES (once in one laptop, twice in the other one). That's a pretty serious harware problem. My fiancee has a comparable IBM thinkpad, and the DELL is a freakin' joke compared to it - it's MUCH larger and bulkier, and significantly heavier. |
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Posted: 10/20/2004 10:21:50 AM EDT
[#27]
See, that's my point. All of this crap is anecdotal. (BTW: You do know that Dell makes other laptops that are lightweight, right?) I know people have had trouble with their Dell laptops. My point is that it's a trivial matter to find people who hate ANY brand for the EXACT same reasons. My co-worker's Thinkpad keeps hard locking, regardless of OS. Processor fan? Maybe. If I had to take a guess, I'd say that Dell machines are commented on more due to nothing other than their popularity, i.e. more people own them, so it stands to reason that more people have a broken one they want to bitch about. Shit, I'm starting to sound like a Dell apologist. Damnit. |
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Posted: 10/20/2004 10:58:12 AM EDT
[#28]
How long have they been using them "exclusively"? My organization has been using Dell laptops since 1998. We have over 400 here. Mine has gone back twice, one for a bad moboard, once for a keyboard failure, which is happening again but it's not under warranty so I use a PS2 replacement since this is just a sendmail machine now. Of the other Dell laptops within the organization, 60% have gone back for one reason or another; mostly keyboard failures. Thats better than the Compaq/HP laptops we replaced, if that means something; 85% of those have gone back for PSU/HD failures, which is astounding to me. EDIT: I used to head the workstation support group, all Dells and Compaqs. Over 1500 machines. I now support over a 1000 servers. This is NOT an anecdote; this is actual numbers I had to use to justify downtime and changing vendors. I've worked with IBM thinkpads, Panasonic Toughbooks, Dell Inspirons, Microns, HPs, Toshibas, emachines and Alienware (Clevo). Again, you want a cheap notebook with decent support? Toshiba. Tough? Panasonic (I would say IBM, but their thinkpads are no longer what they were). Desktop replacement? Alienware (or one of the other brands like Voodoo, Sager, etc. that use Clevo; because Clevo makes the best laptops, IMHO). |
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Posted: 10/20/2004 11:20:50 AM EDT
[#29]
Well dude, I must concede. I just called one of my customers (the one with over 700 Dell's). They've used them exclusively for at least 5 years. He says that they used to be great. However for about the last year and a half, they've had nothing but problems. He says that they replace a hard drive every other day - literally (!!!). As for the laptops, they have only began deploying them in large numbers (about 100 so far) since last month, so it's too early to tell. He mentioned that he thinks the drives are Maxtor's. Needless to say, I'm astonished at the rate of failure. It's been a while since I've talked to him about his workstations (I did a ZEN for Desktops deployment for them some time ago). At the time, they seemed to run great. Not anymore. Wow. Well, I guess Dell's suck. I hate to admit it when I'm wrong, but there it is.  Thanks for giving me a reason to investigate it further! |
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Posted: 10/20/2004 11:28:27 AM EDT
[#31]
Well, FWIW none of the "Big players" makes a really decent machine anymore. At least HP has better support nowdays, given the rate these things die they'll need it to keep customers. The only reason I know Clevo is because I researched the heck out of current offerings just 6 months ago. Also, the absolute best laptop for the money I found to be the emachine from Best Buy with the AMD A64! (I know I couldn't believe it either) Can't find 'em anymore though, all the hardcore geeks bought 'em up! So, if you guys can find an EMachine laptop out there with the AMD Mobile Athlon64, buy it. It's a steal. |
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Posted: 10/20/2004 11:32:50 AM EDT
[#32]
Any University-Corporate partnership is the same way. Here, it's with IBM's, and in order for faculty to buy anything else, it has to be under research accounts, or if there is a certain percentage lower price for a system of comparison. For those of you that think Dell is cheap because of low wuality parts, crack a few open and look, it's not that bad at all. The reason Dell can get away with low prices? Virtually no overheard. There's a reason why Michael Dell is worth so damn much, he created a revolutionary infrastructure. When Dell builds a computer, they don't just grab the parts of the shelf, they order them! Dell has contracts with thousands of vendors that compete against each other to get the order to Dell the fastest. That way Dell Co doesn't have to store all of the parts, they just pay for them to get there really damn fast so they can build their PC's and ship them out. My mother's customized 8300? Ordered Wednesday night, arrived Monday. I've seen other high quality manufacturers computers fail also. Dell does have really bad tech support for home users, but small business users always get Texas, not India. One more thing. My job along with my studies (work study), is at my school's Office of Information Technology. We see a lot of computers come in from different manufacturers. A lot of times, hardware problems are majorly user error. Of course a hdd is going to fail if you drop the damn thing a lot! People with burnt out motherboards? They plug serial devices hot into the machine too many times... Power supply goes bad? Well you shouldn't let it hang by the ac adapter plug... Fans? CLEAN THE PC!!!! |
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Posted: 10/20/2004 11:33:29 AM EDT
[#33]
I used to work on Dell laptops out in the field too. The only time I saw big problems with them was with abusive customers. They were a breeze to work on, though. I could tear one down and replace anything in it, and have it up and running within 30 minutes. Try THAT with a Toshiba. I don't know about any other companies, but we (Dell) offer a 'complete care' warranty, which is actually more like insurance. Knock your 'puter off of your desk and shatter the LCD? We'll fix it or replace the whole unit. Can't beat that with a stick. |
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Posted: 10/20/2004 11:40:34 AM EDT
[#34]
I fixed a girl's HP laptop that she dropped and the LCD shattered, they told her sorry, you dropped it, we won't pay for it, but hey for $600 you we can fix it for you!, and she had a full warrenty, but it didn't cover stupidity I suppose... I opened it up and found that Samsung made the LCD, so I matched it with the right number and found one for $250 new, not even a pull, she was happy as hell. I couldn't believe the markup on it though, it was crazy. It wasn't even 600 for the bezel, antennaes, and data stripe, just the lcd screen itself. |
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Posted: 10/20/2004 11:47:03 AM EDT
[#35]
Are you talking about servers? If so, the guy is an asshat. 4 out of 5 times on our servers, when a drive 'fails' or goes offline, there is NOTHING WRONG WITH IT. If it's on desktops, I can't comment much. I don't deal with them. However, when I was out in the field covering the Dell contract in the entire Central Texas area, service calls on desktops were very rare. Remember, Dell does not make harddrives. If they actually fail, or have problems, we can't do much about it, now can we? We DO drive resolutions back to the manufacturers of components that we use in our hardware. |
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Posted: 10/20/2004 11:51:03 AM EDT
[#36]
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Posted: 10/20/2004 11:54:48 AM EDT
[#37]
He wasn't talking about servers. They run HP/Compaq Proliant's, and they're fine. In the rare event of a drive failure, it wouldn't matter muc,h as they're on array controllers in a RAID 5 array and they're hot swappable. As for drive failures on desktops, you're right. Dell does not make hard drives. If they are particuarly problematic, I would hope that Dell would begin purchasing their HDD's elsewhere. FWIW, my Inspiron 2600 has served me well. |
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Posted: 10/20/2004 11:57:44 AM EDT
[#38]
+1 If the drive is fine, why is it going off-line? Why does the controller deem it necessary do place a perfectly good drive off-line? EDIT for spelling |
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Posted: 10/20/2004 12:38:13 PM EDT
[#39]
Dells servers seem to be about the only solid machine they produce right now.
Want some horror stories from the dell corporate side? 2003 Local accounting firm aquires 200 dell dimension laptops. Within 90 days over 100 had key board failures and i had replaced 30 system boards. It's a good thing they are easy to rebuild. We did it often. 2002-2003 local city buys 50 dell optiplex systems. the first 5 out of the box catch fire. the next 5 smoke the processor.The rest were never opened and are still sitting in the IT office. i am sent out <we did dell service at the time> to see whats up. long story short after MUCH screaming and bitching the city is stuck with 50 optiplex systems dell has not taken care of yet. 2000 SSA gets in 3500 optiplex pc's for the local offices and regiol hub. The installs turn into a nightmare after it is discovered the systems ARE NOT COMPATIBLE WITH WINDOWS NT. even though that was specifically requested in the bid. After fixing that issue <6+ months> The failures begin. in roughly the next 4 months i replaced 2200+ hard drives and well over 1000 system boards. This was in NEW SYSTEMS LESS THAN 12 MONTHS OLD. Dell sends in 2 engineers from texas. Once again i am asked to work with them to resolve the failures. Dells finding..... are you ready for this...... SOFTWARE. A basic NT install is killing the drives and system boards  . We also had severe problems with video cards but that is more of a matrox issue than a dell problem.This is just a couple of the major situations i was involved with. This does not begin to account for incorrect parts, long delays in parts and a general run around when working with their support system. I have been out of the PC side of things full time for a couple of years now. But i routinely here simialr stories from customers at my accounts. I will say about the above.... This was during a MAJOR growth spurt for dell. It is possible they were over extended due to MAJOR .gov contract wins. That doesn't excuse them for today. Yes, every company including IBM has turned out crap and will continue to do so. IBM builds a few systems i wouldn't have either. Dell just seems to have a much larger share of the problems. I will give dell credit for one thing. From what i see and hear they can build a damn reliable server. VERY few calls on them and the customers really seem to like them for the most part. mike |
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Posted: 10/20/2004 1:57:16 PM EDT
[#40]
I can only comment about the Dells I've owned, and since I don't have a large base of computers to base this assumption on, I will gladly have anyone ignore this as usable data.
I have owned roughly 10 dells in the last 5 years. I probably manage, or know people who own them, about 50 more. That's not large numbers. I would consider a reliable pool size of measurement about 1000 units. Anyway, from the oldest laptop (Latitude with a P133) to the newest 8600, the only problems I have encountered are a laptop hard drive (Fujitsu) and a couple laptop batteries that have died from old age. That's good enough for me. That said, I realize computers are disposable. If I buy a desktop from Dell for 349 bux, and it craps out beyond repair 3 years down the road, I don't really care. I do backups, everything important is on a RAID5 that's backed up, I'll just buy another $349 PC. If you choose not to buy Dells because of personal or professional experience telling you they're crap, I'm certainly not going to try to convince you otherwise. |
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