If any executives from Dell are reading this... by CaveTroll

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

If any executives from Dell are reading this...

POSTED BY: CAVETROLL
UPDATED: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 03:08
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VIEWED: 1927
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Monday, May 14, 2012 6:36 AM

An hour of phone time to purchase recovery disks for a Dell laptop with a bad hard drive is completely unacceptable. Outsourcing may save you money, but you will need to save that money. Because you are not getting a cent of mine or my client's cash from this point forward.

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Monday, May 14, 2012 6:46 AM

STORYMARK

Why not try their site, or facebook, or reddit, or any sites where the message might actually get to them. You really think they're ever going to look.... Here??

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"

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Monday, May 14, 2012 7:39 AM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

I think it's more just a method of venting, Story. And warning anyone here who's in the market for a new computer to avoid Dell - which is pretty solid advice, really.

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero, Real World Event Discussions

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Monday, May 14, 2012 8:53 AM

BYTEMITE

Dell is pretty terrible. My brother once had a problem with HP having shipped him a bad hard drive and had to jump through hoops before they'd replace it, but we haven't had near as much trouble with HP as we have with Dell.

Though all of these companies install a bunch of junk that takes up most of the computer when you get it, some of it just useless and some of it not-so-harmless security backdoors.

If I knew more about computers, I'd try to build my own. But eventually I'll learn.

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Monday, May 14, 2012 9:11 AM

STORYMARK

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
I think it's more just a method of venting, Story. And warning anyone here who's in the market for a new computer to avoid Dell - which is pretty solid advice, really.

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero, Real World Event Discussions

Fair enough.

Ive had a couple HP systems that have worked just fine - but nothing from Dell proper - and I never had to deal with customer service in either case.

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"

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Monday, May 14, 2012 11:26 AM

KWICKO

Apple's customer service is not great shakes, either. Some years back, I bought a new iMac the day it was announced, and when it arrived, I took it out of the box and followed instructions, and it wouldn't boot up. Finally I called customer service, spent about three hours on the phone with them, only to find out my computer had a faulty motherboard, a part which was on global backorder because of such high demand for the newest, latest, greatest iMac.

They wouldn't let me return it, wouldn't refund or discount it, and I just had to wait 6 weeks until the part was available. I was less than happy.

That was the last time I tried to be "cutting edge" in my electronics. Let the new stuff come out, and let the early adapters do the beta testing.

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero, Real World Event Discussions

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Monday, May 14, 2012 11:55 AM

OONJERAH

Join your local computer club. Get a Nerd-Built.

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Tuesday, May 15, 2012 4:02 AM

CAVETROLL

Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Dell is pretty terrible. My brother once had a problem with HP having shipped him a bad hard drive and had to jump through hoops before they'd replace it, but we haven't had near us much trouble with HP.

Though all of these companies install a bunch of junk that takes up most of the computer when you get it, some of it just useless and some of it not-so-harmless security backdoors.

If I knew more about computers, I'd try to build my own. But eventually I'll learn.

Yeah, they load them up with shovelware. When I am building a PC for a client I take the time to uninstall a bunch of it. And I have posted this to a few social media sites. Google, Facebook and Twitter. So the people in my circle (who are overwhelmingly techies anyway) know enough to be afraid.

Time was when Dell was the best company in terms of price, product and support. But things took a turn for the worse about 2006, 2007. Now I advise my commercial customers to go HP and get an extended warranty.

To be fair, I'm not upset about the hard drive going bad. It happens. I'm not even upset about it dying until just after the warranty expires. You pay your money and you take your chances. But when the manufacturer doesn't want to just do as you ask and sell you a recovery disk, but tries to get you to pay for a technical support call that absolutely will not help recover a hard drive that is not spinning, THEN I have a huge problem. They were suggesting I run recovery utilities that are on a separate partition ON THE SAME PHYSICAL DRIVE!!!

Which really was a brainless moment for the customer service rep I was talking to. Regardless of which country they were in. I've dealt with HP support and run into walls trying to replace a motherboard on a 1 year old out of warranty system. (I did eventually obtain a new motherboard, from a 3rd party reseller). But in that case the CSR told me that they did not have my part in stock and I would have to go to a reseller. Total phone time with HP was probably 10-15 minutes, tops.

Anyhow, the disks are on the way, replacement drive is in hand and I'll rebuild the dead laptop at my friend's party this weekend. A couple of hours of checking periodically while the laptop does its thing is the best way to do PC support.

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Tuesday, May 15, 2012 4:21 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...

Quote:
Originally posted by CaveTroll:
An hour of phone time to purchase recovery disks for a Dell laptop with a bad hard drive is completely unacceptable. Outsourcing may save you money, but you will need to save that money. Because you are not getting a cent of mine or my client's cash from this point forward.

Computer support - via phone especially - is a mind numbing & demeaning experience. If you think there's communication issues on this board, try and help someone troubleshoot their email when they barely know what a mouse is. In small doses it's not too bad (especially if you are getting paid directly by the client) but 6-8 hours a day is pure Hell. Most people are almost proud of how little they know about their computers and most questions that come into a help desk are incredibly basic - should be easy! No.
For computer companies "We have the Greatest Support!" doesn't move the needle, so it gets underfunded. And a lot of people just don't think their hard drive will fry, they don't know the black hole that support can be, or they conveniently forget it once the problem is fixed. And then there are the callers who are so mad at their computer that they want to kill you. I'd rather wear a funny suit and wait tables before doing support again.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Tuesday, May 15, 2012 4:24 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Since hubby builds ours from scratch (a mere trifling for a guy who builds high-performance 32+ -node clusters) and repairs research PCs as part of his job, he knows what makes a reliable PC and what doesn't. Dell is at the bottom of the barrel. Dell may TELL you that their PC meets such -and-such specs, but the reality is that if you take two Dells apart- as he has- with supposeldy the same specs, you'll find a grab-bag of parts between them. Also, their cases are very small, and there is no good airflow so the hard drives overheat.

We got two Dells as part of instrument packages and wouldn't ya know it, the hard drives failed on both PCs... BLAM! BLAM!... one right after another due to overheating.

The only PC hubby ranks below Dell is Apple. Not BC they aren't built well, but bc they're totally unrepairable.

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Tuesday, May 15, 2012 4:30 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Ditto Cave. The one thing Jo ever "bought" me, once she was back in England (with her ex's money, who she was staying with and whose credit cards she'd gotten ahold of) was a Dell. It was okay, until it wasn't. I went through some of the same kind of bullshit you and others described, and never got anywhere. I ended up paying to take it to a local repair shop. The second time it went bad, I trashed it and bought another. I'll NEVER deal with Dell again; I've had other computers, and never nearly the problems I had trying to get help from Dell!!

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Tuesday, May 15, 2012 5:35 AM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Since hubby builds ours from scratch (a mere trifling for a guy who builds high-performance 32+ -node clusters) and repairs research PCs as part of his job, he knows what makes a reliable PC and what doesn't. Dell is at the bottom of the barrel. Dell may TELL you that their PC meets such -and-such specs, but the reality is that if you take two Dells apart- as he has- with supposeldy the same specs, you'll find a grab-bag of parts between them. Also, their cases are very small, and there is no good airflow so the hard drives overheat.

We got two Dells as part of instrument packages and wouldn't ya know it, the hard drives failed on both PCs... BLAM! BLAM!... one right after another due to overheating.

The only PC hubby ranks below Dell is Apple. Not BC they aren't built well, but bc they're totally unrepairable.

Apple is indeed a different world. I've had my MacBook into the shop for upgrades, and it's always a crapshoot. There ARE going to be issues, it seems; you just don't know what they're going to be until you get it back. The latest is that my battery won't charge. I have an aftermarket battery (three of 'em, actually), and the computer will run just fine, as long as it's plugged in. Unplug it, even for a second, and it's dead. Batteries WILL. NOT. TAKE. A. CHARGE.

I've run every reset I can find, tech support has had their try as well, but nothing fixes it.

The original battery WILL take a charge, and does fine, except for the fact that it's swollen to more than twice its normal thickness, the case is split, and it's a fire hazard waiting to happen.

None of this is too big a deal, because my computer goes to work with me and back home, and that's it. At work, it's plugged into the warehouse stereo system, running music, news, podcasts, etc., so being plugged into the wall is no burden. At home, it's next to my couch, so again being plugged in is no hassle.

But it's a bit annoying, because it takes the "portable" part out of the laptop.

It's a frankenstein of a machine at this point, anyway: 500GB hard drive, 5GB RAM (8 installed, but the core2duo processor can only recognize 5), recent upgrades galore, but it's showing its age anyway. This latest OS is probably the last one that will support that old processor, so a new one is in the offing at some point in the not-too-distant future. I'll more than likely stick with Apple, though, because overall I've had good results with them, and after nearly 30 years, I'm comfortable in the Apple environment. Except for the iPad; that thing needs to fucking die! (Just kidding, but I do find it annoying to use, and always go back to the laptop...)

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero, Real World Event Discussions

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Tuesday, May 15, 2012 4:35 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Quality wise, Dell is pretty cringeworthy, though they beat out HP and NEC machines by a mile and a half and squeak by Gateway by a nose by virtue of the keyboard and the desktop not mutually blowing each other up - revolting proprietary boobytrapped shit they are, Compaq generally trumps Dell on quality though, but heaven help you if you wanna upgrade...

Hell, some of the old machines, besides the ripper blade angled to shred the IDE cables if you got the case off at all, they used torx screws and deliberately stripped em and/or bloody tack welded the thing together... of course later they went to bizarre, incompatible proprietary mainboards, which themselves had a host of QC problems.

I've used off-the-rack machines, when they were dumped on me and superior to the hardware I already owned, but I've never used one stock, that Emachine T6410, by the time I retired it there wasn't a single original part in that case, not even the mainboard - which is a ridiculously expensive proprietary piece of go-se, BUT can be replaced by a comparable board (meaning expensive low quality shit) from TigerDirect...
But I have always hated having to work around badly designed, performance bottlenecked, untrustworthy low quality so-called-cutting-edge (yeah, the PCjr and OS2 were "cutting edge" once too..) garbage, primary among the trashheap of PC history and a pet hatred of mine, Maxtor Hard Drives.
GUARANTEED to not even last the 18months of warranty, some of em didn't last past the INSTALL - stupid tech... was workin for a transmission shop owner trying to fix his fragged up PC, so I isolated the HDD as cause, they shipped a new one, I put it in, it was bad, sent it back, they got pissy, sent their own tech with another HDD, he puts it in, tries to format...

And (mind you their tech support was insinuating I was an incompetent moron) turns and looks at me with this stupified expression on his face, mind you AFTER *HE* went and made the same insinuation tech support did, and deflected my honest and VALID criticisms with a bunch of nice sounding bullshit techobabble (I reminded him he SHOULD be using a grounding strap, especially since the shop owners friggin carpet was all but asking for static discharge, and he zapped himself on the case while opening it, and fumbling around in there with the power still live...)

So he turns and with this crestfallen, dumbfounded LOOK...
"This hard drive is bad!"
Like it never happened to him before (proof, IMHO, that he was a friggin N00b!)
And the shop owner kinda hadda physically restrain me from force-feeding him the friggin HDD, you can well imagine - of course the company offers to ship ANOTHER drive, and I gave the shop owner this sidelong glance, and even HE, a none too bright alcoholic, can figure out they're just gonna ship him one bad drive after another till the warranty runs out...

And so he says to me what does he have to do now ?
I told him, go to the store, buy a WESTERN DIGITAL HDD, and bring it to me, then gimme bout half an hour, which he did - and he amused the HELL out of himself by ordering replacement drives once every week or two and using them for target practice out behind the sheds - I did mention alcoholic ? damned if *I* wanted to be near his liquored up ass tryin to shoot, but let that go...

Anyhows, my current machine was hand-built-custom, from the ground up even including the case, which has like seven freakin fans in it despite that I ain't overclocking jack cause I want THIS one to last the 10years the last one did, but it has room for every imagineable upgrade and as is outpowers an Alienware Aurora by a significant margin - I build a machine maybe once a decade, but I build it to LAST that decade, and even rigged up six ways to sunday and on it's last legs, the modified E-machine would hang in there at the bottom edge of modern performance requirements before I retired it.

Of course, a LOT of those performance reqs today are due to plain, flat out sloppy, lazy coding, bloody awful the whole goddamn lot of it - but I digress.

Yah, Dell sucks, but there's a lot worse suck out there.

-Frem

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Tuesday, May 15, 2012 4:51 PM

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

Quote:
Originally posted by Oonjerah:

Join your local computer club. Get a Nerd-Built.

I've built one by myself, with only a tiny bit of supervision; and repaired/rebuilt several; replaced a bunch of hard drives, re-installed systems several times.

The hardware is pretty simple- most stuff just plugs in. If it doesn't just plug in, it's because it's the wrong stuff for some reason, and needs to be exchanged.

The software is usually just a matter of sticking in a big stack of CDR's, in the right order if possible. Hardest part for me is usually configuring the online setups, configuring the right protocols for your ISP, acount names, passwords, all that gose.

And it sure gets you over the fear of messing around inside the big scary expensive box.

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Wednesday, May 16, 2012 3:08 AM

WISHIMAY

Quote:
Originally posted by Oonjerah:
Get a Nerd-Built.

I know absolutely nothing about computers, I really don't think we even come from the same planet, but the one person I do know is a geek squad guy. This thing is over eight years old.

Almost as long as I've been a FFFlan...

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