>> Err, yes, but that is not Dell in NZ ...

> So? Even Russell seems to buy a lot of his stuff from vendors not in 
> NZ.

> Basically, Russell seemed to really only want to stir the pot, vent
> something or whatever.

I'll bite :-).

The subject line and the original message were, I think I said (but 
may not have made clear enough), originated by a friend who has bought 
Dell's for many years and told me how marvellous they are every time I 
point out my perceived deficiencies with their fine products or 
practices.

So, what I forwarded was the conclusion from a wedded Dell aficionado. 
I thought it was worth passing on a comment about Dell practices which 
came from a man who was a long time Dell supporter. ("Ask the man who 
rides one ...").

> He didn't really come forward with a lot of hard
> data, like notebook vendors who do sell parts after a few years (not 
> for
> NZ, not for anywhere else :).

True.
I was passing on someone else's comment and it's not the reason I try 
to avoid buying Dell's, just another to add to my list.
I dislike Dell primarily for:

- their fine print $100 "delivery fee" from Malaysia when ordered in 
NZ (as if everyone else doesn't have to deliver their parts or PCs 
across the world (akin to the airlines' "petrol tax" separate from 
their fares)).

- their highly exponential price/feature curve with marginally or 
really inadequately specified products being offered at attractive 
prices but with upgrade to eg hard disks costing vastly more than the 
differential should. (Would you like tyres with your car, sir?)

- The "fact" that they advertise specials on eg TV which may well 
exist but which are hard to find subsequently so that the unwary may 
end up buying something else. They are too smooth and polished to be 
accused of crude "bait and switch" but the end effect looks remarkably 
the same.

- the fact that they use *any* non standard connectors or parts in any 
of their products "just because they can". They're far far from 
reaching the level of mastery of this art that IBM reached decades ago 
but I'd like to help encourage them not to do so in the only manner 
available to me. (I once looked inside an IBM Model 80 server going 
"cheap" in a surplus house. I concluded that there was no parts in it 
whatsoever that I could utilise in a "normal" PC system. Not RAM, hard 
drive, floppy, power supply, video, fans or anything else. Customised 
to utter perfection.  A good trick if you can do it, but not with my 
$s if I can help it.

> What he seemed to have wanted to say (according to his later 
> explanations
> in this thread) is "another reason not to buy a notebook" or 
> "another
> reason not to buy a Dell desktop" (even though the example cited in 
> the OP
> was about a Dell notebook -- adding to the general confusion that is 
> not so
> rare when emotional issues are treated as objective facts) or 
> something the
> like.

As above.
As it happens, I now DO have a Dell notebook on the premises :-). A 
friends father in law threw it out and my friend thought that I may be 
able to pass it on to somebody deserving.

I never intended to make any comment about reasons not to buy 
notebooks. As a generic beast I think the pros and cons are for most 
people clear enough. As I think I noted, I have bought 5 new laptops 
personally in relatively recent years for me or my family and have a 
gaggle of others which have arrived on my doorstep in various ways. 
They certainly have their place and I'm happy to accept the tradeoffs 
involved. So far, rather to my surprise, with the exception of the 
dead Acer display that I mentioned, I've not had cause to try to buy 
anything liable to be unobtainable for any of them. [[FWIW (not much) 
I probably have 20 or 30 laptops on the premises - most old and many 
dead.]]



        Russell







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