This subject seems to have been discussed to death, so Im reluctant to throw my 2 cents worth in, but its relevant dammit.... I always used to love Dells. I had corporate support contracts of my own and a lot of my clients were using them too. The build quality was great, the support and service was great and I had no problem recommending them to anyone (especially friends and family). My wife, mother inlaw, grandmother in law and several of my friends and colleagues all had Dell laptops as a result of my recommendations... Then something happened in Dell (I dont know what), but everything changed. Almost overnight the service became terrible, any new machines I and others received had flaws or very quickly developed problems... I stuck with them regardless, believing that perhaps it was just a "hiccup", but 4 machines failed / were delivered with faults one after another and I began to look around at alternatives. As this was almost christmas a few years ago, I had already ordered my wife a new Laptop, but was informed just a week before xmas that the constant delays werent getting any better and they slapped another 2 month delay on it.... A close friend who had bought a Dell laptop on my recommendation phoned me to say that it had died, Dell had picked it up, "serviced" it, returned it in the same condition (it eventually transpired that the motherboard was dead so how they could have decided it was "ok" is beyond me). Needless to say, she wasnt impressed. The very last time I used a Dell was a couple of years ago. A client insisted that I use one of their laptops (as they werent happy about contractors using their own machines on company premises). They phoned Dell and had a brand new laptop waiting for me when I attended site for the first time, fully configured by their own engineers. Within 8 hours, the wireless card became erratic. Within 3 days, the network card failed completely AND half the memory had disappeared, rendering the thing unbootable (the memory upgrade hadnt been seated properly, so it had half come out, frying it completely). Within a month the hard drive failed. By the middle of the contract (3 months) the screen had hundreds of bad pixels, various parts were intermittent (including the pc slot, the new network adaptor, the wireless and even the power button) and it was running like a 3 legged dog. Lets be clear, I wasnt using this thing whilst bungee jumping but Id have expected it to behave better even if I had! Eventually, I boxed the thing up and despite my clients protests, continued working using my own machines and the laptop has sat in storage ever since. I wont be recommending Dell again. Even if they sort their reliability problems out, it doesnt instil confidence to know that they allowed things to get that bad in the first place. Recommended brands now? IBM thinkpad (man they are tough! most of my clients that formerly used Dell are now using these), HP, Sony EK ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dwayne Reid" To: "Microcontroller discussion list - Public." Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 8:38 PM Subject: Re: [OT]:: Another reason not to buy a Dell > Thought I drop a few parting comments before this thread dies: > > 1) I'm fond of Dell machines - both laptop and desktop. One of the > reasons is their superb support program. Yeah - you've got to pay > for it up front. Still better than not having it at all. > > My real reason for liking Dell's support program so much is that I > rarely have to get involved on those few occasions when a friend or > colleague who purchased a Dell machine on my recommendation has > problems - they and Dell support seem to be able to sort out the > problem easily. > > > 2) I've becoming quite fond of HP laptops. I recommended a couple of > machines to friends last fall (sudden need arose - no time available > to wait for Dell machines to be built and shipped). > > Things I liked about the particular 17" widescreen models we > picked: 2 hard drives, 2 PC slots (1 PCMCIA, the other is the new > Express card slot), great battery life, replacement keyboard readily > available. > > I had to work on one of those machines recently - friend exercised > bad judgement when clicking on a particular link. Was easy to pull > the drive go get all of her data off. Not as easy as a Dell laptop > but darned easy nonetheless. > > > 3) Also recently spent some time messing with a recent IBM > Thinkcentre desktop machine. Obviously designed and built for > Corporate use but easy to work on and with. Nice machine, actually > (M50 series 8189). > > > 4) Have also spent much time recently with my hands inside standard > "white box" machines built from parts gathered from various suppliers > - both machines that I put together as well as machines put together > by others. > > Some of these machines had problems that make me wish that the owners > had purchased Dell machines so that Dell support could deal with the > self-inflicted problems instead of me . > > > My original opinion still holds: if someone is well-enough off to > afford a Dell machine and accompanying service contract, I fully > recommend that they go that route rather than almost anything else. > > I'm open to alternatives but so far, Dell looks like the best bet. YMMV > > dwayne > > -- > Dwayne Reid > Trinity Electronics Systems Ltd Edmonton, AB, CANADA > (780) 489-3199 voice (780) 487-6397 fax > > Celebrating 22 years of Engineering Innovation (1984 - 2006) > .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .-. .- > `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' `-' > Do NOT send unsolicited commercial email to this email address. > This message neither grants consent to receive unsolicited > commercial email nor is intended to solicit commercial email. > > -- > http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive > View/change your membership options at > http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist