IT News and Information Blog

The Dell of Change  12.12.2010

Dell computers were my favourite computer, once upon a time. Not any more: many other users, like myself, have experienced the change of Dell.

And what change is this? Well....

Another once upon a time I built my desktop computers for my own use and for my sons. Why? It was a LOT cheaper than buying a ready-made one and it was fun! Achievement! And I got exactly what I wanted.

Then Dell came along... custom specification, ready-built, for LESS than what I could build a machine for, less than buying the individual bits and putting them together. Wow. I was amazed. My first Dell was a home desktop machine: up-and-running in minutes, fully configured, the Windows XP operating system actually worked! (Well, as good as one can expect from you-know-who). I was over the moon!

Time passes. The company I worked for had lots of Dell machines. They worked well. I bought a Dell laptop (Latitude D810) for myself. Configured, ordered and delivered in a week! Perfect! Well almost, the memory was faulty, but no problem, they replaced the memory, delivered by a courier next day! Fantastic service. This was, albeit, once upon a time about three years ago.

Time passes some more. My company's Dell desktop began a routine of dying. It died five times. (For the techies amongst you, the motherboard overheated and fried itself to death). The company gave it up in the end, scrapped it, bought another Dell.

Time passes.... I left my employer's company. My cherished Latitude experienced a series of faults...: DVD errors, serial/USB port faults, fan failures, etc. The service was great! I would report the fault, they would deliver the parts by courier next day or send an engineer (next day!) to my office and fix it. Again and again and again.

In the end, I gave up. After two and one-half years, I put my cherished Dell Latitude in the cupboard and only use it as an emergency spare or for occasional testing. I bought a Samsung laptop (R780) to replace it. The Samsung is great!

Dell's service is great, shame about the reliability. If you don't believe me, see what others have reported on the TechRepublic's User Survey.

If you know the same or different, let everyone know - add your comment!

By the way, my original Dell home desktop (over 6 years old now - ancient) still works perfectly. Shame about the Dell of Change.