Nothing I can link to, I’m afraid. (There’s been stories in The Tennessean about it, but they only keep 14 days worth of articles online.) I can tell you that when I went through an “interview” (in reality just a mass orientation) that they stated Dell hadn’t hired anyone on fulltime and that they weren’t going to be hiring anyone fulltime. Several of the people there recounted to me that this was the policy, and I’ve ran into I don’t know how many people who’ve independantly told me the same thing without being prompted.
One of the ways they can get away with it is that the folks they’re “hiring” don’t exactly have a lot of money, so they can’t afford a lawyer, and probably aren’t educated enough to know what the law is.
I think that one of the ways they cover it up is that they apparently don’t allow any time off for the temps. (i.e. you miss a day, you could very well be out of a job.) With the level of “churn” that they have of temps, it’d probably be difficult for anyone to spot the pattern.
Last I knew, the temp agency they were using was Spherion, so you could probably call the Nashville branch and ask about a Dell job. (Pretending to be a prospective employee, of course.)
Interesting. Thanks Tuckerfan. What’s amazing is that the IRS doesn’t stomp on Dell over this – the reason MS got the beat-down was because the IRS wasn’t getting their due if the employees were permatemps, so it was seen as tax fraud on the company’s part, IIRC.[/hijack]
As Athena said, and to which I whole-heartedly agree, go back about ten years and Dell had great customer service and technical support. Now it’s terrible.
My company used to buy Gateway computers exclusively in the '90s. Their technical support, customer service and even custom builds became so bad we cancelled our corporate accounts with them and switched to Dell. Dell was fantastic back then. Their computers just worked, and if you did have a problem they took care of it, and if they couldn’t resolve it over the phone they sent you a part and walked you through installing it, and if that didn’t work they sent you a whole new computer. It was wonderful. Fast forward to around 2004 and Dell is a completely different company. Whereas before problems were rare, now they’re common. Also, since Dell has decided to outsource its tech support and customer service to the Philippines and India (yes, I know, like other companies) their competence and ability to resolve client issues in a timely manner has suffered significantly. Not only are there dialect comprehension challenges, the CSRs Dell uses are not technicians, or not Dell-Certified technicans because invariably, for most any issue, you’re put on hold multiple times while it’s being researched. I can read a manual or TechNet myself. I don’t need to call Dell to do that for me. Talk about frustrating. In fact, the only way we’ve been able to get around that annoyance is to buy the Gold Support package for every machine which, let me tell ya, is not cheap.
Before spending any significant money on a Dell computer I recommend reading a few of the following articles. There are many others like it, and the experiences of a number of these folks is broadly indicative of our experiences with Dell for the past 4 years. Caveat Emptor…that’s all I’m sayin’.
FWIW, this would be my third Dell computer in a row. First one the main problem I had with it was some questionable design choices (the big plastic clip to hold down the daughterboard cards instead of using screws) and some difficult to upgrade parts (RDRAM… so freaking expensive). The last computer I got was a laptop back in September. I quickly decided that the laptop wasn’t what I needed, and decided to give it to my mom for Christmas.
Before that happened, I managed to crash the silly thing, and when I called Dell tech support, they answered right away, walked me through a couple attempts at fixing it, and when that and when that all failed, they arranged to send me a replacement HD with the OS pre-loaded (which didn’t work, but at least I was able to reinstall Windows on this one, which was more than I could do with the first one). Next thing you know, I can’t get DVDs to play in Windows, I go onto the website and use the chat support, and they just say they’ll send me a copy of Cyberlink PowerDVD, so problem solved there too.
Based on my recent experience, the tech support seems to have it together pretty well, though I did buy the year of tech support, so that might be part of it, and I’ve generally liked my Dells in the past, so I don’t have any problem with buying from Dell again in the future (except that the selection of Dell computers and options through the AAFES website is rather lackluster, so so much for the military discount).
I think that the presumption that a BYOPC solution is the cheapest and best is an antiquated notion. I’m currently running a home built PC that’s been a raging success and at the time it was much cheaper than a stock model, but prices have dropped dramatically since then. Certainly if you are looking for a customized model or a super high-end machine it’s probably going to be cheaper to cherry pick the parts you want and build your own, but for the typical user ( email-internet-chat-music-porn-games) any of the run of the mill packages you see will be more then adequate. There are $500 PC packages for sale at just about every retailer this holiday season and there’s no way that you could build an equivalent machine for anywhere near that cost when the Windows license alone will run you $200+.
Really, unless you are really sure that you need a premium machine I wouldn’t waste your money on them. For the OP, assuming he’s going to be too busy to become a hardcore gamer, I just don’t see the benefit for getting a bleeding edge CPU and video card. Get yourself something like this one and beat it into the ground. By the time it’s too far behind the curve, the next adequate PC will be available for $400 and you can treat it as a disposable. You can spend $2000 on a computer now and it’ll be way behind that $400 one you can buy in 3 years, so I figure you’re better off saving the $1000 and getting 2 PCs instead of a top of the line one now.
Certainly there are plenty of people who genuinely need that rockstar machine right now, but in my experience 75% of the people who think they do never end up capitalizing on that extra power. Those people just wasted $1000.
This is the kind of computers I build now. Pay no attention to the OS, just the style. No cooling problems. No access problems, not paying for pretty gee-gaws. My next tow XP machines will be the same. this one and the next two also will be mounted on thin plywood and hung on the wall behind the monitors. Woo free up almost all the desk space. If you want to go wireless you can make it really clean and pretty but I don’t care about pretty and you still need the UPC and power leads so it will never be totally wireless at the affordable tech levels of today.
We run in house 2 windows boxes, a Linux box and a laptop as a visitor use machine when not taking it on road trips.
Can get a lot of computer for the least $$ this way.
Looks pretty neat, but would be entirely unsuitable to my living environment. I’m required to keep my dorm room neat and dust-free (and having an open computer with all the nooks and crannies and such would make that difficult), and my sergeants are pretty likely to see that and misinterpret it as me either not putting away my spare computer parts before I leave, or even worse, being “too lazy” to put it in a case so it looks more squared away.
Copies of XP in the hands of existing retailers will continue to be sold until supplies run out. Even then, till MS stops selling licences, they will be around. MS last I heard will still be supporting XP pro through 2014 due to the massive business user base.
