I remember in 1998, that a friend of mine, who knew a lot about computers, told me that ‘everything by HP is great, everything by Dell is terrible." And, at the time, my experience matched up, and, IIRC, that was pretty much the scuttlebutt making the rounds (whenever it came up.) In short, Dell was terrible.
Then, the next thing I knew, old goofus came on with the "Dude, you’re gettin’ a Dell!" advertisements, and the rest is history.
I still hate Dell, having bought some of their junk in '05, but, more to the point:
What was wrong with Dell in the late nineties? They seemed to have a *horrible *reputation. How did it get turned around? Was it just the great marketing, which gave them more money, and they started to get serious?
My memory is that Dell had a great rep in the 90’s. If anything, their quality declined after they got huge and the “you’re gettin a Dell” commercials.
I remember Acer having a terrible rep in the 90’s. Not Dell.
I now companies that used Dell pretty much as standard through the whole of the '90s and never had particular problems with them.
What often happens is that a component manufacturer will make a bad batch of components. These may end up with one manufacturer who will use them in their machines. A few end user companies will make some big orders and each end up with a lot of machines with the faulty component.
For years afterwards anyone who worked for one of those companies will not have a good word to say about the particular computer company.
The effect is amplified where an end user buys a lot of machines from the same manufacturer because everyone in the organisation perceive the manufacturer’s products to be ‘troublesome’.
Well their customer service is wretched. Navigate through a labyrinthine touchtone menu so you can talk to a bunch of outsourced Indians reading off scripts. Of course, it blows their minds if you ask them a question that’s not on it, as they are unable to comprehend any fucking thing at all. It’s like talking to a robot calling himself “Dave” with a heavy and difficult to understand accent. No thanks.
I think you are 180 degrees turned around. Dell was the God King of corporate perfromance and value in the 90’s and its stock reflected this reality. In the last 6 or 7 years Dell has been more stagnant, it products more clunky, and it moved its non-corporate support off shore. It’s less of compelling deal than it used to be.
Re Dell quality it’s always (to me) been on a par with similarly priced HP and IBM PC products. Dell was simply more proactive is allowing far greater customization of the product than anyone else, and being far easier to order from in serving the corporate and government customer base. This is still their greatest strength.
Being able to build customized systems was a big competitive advantage for Dell, and the (generally US-based) factories were set up to allow this. But the market has shifted and now many people want to be able to buy a standard configuration, and at a low price. In this case, it’s cheaper to build the systems overseas and I think Dell is now shifting production to China.
The company was also hurt by the “bulging capacitors” issue (although that affected many other manufacturers as well) and is currently involved in a lawsuit over the issue.
Dell used to be a great company, and my experience does not match the OPs. However, now they suck and there is no way they’ll ever get another dime from me.
Anecdotal but, I had the same trouble calling tech support for my Sony Viao laptop, which went belly up three times in the first two months. I had to call Dell’s tech support after 18 months and, although Dell is also outsourced, it was nowhere near as painful as the Sony experience. My best experience has been with a five year old Gateway; I’ve never had to call their tech support desk at all.
So, my take is that Sony customer service is orders of magnitude more horrific than Dell.
Around 2000 or so I was a service tech at a third party company that sold Dells to a Fortune 500 company. One time a Dell rep told the fortune 500 company that if they bought a certain laptop and dockstation, then if they put a video card in the docking station, the laptop would use that video card when docked and it’s built in video when not. This was for a vice president, so the situation had a higher visability than most techie issues have. The companies IT dept couldn’t get it to work, so they called me. I couldn’t get it to work, so I called Dell (on a special support number, not just basic end user support). Dell’s response, and I am giving an exact quote here, was “Well if it don’t work then it don’t work.” Since Dell is the one that said it would work, the vice president was less than pleased when I quoted Dell’s response to him. IIRC they started buying mostly HP machines shortly after that.
As a total side note, best tech support ever was Gateway. I had a question on jumper setting and couldn’t find the manual for their motherboard. I called them and was told the tech would look it up and call me back. Everyone who has every worked with computers knows that’s tech supports polite way of saying ‘Go screw yourself’. Surprisingly, I received a call with the jumper info within half an hour. Especially noteworthy because our company had no relationship with Gateway, I was working with the same tech support number any end user would call.
I have an H/P and a Dell, I prefer my HP desktop to my Dell desktop, but have not had a problem with either. I just like the style of the H/P.
I’ve worked with thousands of Dells when I did ordering for a huge hotel chain. We got like two bad ones out of those thousands. Admittedly we had a huge account so Dell gave us excellent service. That an average home user isn’t likely to get.
I, too, have completely the opposite memory. In my recollection, Dell was -the- quality brand in the 90s, with a price tag to match. Then they went “mainstream” in the home market and their prices and quality dropped.
That was my experience. I swore by Dell now I swear at them. They shifted me to HP. I owned Compaq’s and HP. I swore by them, now I swear at them. I will never deal with any of those companies ever again. HP printers are garbage. Compaq is just an afterthought laugh. Dell? Who knows, but why bother. The sold a bunch of defective shit to institutions and individuals and they deserve to go under.
Apple? Their stuff is 95% great. The other 5% drives you nuts but at the end of the day there is a lot less aggravation. The support is 500% better than the others. You pay for the quality but you get it. That’s enough for me.
To the Californians: If you are thinking of voting for Carly then God help anyone that votes for someone who has proven themselves to be a managerial disaster.
It’s a mystery to me too. Back in the early 90’s, the only company making their computers themselves were Apple and IBM. Everybody else (including HP and Dell) were re-branding other people’s merchandise and selling it as their own brand. Hobbyists were laughing at everybody who were paying 500-1k over fair market value for an assembled computer that was inferior to anything you could make on your own from cobbled together parts.
Yes, exactly. I was building computers from stuff I got from Tiger Direct, etc. Then, somehow, everything went crazy. It became more trouble than it was worth. I went to Apple after my top-of-the-line HP crashed my email and everything else. HP support was useless. (Spend an hour 1/2 on the phone with some person in Calcutta that is running you through every diagnostic exercise that doesn’t really address your problem and has no authority to solve your problem.) I’ve never looked back. Apple is far from perfect but it’s a whole lot better.
I have had good response from Dell with customer service (a little to proactive if anything.) My wife’s laptop developed an odd noise and as I’d paid for it under my name I put the support request through via email. The next business day when I finished work I found 5 missed calls on my phone, Dell support trying to contact and arrange a time for a serviceman to come around to our house and fix it. It was after business hours by then so I didn’t return the call, then first thing the next morning they called again and I was able to get them out that afternoon. The laptop was fixed that day.
Word. I got an Acer last year and now it’s a brick.
Wireless card quits regularly, sometimes crashing the machine.
It only boots every other time.
Now it won’t charge.
I didn’t return it within the warranty period so I have written it off.
[hijack] So I need a new laptop. My work Dell has never let me down but there’s a lot of bad feeling above, and I will never touch Acer again, so any (non-Apple) recommendations? [/hijack]