Dell Good/Bad?

jjmax

Dell Tech Support is sh1te, whatever ethnicity they may be.
My experience the other week was with an Irish Girl at their call cantere in Derry (no, no, Derry not Delhi).
She asked me to remove the HD, Ram, Modem, DVD, from the laptop.
I asked her would she have any recommendations about how to do this without running the risk of static fooking up the whole thing.
She had no idea what I was talking about, had never even heard of a clean room, except that it was a room that had been polished and hoovered (possibly causing a huge static buildup due to the hoover and cloth rubbing over all the rooms surfaces).
She told me that if I refused to do what she said then she'd terminate the call.
I refused, but managed to explain to her the reason why I refused before she hung up.
My experience Dell tech Support are sh1te.
Nobody knows everything, so if you're unsure about something just ask, which she apparently was unwilling to do.
She isn't really to blame it just symptomatic of Dell's in-house fast-track support training.
As I said earlier this was a 90 minute call and her request came about 45mins into it.
I had to wait in a queue of 14 people for 10minutes before I reached her. So, in a call-centre that busy, her supervisor would have been paying attention to what was going on and is apparently clueless himself.

Megatron

jjmax wrote:

Dell Tech Support is sh1te, whatever ethnicity they may be.
My experience the other week was with an Irish Girl at their call cantere in Derry (no, no, Derry not Delhi).

That person you spoke to is not from Dell. From a 3rd party company who do some of the tech support.

as for the 1 yr collect and return , if it doesn come to that it usualy means you will be without your PC for 10 working days.

I've never had a moment's problem with my Dell, i have had problems with the OS, but i've fixed that myself.

I bought dell because i was too busy with work to sit down and build my own PC, and it does the job very nicely indeed. Some upgrades i bought myself and upgraded, Honestly if people are having problems upgrading thier system they just are not looking in the right places.

jjmax

So, Dell tech support are sh1te or the people Dell hire to do their tech support are sh1te?
I can't see the difference.
But hey, if you're happy with Dell then fair enough.
Millions of people seem to have no problem with them hence their success.

Gurgle

jjmax wrote:

Millions of people seem to have no problem with them hence their success.

The same millions of people who use it as a PC shaped ornament, who bought a Dell in the first place because it looks cool in black.

Seriously, There are so many ppl who wouldn't know the difference if you gave them a 386, so long as it had the 17" TFT and wireless peripherals.

Of course they're the ones who spend €2k every 2 years keeping up to date.

Jip

Never has one man met so much smarminess in one place !
No wonder many people have perceptions of anyone involved in computers being geeks.
Some of you remind me of a skit I saw on "Not the 9 o'clock News" where someone out of touch with current trends (the current one seems to be a dislike of Dell or anyone who buys a ready made P.C.) went into a store to buy a new 'gramophone' and the 2 lads working there proceeded to quiz and take the piss out of him for their own amusement because the customer didn't have the same level of expertise as them.

Dempsey

I agree with Jip. People buy dell because they keep it simple for people that dont give a **** about a 6800 Ultra.

jjmax

Well, **** me gently with a chainsaw Jip, but seeing as 29 people have voted to dislike Dell, and 39 have voted the other way, I'd say the current trend is to big-up Dell.
Doesn't take smarminess to figure that one out.
I'd say this thread was light on technical mumbo-jumbo too.
Though if you want to have a bleary-eyed giggle and reminisce about some TV-show you might do well to have a gander through some of the other posts, (The modders forum is always good for a laugh!)

Spacedog

Dell are a rip off, not on base machines, but on extras like next day service charges etc. extra ram, hard drives etc... If you look at what they add on for an extra 512MB of ram and then go looking around, you'll almost always find it cheaper elsewhere.

nesf

Dell, are, as many have pointed out above, perfect for someone who isn't technically proficient and after just a machine for web surfing or spreadsheet work. These people make up a majority of the people buying PC's so Dell are doing the right thing by catering to them.

Personally I build my own PC's after having a Dell being bought for me as a present 4 years ago and it being totally unupgradeable apart from it's memory. But I'm not your average PC buyer, so thus I shouldn't be using Dell in the first place (the person who bought the machine didn't know anything about computers so meh).

If you need a high powered laptop, then your probably better off looking elsewhere (personally I love nice durable toshibas) but it's a matter of personal preference. If all you want is a machine for surfing and some office work, then definitely go for a Dell. If you're like me and a person who'll be running complex applied math simulations on the machine, then you probably need a more specialist machine than Dell do, but imo if you're doing this kind of work on a PC you should be at least proficient enough (or know someone who is) to build your own PC.

I don't get the modders who bitch about Dell, if you're a modder who chose to buy from Dell originally you are wasting your time, if you really want to mod a machine you're better off building it from the ground up aimed at that goal. As for recommended PSU ratings for 9800 cards, you can get away with 250 but you WANT 350 so that your PSU isn't being strained by you running the card. Believe me on this one.

azezil

I often wonder do the people who should "you could build the same machine yourself cheaper" take into account the software you get with the dell machine. Whilst you may be able to build the physical machine cheaper, software is expensive

BoB_BoT

azezil wrote:

I often wonder do the people who should "you could build the same machine yourself cheaper" take into account the software you get with the dell machine. Whilst you may be able to build the physical machine cheaper, software is expensive

Yeah I was thinking the exact same thing myself, I've tried to build computers for customers and compare them with dell. People who build their own machines and compare to dell don't seem to consider the price of the OS. That's generally an extra €130 on top of the machine cost. I can't compete, you get your support with dell, you get your engineers on call when you have major problems. Also when you go with a dell offer they throw in a flatscreen, if you add that price onto a basic machine it raises it a good bit as compared to a crt!

From what i've found dealing with dell myself they're fairly good. I fix computers for companies, most of which have dells, the problems are generally software problems i.e. spyware, virus etc... only twice have I had to contact dell about a machine fault and when I did they were polite, fast and had the parts out to us as fast as possible.

So dell gets my thumbs up