It would seem
the majority of people I confer with have nothing but pain
and anguish leading to murderous thoughts when dealing with Dell.
F Dell and it's namesake!
I wonder why the disparity exists?
Maybe because once upon a time, Dell's were actually good.
For some time, I had recommended them. Their PCs were tanks. You could
beat the hell out of them, and they kept working. And they were good
solid components that worked with default installs of windows 95 and NT
4. Support was even once great (knowledgeable, polite, fast).
And then they grew... and cut costs to stay in business... and went into
the crapper like just about every other consumer PC company.
Now, when people tell me they are going to buy a PC, and ask who I
recommend... I tell them with a straight honest face... I recommend NO
ONE for home use. I can't honestly think of a single good company
building consumer level windows boxes. Between them all putting in
cheaper and cheaper parts, and MS making windows... well more windows
like, I can't think of any company that can get it right, and get it
right consistently.
So now I ask people WHY they are buying a windows PC. Everyone seems to
have one of two answers. 1: to play games (I tell them to buy a
Playstation 2), or 2: to get online (I tell them to buy a cheap used low
end PII and throw a ton of ram into it). Everyone that doesn't fit one of
those two... I tell them to learn enough to build their own, or just go
with a cheap LOCAL vendor (so you have someone you can throw the machine
at when it craps out for the 100th time), or buy a Macintosh.
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
