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Dell

AG/DC Mar 05 2008 08:24 AM

At least 80% of the last batch of Dells in our office have gone down with fried motherboards. I mice elf have lost two. Our poor tech director keeps having to transplant our hard drives. Maybe their market share has gotten too huge and they're offsetting all their manufacture to some dark corner of China, but --- to go by the buzz among techies --- they've gone frome the standard in affordable goodness to the standard in cheap badness in like two and a half yeasrs.

KC Mar 05 2008 08:52 AM

We're a Dell office of about 25 desktops and have very little problem with the machines. My beef the last two years has been with HP printers and I've since abandoned them for Xerox and Lexmark. A lot of computer problems, I think, especially fried boards, could be more power related than design flaws. A high quality surge protector and battery backup should be used for every computer.

AG/DC Mar 05 2008 09:01 AM

We do have good surge protectors, but good point. Our investigations suggest that this maybe was simply a bad batch and a bad model (Optiflex 745), and doesn't necessarily speak to the whole line. But our tech team is frustrated and may be looking beyond Dell next time. We also just happened to buy a crap batch of laptops from them.

KC Mar 05 2008 09:10 AM

I buried my Dell work issued laptop around Thanksgiving for a souped up Lexmark Thinkpad instead. I love this freakin' machine, but it cost twice what a Dell mighta. If I had an office full of bad machines I'd be writing Michael a letter a week until he had someone call me to straighten out. I'm a pain in the ass that way.

Rockin' Doc Mar 05 2008 11:24 AM

I have 19 Dell workstations at my office. Depending on the computer, they have been in service from one to four years each. We have never had to replace a single mother board or hard drive. I'm on my third dell at the house (as well ass the wife and son have laptops) and we have been trouble free as well. I have had software problems in the past, but the hardware has never been a problem. I guess I have been pretty fortunate. I have also had 2 Gateways without any problems. Of course, I've probably jinxed myself with this post.

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