Dell Sucks

Dell sucks dude

What a day this has been. Seems like I'm getting sick, so a major head cold has been scrambling my brain since morning. I was up late last night scouring the web for a good online survey creation tool. I was looking for software that would allow me to create a survey, and they give me Perl files to upload to the web server. The results would get saved to a comma delimited text file. I did the same search a few years back and the best piece of software turned out to be EZSurvey. Even though I hate that pitiful piece of software, it is actually the best thing out there still today. I finally got my survey created and went to bed at 1:30am. Of course this was for work, not for this site.

Speaking of work, I got a new computer at work today. Can't exactly say where I work, but it's a big Fortune 100 company. Of course, we use Dell for all the PC's in the company. My last PC, now a few years old, was ok (for a Dell). When I got the new PC out of the box the first thing I noticed was the cheapness of the parts. I mean, here I am unhooking the old PC, and layout the new parts right beside them. The mouse is a cheaper grade of plastic, and the cord is roughly half of the diameter around. The wires are just plain cheap. The keboard is only 2/3 the size of my original one, and very cheap plastic. It reminded me of a $9.95 Keytronics keyboard. It's cord was also very thin. One of the local support techs told me that he picked up a keyboard last month, and when the cord got caught on something on the desk it ripped right out of the back of the keyboard case.

Luckily enough, my new PC actually came with a real CD-Rom drive. What I mean is, almost all the newer ones seem to be coming with cheap notebook CD-Rom drives (in the desktops). Sure the machine is fast, it seems to be working good so far. But I believe that if Dell keeps putting out cheap cookie cutter assembly line pc's like this their business will dry up. I know damn well that keyboard won't last me more than 6 months. Microsoft should be embaressed to have their name on that cheap knockoff Dell Intellimouse.

I just went to the Dell web site and was looking at a 1.7 Ghz machine with 512MB Ram and a 40GB HD, 64MB video ram, 17" monitor. That piece of crap was over $1,200. Good lord, I could build a much BETTER machine with better quality parts for around $800. For $1,200 I could build a PC with IDE Raid, 2-40GB hard drives, 1GB of ram, and a 128MB video card. I bet I could even squeeze in 5.1 surround sound in there.

I may be biased, but I've been building PC's for myself and others for 5-6 years. I hate cookie cutter production PC's. If you're thinking of getting new PC, do yourself a favor. Go to your local computer store (not the Best Buy, Sears, OfficeMax, CompUSA, Circuit City crap) and talk to a guy that actually builds PC's for a living by hand. Ask him what he likes. Tell him what you want to do on your PC, and have him give you a price. Unlike cars and applicances, you can actually pick out piece by piece exactly what you want in your puter. That's right, you can hand pick the case, the mouse, the monitor, cool speakers, a big hard drive, and lots of memory. If you don't know what to get, they can help you.

Enough of my soapbox for today. Just remember I said it first...

Dell sucks dude.
Posted by jtpratt at May 08, 2002 12:13 AM