GW2K or Dell?

[Dan Kissane]

I have had a great number of problems with Dell equipment. About 1/3 of
what we buy from them has a failure of some kind within 3 months. This
includes a large number of hard drive failures, video boards, and mice.

However, they always come and replace them right away but the warratny
will run out and then the failures will be a bigger problem.



On Sun, 7 Dec 1997 spober at manvax.cc.manhattan.edu wrote:

> Michael Dargan wrote:
> > We're about to upgrade some of our public Internet access stations from
> > various models of 486s to Pentiums.  We've had good luck with a couple of
> > Dell Optiplexes used by staff.  However, I can get Gateway E1000 series
> > machines for several hundred dollars less than similarly equipped Dells.
> > I'm interested in hearing GW2K E series stories, praise, gripes, etc.
> > 
> 
> Don't buy Dell!  
> 
> >From fewer than 10 Dells bought 2 years ago, we've had either 3 or 4
> HD failures.  The tech support on them was mediocre.  A source here 
> told me that there have been a lot of HD failures with the other 
> Dell computers on campus as well.
> 
> A more recent purchase was 4 Optiplexes delivered to our institution 
> in late summer (during the UPS strike).  The delivery service asked 
> our employees to take the boxes off the truck, and when they demurred, 
> the delivery service driver THREW the Dell boxes off the truck. Since 
> there is almost a 4 foot drop from truck to ground, the library refused 
> delivery on them and asked Dell for a replacement.  We did not open the 
> boxes and asked Dell to take them back.
> 
> It took over a month for the replacement shipment to come in.  When it
> did, one of the machines had a hard drive failure within it's first day
> of use.  When I called the company for a replacement HD, I was told that
> the warrantee started on these pc's in August - the day the other 
> *refused* shipment was tossed off a truck!  I asked that the warrantee
> begin the date the replacement shipment arrived.  I was told that a 
> supervisor refused to approve the change in warrantee date because
> we had never proven that there was anything wrong with the original
> shipment. (!)  We did get the warrantee extended, by going over that
> supervisor's head, but that move should not have been necessary, IMO.
> 
> They took three and a half months to arrange the return transport for
> the original shipment.  The boxes dominated one colleague's small 
> office during this time.  We made repeated requests for pickup, with
> no response during this period.
> 
> The computers came with network cards but NO network driver software.
> When I asked for this to be sent, I was told to download it off their
> website (and it took the tech about a half hour to find what the correct
> file was and where it was on the site - time I had to spend on hold
> awaiting this info...)   I downloaded the files, and then when I had 
> installation problems, the support techs were baffled and  wasted
> huge amounts of my time NOT solving the problem.  Fortunately a kind
> support tech at 3com solved the problem in 10 minutes (though he warned
> me that he wasn't really supposed to be answering that sort of question,
> as the support for the network cards should be coming from Dell <sigh>).
> 
> I am convinced that that last order of Dells was cursed from the moment
> the first computers were tossed off a truck.  And if *I* had any say in
> it, those would be the last Dells to cross our doorway.  However,
> the company is top rated for service and reliability, yada yada yada.
> Not HERE - but SOMEWHERE there seem to be a lot of people who like them!  
> 
> Glad you asked! :-)
> 
> //\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\//\\
>  Stacy Pober			   Internet: spober at manvax.cc.manhattan.edu
>  Information Alchemist		   http://www.manhattan.edu/library/mclmenu.html
>  Manhattan College Libraries	   Phone: 718-862-7980                    
>  Riverdale, NY 10471	     	   Fax: 718-862-7995                    
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> 

Dan Kissane
Systems Librarian
SUNY College at Oneonta
Oneonta, NY 13820
dfk at oneonta.edu