[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Dell profit slides 47 percent amid weak PC market here

[AhhYonzbd]

Yeah! This wonderful news to hear about. Dell is terrible, just down right terrible. Michael should have stayed serving the educational department. In addition to, not buying Alienware. You turned a great gaming computer into nothing but a piece of crap!

[eemail]

I will never never buy a Prehistoric Computational device (PC)
in my life

[Annon]

Maybe instead of peddling junk on the market and poorly designing 500 new models of a laptop every few months with 500 different problems each, they should streamline their product line and offer only a few choices per category, a few types of laptops in each price range. A few types of tablets in each price range, and the same for desktops and so on.

Maybe if they do this they will be able to build a reputation with consumers for building reliable hardware to run in their homes and people would switch to DELL hardware as the preferred brand for those people who are interested in a PC purchase.

Word of mouth is powerful, but statistics speak loudly too. If they decided to spend their RND dollars on a few good designs and models each refresh then they would save a lot on RND and in other areas. They would save on support if their computers were better quality. They would also stem their losses in RMA's and in repair costs. They would also save millions if they stopped RND for the countless hundreds of poorly-built devices that end up coming back to haunt the company a few months later and lasting for years sometimes. This ironically would be very ecofriendly as it would keep computers in-use in consumers’ homes longer preventing them just breaking and ending up in the landfills.

I’m sure their developers aren't very motivated to design; creative, efficient, as well as quality drivers when they are forced to move onto the next slightly modified hardware build to design hardware drivers for. When, they have some time to spend on a computer that wasn't just slapped together with glue and a glossy finish. I bet they would spend more personal effort designing stable; and by stable I am referring to enterprise quality drivers that can allow a computer to run for months without crashing the computer, hence frustrating the customer and making them bitter to the brand.

Not to mention, the current paradigm of releasing new computers to market with manufacturing poor quality and sometimes shoddy quality drivers that are almost never updates and fixed. Then there’s the hardware bugs, imperfections and poorly researched design decisions that will very in every other model they sell that will never be fixed, or even a features that sold someone on buying this laptop. A cleaver feature that innovates or makes someone’s experience with their computer a pleasant and enjoyable one. After their computer eventually expires, even if they come back to the same brand and look at the same category of their computer, they will find that the feature no longer exists.

Good and innovative design decisions are lost from version to version of the uni-body and hardware designs.

Because their development strategy is so fragmented and messy, the sometimes good features that make their appearance are not carried over to future designs. So in a sense, in some ways, we are not moving towards the future of technology but actually backwards with innovations remaining stuck in the past.

I believe this is a consequence of such an arcane development practice.

[mipa]

It's more a reflection of the quality of their products. Thicker, heavier, missing components essential considered mandatory, etc.

[karthiq]

Quote

Maybe instead of peddling junk on the market and poorly designing 500 new models of a laptop every few months with 500 different problems each, they should streamline their product line and offer only a few choices per category, a few types of laptops in each price range. A few types of tablets in each price range, and the same for desktops and so on. Maybe if they do this they will be able to build a reputation with consumers for building reliable hardware to run in their homes and people would switch to DELL hardware as the preferred brand for those people who are interested in a PC purchase. Word of mouth is powerful, but statistics speak loudly too. If they decided to spend their RND dollars on a few good designs and models each refresh then they would save a lot on RND and in other areas. They would save on support if their computers were better quality. They would also stem their losses in RMA's and in repair costs. They would also save millions if they stopped RND for the countless hundreds of poorly-built devices that end up coming back to haunt the company a few months later and lasting for years sometimes. This ironically would be very ecofriendly as it would keep computers in-use in consumers’ homes longer preventing them just breaking and ending up in the landfills. I’m sure their developers aren't very motivated to design; creative, efficient, as well as quality drivers when they are forced to move onto the next slightly modified hardware build to design hardware drivers for. When, they have some time to spend on a computer that wasn't just slapped together with glue and a glossy finish. I bet they would spend more personal effort designing stable; and by stable I am referring to enterprise quality drivers that can allow a computer to run for months without crashing the computer, hence frustrating the customer and making them bitter to the brand. Not to mention, the current paradigm of releasing new computers to market with manufacturing poor quality and sometimes shoddy quality drivers that are almost never updates and fixed. Then there’s the hardware bugs, imperfections and poorly researched design decisions that will very in every other model they sell that will never be fixed, or even a features that sold someone on buying this laptop. A cleaver feature that innovates or makes someone’s experience with their computer a pleasant and enjoyable one. After their computer eventually expires, even if they come back to the same brand and look at the same category of their computer, they will find that the feature no longer exists. Good and innovative design decisions are lost from version to version of the uni-body and hardware designs. Because their development strategy is so fragmented and messy, the sometimes good features that make their appearance are not carried over to future designs. So in a sense, in some ways, we are not moving towards the future of technology but actually backwards with innovations remaining stuck in the past. I believe this is a consequence of such an arcane development practice.

My thoughts exactly.

[Annon]

Quote

Maybe instead of peddling junk on the market and poorly designing 500 new models of a laptop every few months with 500 different problems each, they should streamline their product line and offer only a few choices per category, a few types of laptops in each price range. A few types of tablets in each price range, and the same for desktops and so on. Maybe if they do this they will be able to build a reputation with consumers for building reliable hardware to run in their homes and people would switch to DELL hardware as the preferred brand for those people who are interested in a PC purchase. Word of mouth is powerful, but statistics speak loudly too. If they decided to spend their RND dollars on a few good designs and models each refresh then they would save a lot on RND and in other areas. They would save on support if their computers were better quality. They would also stem their losses in RMA's and in repair costs. They would also save millions if they stopped RND for the countless hundreds of poorly-built devices that end up coming back to haunt the company a few months later and lasting for years sometimes. This ironically would be very ecofriendly as it would keep computers in-use in consumers’ homes longer preventing them just breaking and ending up in the landfills. I’m sure their developers aren't very motivated to design; creative, efficient, as well as quality drivers when they are forced to move onto the next slightly modified hardware build to design hardware drivers for. When, they have some time to spend on a computer that wasn't just slapped together with glue and a glossy finish. I bet they would spend more personal effort designing stable; and by stable I am referring to enterprise quality drivers that can allow a computer to run for months without crashing the computer, hence frustrating the customer and making them bitter to the brand. Not to mention, the current paradigm of releasing new computers to market with manufacturing poor quality and sometimes shoddy quality drivers that are almost never updates and fixed. Then there’s the hardware bugs, imperfections and poorly researched design decisions that will very in every other model they sell that will never be fixed, or even a features that sold someone on buying this laptop. A cleaver feature that innovates or makes someone’s experience with their computer a pleasant and enjoyable one. After their computer eventually expires, even if they come back to the same brand and look at the same category of their computer, they will find that the feature no longer exists. Good and innovative design decisions are lost from version to version of the uni-body and hardware designs. Because their development strategy is so fragmented and messy, the sometimes good features that make their appearance are not carried over to future designs. So in a sense, in some ways, we are not moving towards the future of technology but actually backwards with innovations remaining stuck in the past. I believe this is a consequence of such an arcane development practice.

My thoughts exactly.

Yay, positive response!

[wth1954]

While the criticism of Dell's offerings may be well founded, a big part of the problem is the increasing interest in tablets and smartphones which is taking the money away from the desktop machines.

Dell sells the vast majority of its machines to non-technical people who want to do browsing, email and Facebook. Another major customer is corporations who tend to run a set of business applications. If the machine does that, then they are happy and the more esoteric functionality is a non-issue.

[LarryE]

It's no wonder. I just returned an XPS One 27 all-in-one because of an inferior Wi-Fi card that they said was a software problem and they had to charge me for any technical support. This on a 3 day old unit. I was hesitant about buying another Dell because of problems I had a few years back when I wanted to upgrade a machine and was told I couldn't, but I could buy a new machine. The machine was a top of the line model and after only 2 years I wanted to upgrade the graphics card and was told the power supply would not support it and there was no replacement.

[Annon]

Quote

It's no wonder. I just returned an XPS One 27 all-in-one because of an inferior Wi-Fi card that they said was a software problem and they had to charge me for any technical support. This on a 3 day old unit. I was hesitant about buying another Dell because of problems I had a few years back when I wanted to upgrade a machine and was told I couldn't, but I could buy a new machine. The machine was a top of the line model and after only 2 years I wanted to upgrade the graphics card and was told the power supply would not support it and there was no replacement.

Very interesting, but not uncommon. Companies like DELL tend to make the greatest and newest thing you buy from them go obsolete overnight.

~

Oh, and did we forget to mention the crapware issue?

wth1954, mentioned:

Quote

Dell sells the vast majority of its machines to non-technical people who want to do browsing, email and Facebook.

If DELL sells a large majority to non-technical people, and I agree that they do. The non-technical majority of people aren't going to be removing the crapware from their brand new machines. Sad, sad, sad.....

Ironically I prefer DELL because they offered up crapware free re-installation media unlike every single other company who refuses to.

But it is becoming harder and harder to recommend DELL to people as their hardware breaks all the time. My friend and I owned about 7 DELL machines collectively. Overall, we have had problems with 100% of the machines. That is a pretty horrible track record.

One tower, the DVD drive broke 6 times, after dell came and replaced it all 6 times, ridiculous! Next tower, the memory, motherboard, and graphics card all fried in the same computer. Next computer, it came with the floppy drive not even screwed in and it was wobbling around in the tower, probably all through shipping, scratching and hitting things inside, ironically the floppy drive failed right after the warranty did. The next tower, defective memory and a really crappy GPU from ATI when the two companies were still two companies. The drivers for the graphics card always caused weird and unusual things to occur. Next, DELL, the motherboard started oozing something from the capillaries, this is from when there was a class action lawsuit because DELL knew they were selling PCs with defective motherboards for over 3 years and failed to notify their customers. Even when I called in 8 times for that one computers, they were silent and said it was my fault.
Yea, my fault for spending my money, huh.

And I never got a peace of all class action either...

And I didn't even include all of the Windows re-installs after vengeful viruses.