Comments on: When Dell sells something they don’t properly support, lawsuits result

By: Red Flounder

Red Flounder — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:43:01 +0000

Old topic, but I blame her teachers. These educators who profess to be experts should have known that she could have used alternative software. I personally know and loathe dozens of these people who got into the field for the simple reason that they have summers off.

By: jmjames

jmjames — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 01:15:40 +0000

At the super-low end, it is almost impossible to beat "the big boys". I priced out one of those MSI Wind systems, the kind with an Atom CPU. Adding a cheap hard drive (whatever was the cheapest), a cheap SATA DVD burner, the cheapest 2 GB of RAM that would fit, and a copy of Windows, it came out to be about $300, before shipping and handling. eMachines will sell me something for about the same price, and it will be a "real" CPU, not the Atom, and even come with speakers, mouse, and keyboard. On the other hand, once you get past about $600, I find that the "big boys" are indeed a rip off. They basically charge you double the base model price, for the next level CPU, a slightly bigger hard drive, and another $20 worth of RAM. My mother walks into that trap every few years, buys a "mid range PC", but it is still inadequete for her needs. She does a lot of photo work, so what she needs is a lot of RAM, and preferably twin hard drives in a RAID 1 so she doesn’t lose any of her valuable data. And she also needs a qulaity video card. Instead, she keeps spending $800 on "mid range" boxes that I could assemble for $500 – $600.

J.Ja

By: notgonnatellya

notgonnatellya — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 01:04:59 +0000

My only experience with dell is via the business unit. It doesn't take much to get a business account -- says the business customer without a business.

The reason I said what i said aobut white box sellers is that if they sold a machine with linux, and they didn't support it, I suspect they'd only offer it to people who specifically requested it and I also suspect they'd do their best to convince noobs from getting the OS.

I always build my own machines, so I really don't have to worry about this much, except for when it's a friend's or parents machine (where most of my Dell CS experience comes from). It's not for everyone, but I generally find that I can build a better machine for about the same money, if not less...and after that, I tend to upgrade it bits and pieces.

Anyway, let's hope that Dell has learned their lesson.

By: jmjames

jmjames — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 16:03:38 +0000

Actually, this story is flying ALL over the Internet right now… the TV station says its had phenomenal amounts of traffic and comments on it. What makes it so sensational is, of course, the lawsuit end of it. It’s a rediculous lawsuit, which activates the "dumb lawsuit flame wars" gene that people have (which is why I avoided talking about it too much, it’s a troll topic).

Funny thing is, I tend to expect *better* support from a white box company, if they are a local mom ‘n pop, than I do from Dell. If they’re an Internet shop, I know that support isn’t happening. My experiences with Dell’s support are so overwhelmingly miserable, with the exception of my most recent experience. And I suspect that was better because I was a business customer. For consumer machines, I’ve had a *very* good experience with eMachines, and I highly recommend them, partially due to that good experience (mostly because they sell a decent box at an unbeatable price and it isn’t littered with junk).

J.Ja

By: notgonnatellya

notgonnatellya — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 05:31:40 +0000

I think if they precisely replicated MS Windows there would probably be lawsuits (hasn't apple already sued on that basis before?)

In the end, a company like Dell shouldn't sell a product if they're not going to support it. If they were a local white box builder, I might give them a pass, but they're Dell. Consumers expect more.

The only thing they've got going for them is that most consumers will never hear this story.

By: jmjames

jmjames — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 04:50:45 +0000

On that note, the laptop did indeed ship with Open Office. Dell didn’t tell her that Open Office can create files that Word can read (and I am sure it can create ’97 – ’03 style documents too, but I’ve never used it so I can’t confirm it). Likewise, if her teachers at school were more technically knowledgable, they would have been able to say, "that fine, send me a PDF or a RTF file". In terms of file format, the confusion came about from people who were ignorant of technical matters setting policy and making advisements regarding technical matters.

Support is a killer for desktop Linux. Ever if you had a Linux that looked 100% like Windows, and acted 100% like Windows, vendors would still not want to support users on it! That’s not a bad idea though, a desktop manager than 100% emulates Windows’ interface, right down to how to set NIC configurations, "Add/Remove Programs", and so on. While you would, of course, be replicating some of Windows’ worst aspects, supporting it would be transparent to support staff.

J.Ja

By: notgonnatellya

notgonnatellya — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 17:19:53 +0000

IMO, this is one of biggest problems for Linux's on the desktop: nobody really wants to support it. I have friends who don't like windows and run linux at home (windows is relegated to Virtual Box if it's required for some application), but they wouldn't dream of putting it on any of their relatives' machines.

I don't know if Dell decided that supporting Linux is too expensive (when it's coupled with technically challenged users) or this is just a case of poor training on their part, but the only way I'll give htem a pass is if on the OS select page, in big bold letters, it says, "WE DON'T SUPPORT THIS OS."

As you've said, given her issues, it sounds like Dell should have gotten her up and running in seconds flat. I'm fairly certain that that machine shipped with Open Office, so it the rep should have been able to tell her that she was good to go for school.

I personally fall on the side that Desktop Linux is still not ready for the unwashed masses (though Ubuntu is moving things in the right direction), but I also think a nice lawsuit is in order to get Dell to fix their support issues or stop selling Linux if they don't want to support it and offer a free copy of Vista (not home basic) to those that purchased a Linux machine in the last 12 months.

Selling Linux without support is wrong