Dude, don’t get a Dell
Thursday, September 6th, 2007
Hey, wouldn’t you really like a pink laptop? Yeah, my sister wants one, too, so we ordered a Dell for her with one of those fancy new paint jobs they’ve been advertising the heck out of. She was supposed to have it in time to take to college with her, but now she’s at school and the computer isn’t. It’s been delayed at least three times.
It seems that Dell is having major, major problems shipping their laptops. They’re apparently running out of all kinds of basic supplies — LCD screens, peripherals, processors, you name it, they don’t have any — and, on top of that, the chucklefucks working in their factories can’t seem to figure out how to put a coat of paint on a laptop casing, and they have nothing to say to their customers except “next week, we promise.” Many people have been expecting their laptops “any week now” since July.
But for anyone out there who’s also sans their computer, here’s some comedy gold I found in the comments on a post on Dell’s blog about the problem:
Lumbergh said:
So…Mr. Dell…whuut’s happening? We have sort of a problem here. I ordered a 1720 in black, so I’m gonna have to go ahead disagree with you that color is the reason my ship date was bumped to the 28th. Ohh, and as for some screen sizes being in short supply, I wasn’t aware there were that many options you needed to…ummm…cover, and really isn’t the supply of that kind of…uhhh…basic component something you should have squared away before you launch a marketing campaign, you know, so we don’t have to sort of play catch up like this?People are also asking some questions about that magic ship date, and I noticed you didn’t…uhhh…address that in your memo. So, you know, if you want to say a few words on that topic, it would be great.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a Dell fan. Your products, particularly the 2407FPW keeping me company now, are just super. But I’ve noticed you’ve been real flakey lately, having some problems with your communication and…uhhh…candor with customers, and you’ve lost some people this week. So you should ask yourself, is this good for the company?
If you could just get to shipping my 1720 as soon as possible, that’d be terrific. But if you you wait much past the 28th, I guess we should go ahead and have a little cancelation talk.
Bill Lumbergh, Division V.P.
August 25, 2007 9:37 PM
Santa Claus said:
Fear not! Michael Dell and his SVP’s will only get a lump of coal for Christmas… luckily, my elves know how to paint a lump of coal so they will get whatever color they want on December 25th and not on April 25th.Santa.
August 26, 2007 8:37 PM
If anyone else has any Dell-related horror stories, feel free to vent.
5 Responses to “Dude, don’t get a Dell”
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Hi, Crabby! I’m afraid I’ve always been a desktop person and don’t know much about laptops and so wouldn’t really be able to make a recommendation (other than, obviously, “not Dell”), but it does seem to me that if you make a laptop lighter, you would inevitably have to sacrifice some durability. Personally, I think I’d go for a medium-weight one to avoid flimsiness, and consider the extra couple of pounds “strength training”.
But, of course, I would almost certainly have a completely different set of priorities than yours — I would want to make sure any laptop I bought was powerful but had Linux-friendly hardware, and I would want to buy from a place that would be willing to sell me the computer without putting Windows on it. (Why should I pay $100+ for a Windows license if the first thing I’m going to do is wipe the hard drive and install Linux?) I might even toy with the idea of getting a Mac and dual-booting Linux just so that I could have OSX at my disposal.
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Thanks ChickenGirl, great things to think about!
So I’m sure you’re already all over this, (and I don’t want to make any presumptions about your political affiliations), but I wanted to warn you that the whole LOL-thing may be starting to go way mainstream. This was on the Time Magazine political blog:
http://time-blog.com/swampland/2007/09/lolcraigs_for_your_loling_1.htmlThought I’d share since you first introduced me to LOLcats!
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LOL, indeed.
A friend of mine posted a YouTube video on his LiveJournal of Craig’s “I’m not gay” press conference juxtaposed with the “If you were gay” song from Avenue Q. I think it’s this one, but I can’t check because YouTube videos are blocked at work, even though YouTube.com itself inexplicably isn’t. (ETA: Yep, that’s the one.)
(Total godless liberal, incidentally.
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That was hilarious!
(And likewise!)
September 6th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
That does seem like major PR stupidity to do a huge marketing push for a product you don’t actually have in stock.
Maybe for some new hot product like an iPhone you can get away with that, but there are a billion different companies that make laptops. Way to screw with product loyalty.
As an aside, I liked all the features of my HP dv1000 when I bought it a couple of years ago, but the damn thing keeps breaking down and I’ve reached the point where the next $150-$250 repair bill just won’t make sense to cough up for again. Is there a laptop brand that’s lightweight but known for reliability? Or are those two concepts mutually exclusive? I should do some research now before the thing craps out again so I don’t have to start from scratch with no computer to do the research on!