She's been to Dell Hell and lived to tell the tale
You've read about some of the problems I've had with my Dell Inspiron 4000, specifically about the motherboard failure that prevented the machine from even loading the BIOS. (See here, here, and here.) I have since replaced the motherboard and the machine works pretty well, although I've had some intermittent keyboard glitches -- a column of keys will stop working, but that's unusual. So far, on this box I've replaced the hard drive (original was too small and went into infinite repeated clicks if I accessed the Dell help file), the video cable (snow and occasional scrambled garbage), and the motherboard.
Julie R. Neidlinger has her own story of woe. The problem wasn't the computer but the Dell phone sales rep, who lied to her about the "benefits" of financing her new PC by opening a Dell Preferred Account through Dell Financial Services. When she realizes the DPA wasn't as good as promised, she went through another level of Dell Hell trying to close the account.
She's posted a detailed entry in hopes that Google will notice and point people her way when they search for Dell Preferred Account. This entry is here to support her quest, and I'll even throw in some Technorati tags to aid in the effort.
The presence of a good little Dell repair shop here in Tulsa with quick turnaround has made it more like Dell purgatory than The Bad Place for me, but I doubt such a place can be found in Julie's corner of the Lone Prairie.
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I would beware advertising Wholesale computer supply. They have their own deviant sales tactics as well. A network card purchased, discovered to be incompatible, and then taken back 15 minutes later was charged a restocking fee in order to return. 15 minutes later!
The Webworm says:
Get a Mac!
Yours truly,
George W. Wormleigh....
my PowerBookG4 wouldn't do this to me.....
Mike,
I would have to agree with Webworm the MAC is an awesome machine, however due to software compatibility I still choose to use a windows based machine. Having said that, I'm exceptionally found of the IBM Thinkpad laptops; I have one and wouldn't consider any others. And since I'm also an employee of IBM I get them at a considerable discount off of retail and I'm alloted the opportunity to pass the same plan on to select freinds and family. Therefore If you would like to consider a Thinkpad, give me a shout via email and I'll get you set up to go shop for yourself.
Willy
Well, Willy; all I can say is Big Blue to you, too! I wouldn't expect a thing less from someone who works for IBM. All I can say is, you get what you pay for. When you buy Windoze, whether it's IBM or Dell or Gateway or whatever, and regardless of the Having A Friend At The Factory Discount, that's what you're gonna get. As a MacAddict, all I can say is "no thank you".