Trouble in Dell Land

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/te...gy/29dell.html

hmmm...makes me even more excited to build my own computer soon...money is tight, but hopefully in the next few months I can build a new comp with win7 on it and finally make the jump I've been waiting to make for months now.

I will say though, I didn't really have many problems with my dell, but mine isn't the type discussed in the article. Oh well, serves them right for hiding it. Thanks for sharing that.

Yeah, my 6200A-Le NVIDIA video card downstairs blew out the caps. I replaced them with low esr type 5 years ago and it's still going strong.

On my main rig here, it had a different motherboard which blew out the caps. I didn't want to be bothered replacing them and found a guy clearing inventory. I bought a replacement motherboard, the MSI one I have now, for 30 USD to my door. Been working flawless without bsod ever since. This was about 2 years ago.

For people building rigs nowadays, I always recommend getting a board with the silvery flat type of caps of extreme high quality.

Dell has apparently been in trouble for awhile. In 2005, they built a plant in our state (NC), after much in tax breaks and even land had been donated to them. Last year, they shut the doors on the new plant, braking promises to many.

But they were forced to repay a lot of the money back to the taxpayers. As for the landowner who donated to help the local economy, he got nothing for his generous donation to the community. And the employees were shafted as well, Dell decided to close the plant in the country where they sold the most, and kept their Malaysia plant running. Sure, PC sales were losing ground, but that new plant could have been converted into a netbook/notebook plant easily. But it didn't happen.

Except this PC that I'm on now (built by HP), all that I owned were Dell products. After this new development, and the way they did our local economy, another Dell won't sit on my desk, unless it's given to me. There are too many more reliable brands on the market. And BTW, Dell doesn't make any of it's own parts, they assemble computers of aftermarket products that they buy in large lots. Tear a broken down one and see for yourself, another name is stamped on every part of their computers. No wonder they can sell desktops for as little as $399.

I think that there are very few computer manufacturers who make there own parts, if any. I have a seldom used small IBM computer which has no parts in it with an IBM lable.
Not to discredit the computer industry, though. The same argument applies to most assembled products - vacuum cleaners, fridges etc. Here there is a very well known and prestigious electronic company, which sells products such as Hi Fi and TVs at outrageous prices. The only unique feature is the arcitecturally designed furniture which sits around the equipment. Opening any of this company's equipment shows a heap of parts enitrely from a very old and established german concern.

This bad capacitor problem has been ongoing since early 2002. A manufacturer in Taiwan or China got a copy of the electrolyte fluid formula for a famous brand of Japanese capacitors. One of those industrial espionage things. The problem was the fact that the individual who stole the formula copied it wrong and so the resulting formula was defective from the start.

It was an attempt to produce an equal to the superior Japanese capacitors at a bargain basement price. So capitalists being capitalists naturally went for the most "competitive" priced products. It was like yelling free beer during Rush Week, everybody came to the party.

Everything was great until as stated in the article, the fluid aged prematurely, broke down and was leaking or bursting the capacitors. A whole bunch of motherboard and video card and sound card makers were affected by this problem.

A lot of problems first showed up in 2002 and 2003, then went by the wayside and then began showing up again in late 2004 thru 2005, only this time on mostly OEM and mass-produced systems.

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Now everybody on this forum knows that I despise DELL equipment and their much beloved "No Customer Service".

What marketing / customer service VP idiot at DELL came up with the "unusual reason for the computers’ demise: the school had overtaxed the machines by making them perform difficult math calculations." to quote The NY Times.

The thing that cracks me up about it is the fact DELL had the audacity to do this to one of their biggest customers, the State of Texas University System! That take big cajones!

There's a very famous quote from the movie: The Outlaw Josie Wales. It goes like this: Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining!

That is the biggest bunch of malarkey I've ever heard of. Most of you know I live in Austin, TX nearly all the computer people (read geeks) I know of wouldn't touch a DELL if it was given to them. There have been so many issues regarding hardware, tech support, refurbs sold as new products, etc.

This sums up the company attitude for me.

They were trying to scheist their scheisters.

I'm just glad to know that the problem is, for the most part, confined to Dell. If all of the large computer OEM's went after those cheap parts, everyone would be getting burned.

Dell is also known for heat issues in many of their notebooks, even the Latitudes, once their flagship notebook. Many of these came with elcheapo MOBO's, combined with the heat issue, led to fine cracks in them. This causes BSOD's in the worst of cases, and I can testify that is true. I've already had one to do it (even though I didn't know it at the time), now I fear the same is happening with the notebook that I currently own. Which, BTW, is the very same model that I currently have, only the one I now have is a year newer.

And speaking of refurbs, this one was a "certified" refurb by Dell itself. There is a green sticker on the bottom that says in print, "REFURBISHED, This product may contain new, refurbished, repaired or previously used assemblies. Dell factory trained technicians have tested the product". I bought this notebook from Dell Financial Services, through an eBay auction broker, CSR Technologies. The particular broker had thousands of the same product, in fact, if you bought a lot of 1,000, you would get a 15% discount. A trace of the serial # led me to the discovery of the original owner, Kaiser Foundation Hospitals.

So, this goes to show that Dell is out to burn their loyal customers at all costs. For a major corporation to shove "previously used assemblies" in notebooks to resell them is equal to an auto dealer piecing cars together with salvage yard parts, and selling them as "certified pre-owned" autos. I'm actually shocked that Dell would participate in this practice, I knew it was a refurb, but didn't notice this sticker until recently, and this thread reminded me of it.

What I'd like to know is this, how many millions of customers got burned in a like fashion? Dell Financial Services is still selling notebooks through brokers on eBay, and even some newer ones direct without a broker on eBay. Now I know what they mean when they claim they "dispose of your previously owned computer in an environmentally friendly way". If this was ever really looked into, Dell would be remembered for pulling off the largest screwjob in the computing industry. I know one thing, I'll never deal with Dell again. And I mean never on this one, because this is a deceptive practice. New auto dealers sells used cars, but they're up front about it. This notebook that I have, with that green sticker, and some parts obviously looking newer than others is shady practice. I could see it if it were a third party doing this (one who buys tons of "off lease" computers, and "refurbishing" them). It happens on eBay thousands of times a day. But for Dell to have a hand in it, is true corporate greed in the first degree.

Cat

Actually, the problem hasn't been confined to only Dell.

Intel and HP are also known to be directly affected. All types of gear suffer. Even Apple's stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

'Tis a shame as back in 2000, when I bought my first computer (Dell Dimension) they seemed to be a great company. When I had issues, I'd call and speak to someone in the USA about my issue and the parts in said computer seemed to be of good quality overall.

After 5 years, it finally died out, not sure why really, but in thoes 5 years as I had to go to them from time to time I could see the decline. I went to speaking to someone in the USA to someone who had a really thick accent (possibly from Asia) and instead of having someone who knows computers on the other end, these people were definately reading from a script and wouldn't know one end of a screwdriver from the other.