Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: Ghastly on July 08, 2010, 01:18:12 PM
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This - if it doesn't derail somehow - is like to open Pandora's box, perhaps in more ways than just the lawsuit at hand.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures/dell-lawsuit-pattern-of-deceit/10165?tag=nl.e539
<S>
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I will never own a Dell product.
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Can't say I'm surprised, somehow they'll get away with it though. That usually seems to be the case.
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My first computer was a Dell. Little 200 MHz Pentium, a whopping 64 meg of RAM... I popped my 3D cherry on Quake II using a 3D Blaster Banshee video card. First time I saw colored lighting I about *#^$. HOLY CRAP THAT WAS COOL! Now I'm looking at LOMAC, Bad Company 2, DA:O, and going "The textures aren't bad, but that one over there needs work. And that model glitch never should have left QA." How time flies. :D
Oh, right: Dell. I went through no less than nineteen CD-ROM drives by Toshiba because the entire production lot Dell purchased was using a 2¢ part instead of a 7¢ part. All covered under warranty, which was Dell's only saving grace. Right before dropping them completely and building my first rig, I got to deal with the infamous "Welcome to the Quickie Mart" tech idiots that can't tell the diff between a DIMM and a PCI modem.
Personally, I hope Dell gets their collective rear ends reamed out with a 50" auger.
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Flakbait [Delta6]
Delta Six's Flight School (http://www.wa-net.com/~delta6)
"For yay did the sky darken, and split open and spew forth fire, and through the smoke rode the Four Wurgers of the Apocalypse. And on their canopies was tattooed the number of the Beast, and the number was 190."
Jedi, Verse Five, Capter Two, The Book of Dweeb
(http://www.wa-net.com/~delta6/sig/unsuperv.gif)
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Question from the floor: "What would you do if you were in charge of Apple?"
Dell: "What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."
Apple stock:
7 Nov 1997 $4.94
9 Jul 2010 $258.09
Michael Dell is an idiot. nuff said.
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Man after browsing the boards here and I know basically little more than nothing, I am beginning to realize how I got taken advantage of by so many companies. Times when companies would make good solid products to sell are over. There's a few small companies like here (i still hate caps and eny :D ) and a few others that really do make nice good products. But this is only the beginning, as more companies buy crap from overseas due to lower costs, its gonna be expensive for them. Then again of course they will depend on people like me who dont know any better or have no choice and will just pay more.
semp
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I will never own a Dell product.
After the headaches my fiance went through when her 6 month old Dell died, we will never purchase another Dell product. Even though in the end Dell did come through and give my fiance a new AlienWare Area 51 ALX to replace her Dell XPS 720H2 and I ended up getting a free GTX 295 out of it, the nightmare of having to spend 4 months trying to get any support left us with no desire to to business with them in the future.
ack-ack
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So long as consumers make purchases based exclusively on low prices, companies will cut whatever corners they have to in order to deliver low prices.
Companies will outsource jobs to slave-labor camps in whatever country has the fewest worker-protection laws at the moment (Foxconn, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, etc.)
Companies will calculate the cost of settling wrongful death suits against the cost of making safe products (google "Ford Pinto exploding gas tank").
Companies will use a substandard five-cent part instead of an adequate ten-cent part (google "Dell capacitors").
Only when customers demonstrate - with their money - they will pay for service, will they get service.
Imagine a world full nothing but Wal-marts staffed by know-nothing cashiers selling shoddy crap from third-world sweatshops... shudder!
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Imagine a world full nothing but Wal-marts staffed by know-nothing cashiers selling shoddy crap from third-world sweatshops... shudder!
Isn't that what we have already with our trash and buy mentality in the consumer marketplace here in the USA?
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Well put Bino :aok
The consumer must educate themselves before they make purchases,penny wise,dollar foolish!
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Dell hit it big with its stoner college student TV ad campaign, not for being actually better than its closest competitors in any other way. Its been only a matter of time before they fall back to where they belong. I always liked Gateway (2000) better, but they only had cow boxes, for their ad campaign. Why some stoner telling people to get a Dell actually worked, I'm not really sure.
In any case, I've never bought any of them for myself, always build my own.
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I have a dell laptop I certainly won't buy another computer from them though.
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nailed it
:aok
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After the headaches my fiance went through when her 6 month old Dell died, we will never purchase another Dell product. Even though in the end Dell did come through and give my fiance a new AlienWare Area 51 ALX to replace her Dell XPS 720H2 and I ended up getting a free GTX 295 out of it, the nightmare of having to spend 4 months trying to get any support left us with no desire to to business with them in the future.
ack-ack
i got 4 months left on my XPS720 been thinking about destroying it and having them send me a new one
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I'm seeing an equally disturbing trend in the Auto Repair industry. Since the internet developed, and DIY Auto Parts stores (such as Autozone) have become popular, it is increasingly more and more difficult to stay profitable. With the low cost of parts due to bulk (and overseas parts) available to the large chain shops, small and independent shops really don't stand much of a chance anymore. Throw in the requirements for dozens upon dozens of thousands of dollars worth of diagnostic equipment for modern vehicles, and that's like throwing salt in the wound.
It's hard to justify the price for a part to a customer when your COST is more than what they can get it from Autozone for. Granted, the quality may be like night and day, and the part you're trying to sell them may be made in the USA (Vs. China for the Autozone part), but all they see is "lifetime warranty" and half-the-price. Then you get the reputation for trying to price-gouge them... and the sad thing is that they are right! It's gotten to the point in which you have to tack on to the cost of the people who don't do their research to compensate for the business you lose from the ones who can get cheap Chinese parts from these chain stores (and FREE loaner tools, and FREE repair instructions)... and when they run into problems from doing it themselves or because of defective parts, they come to you and then complain to the BBB when you have to charge them $300 for a job that would have cost them $100 in the first place, so when this happens it's almost not worth the headache to even get involved.
Next thing you know, you have to get cheap Chinese made parts as well just to stay competitive and profitable, because simple business rules dictate that it makes no sense to stay in business if you're not making money... and things just spiral downwards from there.
Now... how does this compare to Dell? I'm not exactly defending them... but you have to look at the large picture here. First off, I doubt seriously they actually installed these capacitors onto the motherboards. More than likely they purchased these motherboards pre-built from the lowest bidder who could meet their hardware specifications. Kind of like Toyota... they didn't build their gas pedal assemblies... they installed ones that were already made... in China. To stay competitive, they people who did build these motherboards chose cheap Chinese-made parts over more expensive and more durable ones. They took a gamble that the cheaper ones would last long enough for the warranty to run out, and warrantying the few that didn't last that long would still be cheaper for them in the long run.
Once Dell learned that these motherboards didn't make the grade in durability, they were forced to make one of three decisions:
1> Issue a recall and replace all of the motherboards... this would have likely bankrupted them.
2> Handle these on a case-by-case basis and replace the failed motherboards with quality ones, and throw away all of their existing stock and start using quality parts from that point on... while this could have been a brilliant long-term plan on their end if marketed correctly, it would have still cost them a fortune... causing losses for quite some time and destroying their stock prices.
3> Bury their heads in the sand and keep doing things the same way, keeping their profits high and their shareholders happy for as long as possible... unfortunately it seems that the bigger a company gets the more short-sighted they become. They choose short-term gains over long-term stability, almost in a self-destructive way. Why do they do this? It's quite simple.. because TOO MANY PEOPLE HAVE TOO MUCH INVESTED in this point. It's all about throwing the wool over their eyes for as long as possible.
And folks, believe me.. this is still only the beginning. As long as people continue to cut corners.. clip coupons.. choose the lowest bidder.. use price as their only deciding factor... sue the second things go wrong.. well things will only continue to get worse. I'm seeing a disturbing trend with large companies following practices that look good in the sort term, but really cost them later on. Kind of like taking on a $10,000 loan at 500% interest... yes the case looks good in your hands when you get it, but what happens next year?
Companies think that outsourcing parts, repairs, and customer service overseas is a good idea, but it will (and is already starting to) bite them in the ascot. I'm sorry, but when you take into account the logistics involved, there is NO WAY you can tell me that having a heavily accented, engrish-speaking guy in India who goes by the name of Bob Barker do your customer service is going to be cheaper in the long term. If they would take the time to FIX their products, documentation, and procedures they would find a way to eliminate the vast majority of customer service needs. Take HTC for example... they are finding themselves having to devote a large amount of time telling people to alt-tab out of the program so they can click a box to allow a new update through their software firewall... so now they are FIXING the main screen so that it will allow this window to the foreground. Granted, it's become a bit more of a pain then anticipated, but they are getting the job done. In the long-term it will be better.
There are two sayings that hold true to my philosophy: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" and "Just because you can doesn't mean you should". I wish companies would follow these more often.
I hope that this whole Dell issue becomes more of an eye-opener than a huge lawsuit. I would rather people learn from this and adjust their spending habits and practices, rather than to jump on the "class-action bandwagon". Personally, I think class-action lawsuits are a huge wound to the American legal system.
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One thing I've noticed about the big companies I've worked for: the bosses are rewarded each quarter, based at least in part on how the stock does. So, since they get their stock options on a three-month cycle, that is as far into the future as they will plan.
And they will do *anything* to drive up the stock price in the short term, so they can cash out their options as fast as their contracts will allow. I have personally listened to a Fortune 500 CIO admit that spending millions of dollars on Big Blue consultants to "fix" a problem with an e-commerce system - a problem which had been both predicted and diagnosed by her own in-house IT staff - was nothing more than a dog and pony show meant to assuage the nervous nabobs of Wall Street.
Short-sightedness is enshrined in the compensation plans of big American companies. We are *so* screwed here, people.
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It's not just Dell that has the leaking capacitor problem. Other major PC manufacturers have the very same issue. I know I work for one and have seen this issue myself.
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It's not just Dell that has the leaking capacitor problem. Other major PC manufacturers have the very same issue. I know I work for one and have seen this issue myself.
I keep hearing this, but I have yet to see a single, credible source stating "other brands".
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I keep hearing this, but I have yet to see a single, credible source stating "other brands".
Take my word for it, this is not hear say. I have personally replaced other brands components due to leaking capacitors.
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I keep hearing this, but I have yet to see a single, credible source stating "other brands".
Masherbrum, with other manufacturers it's definitely not as widespread as with the Dells, but it is there. I've seen first hand a couple of emachines with that problem, and an old Biostar "slot-A" motherboard I used in a custom system built by me years back suffered that same ill-fate. Granted that may have been an isolated incident, but it still happened.
I doubt seriously that Dell hand-picked these specific capacitors, and I also doubt further that they even build their own motherboards. Like I was saying before, they most likely simply picked the 'cheapest bidder' of who can supply motherboards to meet their specifications. It's the manufacturer of that motherboard that chose to use the cheap capacitors. To make matters worse, they probably had to low-ball their prices like crazy in order to win Dell's contract which necessitated using these sub-par capacitors in the first place!
So here is how the process SHOULD work:
Company A wants to build and sell widgets. Company A needs a supply of whatchamacallits to build their widgets with. Company A weighs their options from several manufacturers of whatchamacallits, factoring in not only cost, but also quality, manufacturers' reputations, source of raw components, etc. Company A ends up purchasing whatchamacallits from Company B even though they cost slightly more than Company Q's whatchamacallits because Company Q has a bad reputation for quality.
Company A builds and sells their widgets using whatchamacallits purchased from Company B. Company A has to warranty one out of every ten thousand widgets because of a defective whatchamacallit. Company A can afford to do this because they made a comfortable profit off of the widgets, and because Company B will replace the defective whatchamacallits because they can afford to do so from making a comfortable profit from the purchases from Company A.
And then THIS HAPPENS:
Company C sees that Company A is making large profits from their widgets, so Company C decides to build their own version of the widget, called a wadget. Company C needs to sell these for less money in order to be competitive with Company A. Company C also needs a supplier of whatchamacallits but in order to save money they choose to buy their whatchamacallits from Company Q, basing their decision solely on cost.
Company C builds and sells wadgets using whatchamacallits purchased from Company Q. Company C has to warranty one out of every thousand of these during their much shorter warranty period. Company C can afford to do so because they made a comfortable profit off of their wadgets, and because Company Q will replace the defective whatchamacallits because they can afford to do so from making a comfortable profit from the purchases from Company C. They did this by using extremely cheap and questionable materials in their whatchamacallits, knowing some would fail and taking that into account.
And then IT GETS INTERESTING:
Company A is losing sales because Company C is so much cheaper. While the wadget has a reputation for having less quality than the widget, people are choosing it anyway because the price difference is so huge. Company A needs to cut costs so they can now compete with the wadget. They decide to take on new bids for their whatchamacallits. Company B, not wanting to lose out with doing business with Company A decides to lowball their whatchamacallit prices lower than what Company Q is selling them for, but adds a clause in the contract stating that they are not responsible for warrantying any that fail. Company A decides to take that risk, basing their decision on the one in ten-thousand failure rate they experienced before.
The problem is that since now Company B isn't bound to warrantying their whatchamacallits, they end up buying their materials from a Chinese company even CHEAPER than what Company Q is using. This result in the once great widgets that Company A sells suffering from a one in one hundred failure rate instead of their previous one in ten thousand failure rate. Since Company A cannot get reimbursed for the bad whatchamacallits from company B, they have to eat the costs themselves in having to warranty these units. And since they didn't make much money due to having to sell them so cheap to compete with the wadgets, then they are left with replacing a cheap part with an equally (or even MORE) cheap part... or to take a loss and go bankrupt.
So.. in this scenario.. what could company A have done? Don't get me wrong, I still believe that competition is a good thing, but when consumers have been impregnated with the idea that 'cheaper+discount+coupon=good', and when consumers base their decisions SOLELY on price... or even worse.. SOLELY on a pothead teenager in a TV commercial.. well then competition is no longer on a level playing field. Believe it or not, an educated consumer and competition do go hand-in-hand, but until people learn that low-flow toilets are a bad idea** we're just going to see this kind of thing continue to spiral downward.
Luckily, with the internet evolving the way it is and with people taking more stock in online ratings and reviews of products, I AM starting to see a trend of people willing to spend more money for a better quality product.
**Low flow toilets ARE a bad idea. They use 50% less water which on paper seems like a good idea, but when you have to flush them three times or more that kind of defeats the purpose. Basically I use it as a metaphor (or is it a simile.. I never can remember) for situations where trying to save money ends up costing more in the long run.
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Masherbrum, with other manufacturers it's definitely not as widespread as with the Dells, but it is there. I've seen first hand a couple of emachines with that problem, and an old Biostar "slot-A" motherboard I used in a custom system built by me years back suffered that same ill-fate. Granted that may have been an isolated incident, but it still happened.
I doubt seriously that Dell hand-picked these specific capacitors, and I also doubt further that they even build their own motherboards. Like I was saying before, they most likely simply picked the 'cheapest bidder' of who can supply motherboards to meet their specifications. It's the manufacturer of that motherboard that chose to use the cheap capacitors. To make matters worse, they probably had to low-ball their prices like crazy in order to win Dell's contract which necessitated using these sub-par capacitors in the first place!
So here is how the process SHOULD work:
Company A wants to build and sell widgets. Company A needs a supply of whatchamacallits to build their widgets with. Company A weighs their options from several manufacturers of whatchamacallits, factoring in not only cost, but also quality, manufacturers' reputations, source of raw components, etc. Company A ends up purchasing whatchamacallits from Company B even though they cost slightly more than Company Q's whatchamacallits because Company Q has a bad reputation for quality.
Company A builds and sells their widgets using whatchamacallits purchased from Company B. Company A has to warranty one out of every ten thousand widgets because of a defective whatchamacallit. Company A can afford to do this because they made a comfortable profit off of the widgets, and because Company B will replace the defective whatchamacallits because they can afford to do so from making a comfortable profit from the purchases from Company A.
And then THIS HAPPENS:
Company C sees that Company A is making large profits from their widgets, so Company C decides to build their own version of the widget, called a wadget. Company C needs to sell these for less money in order to be competitive with Company A. Company C also needs a supplier of whatchamacallits but in order to save money they choose to buy their whatchamacallits from Company Q, basing their decision solely on cost.
Company C builds and sells wadgets using whatchamacallits purchased from Company Q. Company C has to warranty one out of every thousand of these during their much shorter warranty period. Company C can afford to do so because they made a comfortable profit off of their wadgets, and because Company Q will replace the defective whatchamacallits because they can afford to do so from making a comfortable profit from the purchases from Company C. They did this by using extremely cheap and questionable materials in their whatchamacallits, knowing some would fail and taking that into account.
And then IT GETS INTERESTING:
Company A is losing sales because Company C is so much cheaper. While the wadget has a reputation for having less quality than the widget, people are choosing it anyway because the price difference is so huge. Company A needs to cut costs so they can now compete with the wadget. They decide to take on new bids for their whatchamacallits. Company B, not wanting to lose out with doing business with Company A decides to lowball their whatchamacallit prices lower than what Company Q is selling them for, but adds a clause in the contract stating that they are not responsible for warrantying any that fail. Company A decides to take that risk, basing their decision on the one in ten-thousand failure rate they experienced before.
The problem is that since now Company B isn't bound to warrantying their whatchamacallits, they end up buying their materials from a Chinese company even CHEAPER than what Company Q is using. This result in the once great widgets that Company A sells suffering from a one in one hundred failure rate instead of their previous one in ten thousand failure rate. Since Company A cannot get reimbursed for the bad whatchamacallits from company B, they have to eat the costs themselves in having to warranty these units. And since they didn't make much money due to having to sell them so cheap to compete with the wadgets, then they are left with replacing a cheap part with an equally (or even MORE) cheap part... or to take a loss and go bankrupt.
So.. in this scenario.. what could company A have done? Don't get me wrong, I still believe that competition is a good thing, but when consumers have been impregnated with the idea that 'cheaper+discount+coupon=good', and when consumers base their decisions SOLELY on price... or even worse.. SOLELY on a pothead teenager in a TV commercial.. well then competition is no longer on a level playing field. Believe it or not, an educated consumer and competition do go hand-in-hand, but until people learn that low-flow toilets are a bad idea** we're just going to see this kind of thing continue to spiral downward.
Luckily, with the internet evolving the way it is and with people taking more stock in online ratings and reviews of products, I AM starting to see a trend of people willing to spend more money for a better quality product.
**Low flow toilets ARE a bad idea. They use 50% less water which on paper seems like a good idea, but when you have to flush them three times or more that kind of defeats the purpose. Basically I use it as a metaphor (or is it a simile.. I never can remember) for situations where trying to save money ends up costing more in the long run.
Absolutely, I've been floored at the quantity of Dell's and the fact they knew ahead of time, they screwed the pooch.
Good post man!
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Just FYI, HP had the same issue some 6 years ago with their micro atx mobos. Where I work we had several thousand of their D-530 mini desktop units, 80% had bad capacitors. The only thing Dell did wrong was to try and plead ignorance instead of dealing with it. Can't really blame them though, the profit margin on a retail system is very slim, they deal in volume. In the retail computer industry where most of your business is the home user, price gets you volume sales and those sales build your company.
Apple stock:
7 Nov 1997 $4.94
9 Jul 2010 $258.09
Michael Dell is an idiot. nuff said.
Not even close. Considering Apple started building personal computers in 1977, went public in 1980 and didn't start hitting it big until they dropped their proprietary junk...and they still don't have as big of a market share as Dell, HP or even Acer. Dell has been in the top 5 in world wide pc sales since it went public in 1992, when Apple was still marketing over priced stone age desk anchors.
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Not even close.
nope, not close, exactly right. 1st price is market open the morning after michael's wise words, 2nd price is a spot taken when I posted. if you think his "advice" was good for apple's employees, stockholders, suppliers, endusers or the PC market itself (or even broadening it out to competitive markets in general) then ... you're just plain wrong. like dell was.
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I keep hearing this, but I have yet to see a single, credible source stating "other brands".
Google bad caps or bad capicitor and research, there were a few companies that were pinched a few years ago by a supplier. I have read some on this , but never did a whole lot of research.