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Guess the AMD partnership didn't help them like they thought it would. I wonder if Intel raised Dell's prices after Dell went buddy buddy with AMD. I guess Dell must have tried to pass that on to the consumer and failed. {insert other speculation here}.

In all honesty, I guess the battery recalls didn't help either.

Dell's business model is not good enough. Not the problem of partnership.

Dell's business model is not good enough. Not the problem of partnership.
Even if HP is on top I will always buy Dell Laptops

Dell's business model is not good enough. Not the problem of partnership.
Even if HP is on top I will always buy Dell Laptops

I just got an HP notebook last year

Dell's problem lies in the fact that consumers prefer to see and touch the laptops they buy. As spending has shifted to laptops Dell's direct to customer business model is actually hurting them as customers are less comfortable with the approach. IMO Dell's quality control has also suffered in the last year which hasn't helped things (and I'm not talking about the batteries). Heck one of my friends bought a Dell and had the MoBo replaced twice in the first two weeks, got a replacement of the model and finally just got her money back; not exactly confidence inspiring to me.

Just to add something to the Dell quality discussion... I work at a hospital in the IT department and a batch of Dell computers experienced an unusually high defect rate... to the tune of around 40-50% of the units. Apparently, Dell was sold some bad (probably cheap) capacitors that would rupture... the first sign of the problem was random shutdowns and inability to power back up... as the problem progressed the PC would be unable to power up at all. Various capacitors on the motherboard would puff outward and in some cases rupture (they'd spew a metallic brown substance when this happened) After having to call in numerous units for replacement it got to the point where all I had to say was "puffed capacitor" to the Dell support technician and he'd go ahead and send me a new motherboard without any hassle. Apparently this was a VERY wide-spread problem... and these were not Dimensions... these were Optiplex workstations.

I still like Dell... but that definitely left them with a black eye in my book.

I agree with danny... I work for HP and we send back so many defective units that I will always go with Dell for a laptop. I bought a Dell in mid 2001 and it just died receently, due to my wife stepping on it. It even worked after being completely submerged in water for a brief moment (dont' ask).

I haven't bought Dell for a while, but we do have about 8 Dell's at home. Those never seemed to have given me any problems, moreso probably because I know how to take care of them than most, but I can't complain.

However, Dell's support has been slipping lately, and they might have overextended themselves too fast. This might be a wake-up call for them to cut down on some areas and re-focus on the important things. Either way though, they still are a power player and has a very high chance of coming back.

Yes Yes. My Dell notebook is great. Got it at a great price also.

Dell desktops is where I draw the line. Dell locks down the BIOS pretty good. If you pay for a RAID level you only get that level. You can't switch between lets say RAID 0 or RAID 1, only the level you pay for. Same goes for memory speed. If you buy DDR2-533 only future memory amount increases are permitted, not speed upgrades to DDR2-667 or DDR2-800, even if the chipset support faster memory speeds. This is the only reason I've built my own desktop, otherwise, had Dell not locked down the BIOS so tightly there was no reason for me to DIY my own PC. Also, for me, OCing is a no-go. I didn't use that as an excuse not to buy a Dell. Hopefully, competition will cause Dell to loosen its grip on the BIOS to permit some simple user changes.

One thing I hope Dell decides to go back to is system recovery cd/dvds instead of just OS recovery cds.

HP buying Voodoo was a pretty good idea... i bet we see HP continue to dominate and eventually start coming out with some great innovative stuff.

Yes Yes. My Dell notebook is great. Got it at a great price also.

Dell desktops is where I draw the line. Dell locks down the BIOS pretty good. If you pay for a RAID level you only get that level. You can't switch between lets say RAID 0 or RAID 1, only the level you pay for. Same goes for memory speed. If you buy DDR2-533 only future memory amount increases are permitted, not speed upgrades to DDR2-667 or DDR2-800, even if the chipset support faster memory speeds. This is the only reason I've built my own desktop, otherwise, had Dell not locked down the BIOS so tightly there was no reason for me to DIY my own PC. Also, for me, OCing is a no-go. I didn't use that as an excuse not to buy a Dell. Hopefully, competition will cause Dell to loosen its grip on the BIOS to permit some simple user changes.

One thing I hope Dell decides to go back to is system recovery cd/dvds instead of just OS recovery cds.

Can anyone validate what this guy just said about the memory in a Dell? I've NEVER heard of such a locked down BIOS... but my experiences with upgrading Dells is pretty limited.

Yes rodney_ws, I ran into that with my dell. It wouldn't accept any RAM that was a different speed other than what it was rated at from the manufacturer. It came with PC100, and wouldn't accept PC133 at all. Bummer eh? That's an old Inspiron 4000 thought. I haven't dealt with one any newer than that or my other Inspiron 8100.

Hrmmm... might be why I'm getting this strange result in CPU-Z on this new Dell Optiplex 745. It won't show the current memory speed.

Bios options are very limited at best. The bios on my ABS laptop offers more options than Bios on my Dell. I'm surprised they don't lock the bios down and not even allow users to go into them since there's almost nothing we can do in there.

But their machines are still fairly decent, especially their laptops. I love my ABS laptop, but the wireless blows. My parents both have Dell laptops, and they work fine, although one time a fan died which was a bitch to repair.

GX270's and SX270s to be exact. HP had the same faulty capacitors in their A305W Pavilions, IBM had some bad Servers (!) with the issue as well. It was some Taiwanese mfr. who purposely used low-quality capacitors and called them high grade, there was a huge todo about it. Unfortunately, Dell had the biggest hit due to the optiplexes with the issue.

Dell has the best business service warrenty, hands down. You can get a 4-hour onsite replacement contract in most highly populated areas--for Optiplexes. Dell is still the only manufacturer with that warrenty offering for desktop PCs. Their servers can have 2 hour onsite resolution as well, this is critical for 'mission critical' servers. Their certification requirements for Dell technicians really helps because technicians from virtually every PC repair company can know exactly how to replace parts in every specific configuration individually.

The problems with Dell tech support involve mostly their CTS (Consumer Tech Support), but most other vendor's CTS that can be much worse. Dell screwed up when they started making cheap computers. I understand the reason they did, but inevitably, it ruined their prior reputation for being "rock-solid" reliability and quality. Even though it is stupid to think a $300 PC--whether it be Dell, Sony, HP, or whomever--will be as "rock solid" as the business line, consumers started spreading the word that Dell sucked because the $300 PC they bought was worthless. They were inadvertently misleading the public to believe all Dells were as bad as those Dimension PCs were, even when they were not. Wrong or not, people started believing them, especially since this was at the same time the GX270's had those capacitor issues (not to mention those Maxtor 40GB drives dell part number 2W649!).

Dell had several things go bad at once, and along with the consumers complaining about their $300 PCs not working as well as their "older" $2200 PC's, businesses stopped buying from them after the GX270 and maxtor fiasco. I know--I spoke to some of them and most of them told me they were leaving dell for HP or Compaq!