My Rant on Dell

[AtHomeBoy_2000]

Can I just say.... I am soooooooooooooooo happy I switched to Macs. Here's why.....
My Grandma (God Bless her) needed a new computer. Her 8 year old Gateway (400 GHz P2) was just so slow and bug ridden that it was pointless to try and save. So, she decided she was going to by a new computer. She wanted to go with Dell (I would have recommended Macs, but the woman is so locked into Windows that changing would be nearly impossible. Hell, She thought Windows and Word where THE SAME THING!) so i went over one afternoon and we placed an order for a $550 Dell. It's good enough for what she needs.

It came and I set it up. No problems.... except it doesnt come with any discs!!!! It came with AOL 9.0, and Coral WordPerfect. That's it! No system restore disk. No Windows XP Disk. No "Installed Software Disk". Just a Card Board Disk that read something to the effect of... "If you need to restore your PC or reinstall Windows XP, click the 'Restore PC' icon on the desktop. What The!?!?!?! That's it? An icon on the desktop? What if the hard drive crashes in 3 years? I need to go out and buy Windows XP (technically Vista, but Vista's system requirements probably wont run on this PC)? That's total CRAP! How is that Customer Service in its purest form? you are doing no service to your customer by making them jump through a thousand hoops. McAfee anti-virus was causing the computer to freeze on boot-up. So I uninstalled it to reinstall it,.... only to find out there was no disk to reinstall it!

Ok, my rants over. needless to say, i will ALWAYS recommend Macs even if I have to spend a WEEK retraining someone.

 

[emaja]

Somewhere on there is a program to create restore CDs. Go under Start -> All Programs and look for a menu item called "Dell Support" or something with "Dell" in it. It's there somewhere, just not sure what it is called on Dell computers. Most PC manufacturer's have the system restore data on a partition on the HD and don't ship CDs anymore.

If it is not there, I would be seriously surprised.

 

[mfacey]

Somewhere on there is a program to create restore CDs. Go under Start -> All Programs and look for a menu item called "Dell Support" or something with "Dell" in it. It's there somewhere, just not sure what it is called on Dell computers. Most PC manufacturer's have the system restore data on a partition on the HD and don't ship CDs anymore.

If it is not there, I would be seriously surprised.

You're right, there is an app to make your own restore CDs. I just happened to speak to a friend about this today. I find it somewhat odd that Dell would do such a thing. The least they could do is explicitly state that users should create a restore CD IMMEDIATLY upon running the PC. Sounds like trouble waiting to happen for most users.
I guess this is just another new way for Dell to reduce costs and "make life simpler" for their users. Good luck to them 😉

 

[millypede]

This happened with ALL PC Manuf' as Microsoft changed the OEM Licensing and to help combat 'piracy'. Its a complete pain, and most normal people dont even realise it until its too late.

 

[plinden]

When ordering Dells, there's an option to include restore CDs, for $10 extra.

 

[emaja]

The least they could do is explicitly state that users should create a restore CD IMMEDIATLY upon running the PC. Sounds like trouble waiting to happen for most users.

I have no experience with Dell, but a friend of mine bought an eMachines tower and it immediately came up with a pop-up that advised him to make the restore disks.

Again, I would be very surprised if Dell did not have the same system in place.

 

[homerjward]

meh
as fun as it is to diss dell, their displays are great, and both dell notebooks i've had have been been great if very loud (although this one is used so it's not dell's fault). also my pc is full of high-end dells that are great performers and never have any problems (save server crashes but we have a novell server)
btw dell sucks 😛

 

[macrlz9]

i recently got a dell and went through the same deal didn't realize there were no restore cd's. I called them up and they hassled me for quite a while asking me why i need them. I got fed up and i just said because i paid for the f-ing computer and they should have been there in the first place. they didn't charge me & mailed them out.

 

[Clydefrog]

when i used to have an HP laptop🙁 🙁 It didn't come with an OS disc, so i called Hp up and they sent me the disc in 2 business days free of charge. I was shell shocked😀