World of Rob: Never Again, Dell

Do I like Dell? Uh-uh. Nope. Sorry, I don't.

Do I like Dell people?

Well, the guy who came to my house to fix my wife's laptop was pretty nice. He took my conversation on Linux and Macs in stride. Pointed out the advantages (and there are some) of Windows and mentioned that Macs are pricey. But then, he wasn't fixing the iMac. He was fixing the Dell XPS, which the iMac had made obsolete for my wife.

Of course, Dell had already made it obsolete for my wife by making it a poor product. She'd long coveted a Mac anyway. She works as a graphic designer, uses a Mac at work, and had been using a Mac in her college classes for the last year. The XPS, when we had bought it, was going to be her go-to graphics laptop. We'd outfitted it with the best discrete graphics card we could afford. It had HDMI and a TV card and it was a pretty nice system for $1500 and change. REALLY nice, for the year we bought it (2008). It was the first year Dell put out the XPS, which was meant to capitalize on the Alienware line that Dell had just picked up.

Four years later, here's the summary:

Hard drive replaced twice;
Motherboard replaced;
Power cord is loose on the connector;
System has not charged the battery or recognized ~~the~~ ANY adapter for a year and a half (this includes both the OEM battery & adapter and non-OEM replacements)

And when she decided to upgrade to Windows 7, with the laptop just over a year old, Dell provided no support, no updated drivers, no Knowledge Base articles. The Dell website did not list the XPS as able to be upgraded. This was a 1-year-old model, for goodness' sake, that clearly had the hardware to run 7.

My family has owned 3 Dells, because my workplace qualifies for Dell's employee-purchase plan and I can buy a Dell interest-free with installments taken right out of my paycheck for a year. We loved the first one, a desktop that is now 8 years old and which my oldest daughter could still fire up if she weren't so in love with her MacBook. The XPS was the second; well, you know about that. The third is almost a year old--a desktop, purchased with my artist-in-waiting daughter in mind. It's already showing signs of being . . . balky. I'm not sure how much of that is rough usage and how much is the product. Because of our experience with the XPS, I'm having a hard time giving Dell the benefit of the doubt. But it's got a 4-year warranty and I'm pretty sure I'm soon gonna see the little guy who had such a pleasant conversation with me on Macs and Ubuntu.