Stanton,

In the 90's, I recommended Dell because of their superior tech support and their superior Dell engineering. In 2002, I bought a top of the line desktop and laptop spending just under $8,000. Both purchase prices includes $500 for their premium "Next Business Day" support.

Six months after buying my OptiPlex GX400 workstation, I started to get BSODs, where my computer would randomly reboot itself. I spent 2 months trouble-shooting it myself before I called Dell. Boy, was that a shock, when I learned that "Next Business Day" does not mean next business day. Dell said that my W2K OS was corrupt and probably needed to be re-installed. I was hesitant to do that because I didn't want to lose all of my data files on the C:\ partition. Dell would not provide any assistance.

I went to the Microsoft website and it said that the cause of the error code generated (95% of the time) by my BSOD was probably malfunctioning hardware. After 6 months, I finally paid a technical support person to trouble shooot the problem and he determined that it was caused by a software application. However, because a BSOD can be caused by hardware, drivers, OS or software applications, my tech support person started by checking and double-checking the hardware components.

I was particularly concerned since this was a new computer, which was still under warranty.

Stanton, Dell obviously abuses their individual customers no matter how much they pay for a computer. I don't know how they treat their big corporate clients, who can demand that no junkware be put on their computers and they have the muscle to negotiate components, price, etc. They may get a better deal. I know some companies that are building all of their own computers with the same configuration for consistency and trouble-shooting efficiency.

Not only do I not recommend Dell computers any more, I would not buy one. In June 2003, a non-profit that I am associated with wanted me to get quotes for a new server, which I did but it turned out that this server was priced at $3,500 and it only had a workstation motherboard, not a server motherboard. We bought a top of the line server for $1,500 with 2 SATA 72 GB hard drives. The Dell price also did NOT include SATA hard drives.

When you add to this all of the junkware that they are paid to put on their customer's computer and their non-existent support, I do not know why anyone would buy a Dell. Dell is becoming the new Gateway.

If you want to read about more Dell misdeeds, go to http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/ and click on Dell in the right hand column.

Cheers,

Linda