Dell complaints

dontbuydell

Ok, I work as a systems architect for a large company. We purchased somewhere in the neighborhood of 30K D600 laptops a couple of years ago. Well, 9K of those were bad, either system board failures, HDD failures, NIC failures or a combination of the above. I personally have had 2 system boards and am on my 3rd HDD within a years time. Dells excuse was that we 'purchased them all at once and if we had split up the 30K order into chunks, we would not have the issues.' That's the most bogus thing I think I've ever heard from a vendor. Let's blame the customer for our shitty ass HW.
With the whole megagrid thing going around, Sr management is wanting us to take a shot. Since the Dell word is on the HW, I'm very reluctant to sign my name to it.
Does anyone have any experience with the 6850's and are they as unreliable as their desktops and laptops?
I'm a midrange guy and x86 hardware generally frustrates me as to it's scalability, reliability, etc but shit rolls down hill and I'm not even sure my advice will be taken into account.

I know if you're on this site, you're probably not a fan of Dell, but I'm looking for some either experienced advice or hard evidence that they suck in the Enterprise too..

Thanks.

paul_dellcc · Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2005 12:19 pm Post subject:

Welcome to the forum dontbuydell Exclamation

If I am not wrong, Enterprise has American technicians instead of Indians.
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dellacroix · Regular Hater Joined: 25 Jun 2005 Posts: 36

ShaftDu · Dances with Hate Joined: 26 Nov 2004 Posts: 585

actually, from what I heard, IBM thinkpads are the best laptops. They are a little pricey but you don't have to worry about the failure rate. Dell is still living on the name.

Blaze · Posted: Sun Aug 21, 2005 2:26 pm Post subject:

Toshiba consistently out-performs all others.

dontbuydell · Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2005 6:59 am Post subject:

I've had a laptop from just about every major vendor out there, Stinkpads are nice but let's see what happens since Lenovo bought them from IBM. Toshiba never gave me any problems but neither have my 3 Compaqs. Dell laptops... well that's why I'm on this site.
I'm looking for advice on more of the enterprise server side like the poweredge 6850, 1850 etc..

ShaftDu · Dances with Hate Joined: 26 Nov 2004 Posts: 585

you might want to consider independant 'whitebox' notebooks maybe like a company called Compal. Though with your volume, i am not sure which vendor would be able to provide.

Compal is a laptop company that HP and Dell goes to make their laptops.

dontbuydell · Posted: Mon Aug 29, 2005 3:18 am Post subject:

Thanks for the post, but guess my last post wasn't that clear. I'm not interested in laptops right now... Need to know about their server class HW. Basically, the only model that I'm looking at right now is the Poweredge 6850 and that's where my concern comes in because I've had their laptops and can't wait to get rid of mine. I just don't want to spend 2M and come to find out their servers are just as bad as their laptops.

Rocke_T_Sinetist · Posted: Mon Aug 29, 2005 10:16 am Post subject:

rmenga · Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 12:59 pm Post subject:

Rocke_T_Sinetist · Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 7:39 pm Post subject:

Good observations Rmenga. Dell has 20 years' experience building sturdy tower systems so it stands to reason the tower servers are stable. 1U systems and blades are new hardware configurations without the long heritage of learning how to do it well.

As 'performance' systems (akin to a Corvette vs. a Toyota), they won't be as stable as the box systems until a good database of lessons-learned has been amassed. This analysis applies to similar configuration transitions from any vendor, with rare exceptions. (Toyota can completely re-engineer a platform and produce 90% reliability the first quarter of production--I own one. So can Boeing, but it costs how many millions?)
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rmenga · Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 8:12 pm Post subject:

Badger · Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2005 1:36 pm Post subject:

One good way of seeing it, is that consumers will buy a new comptuer when theirs no longer works. Companies usually have a 2 or 3 year turnaround on server systems, to keep pace with technology and to prevent failure. However, those servers usually are kept around for whatever duty, and if they prove themselves sturdy and worthy, their manufacturer picks up the contract for the next round of servers. Ergo, home and small business lines are usually craptastic, hoping that they will break and you'll buy a new one. Servers will hold up a good while, as that's where the real money is.
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Rocke_T_Sinetist · Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2005 3:22 pm Post subject:

Not to argue or contradict; I don't have numbers here to back up any assertions and bit-errors readily creep into human memory, but the Austin paper regularly publishes financial data in the form of press releases from Dell.

Servers are high-markup, low volume. Nobody ever got rich selling servers. (Where's Sun's stock today?) Personal systems are incredible volume. And the TS/CS folks can corroborate I think, that personal systems are not subject to anywhere near the profit-shaving under which grocery retailers operate, or even gasoline stations-- pennies on the dollar.

Servers deliver dramatic profit-per-unit-cost at the manufacturing level. At the engineering level however, roughly the same expense it takes to produce a personal-system platform has to be recovered from the sale of one ten-millionth as many 'boxes'.

Personal systems sales is the engine that drives overall corporate profit. The staggering number of systems sold also accounts for the reason an operational fault that is not also a safety fault, will not be 'recalled' in desktops or portables: it would cost too much; Wall Street would major frown Mad

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Badger · Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2005 6:47 pm Post subject:

You may not have intended to argue or contradict, but you seem to have Wink

My main case was that the money is in servers, which is true. As you said, they have a high profit to cost ratio, which is good for business. The servers do end up being a higher quality and lasting longer. I also should have noted that the business line of desktops (Optiplex) are generally sturdy as well, aside from component defects which affected the whole industry. All of these systems are generally replaced every few years in the major companies, as well as governments, who have lots of money. We're talking thousands of computers at a time.

Personal systems are pretty much peanuts when profits are compared. Yes they sell a great deal, but one server at $4300 accounts for four personal computers, and there aren't too may cheap servers. As for Sun, revenues for the second quarter of 2005 were $2.843 billion with a net profit of $19 million.

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/investor/earnings_releases/pr/2005-q2.html

I think they're doing allright Very Happy

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