It happens every spring...

posted by Lorna Brown at 5:34 AM

oh, what the heck. Here's one more. It's FUN to gripe about Dell!

posted by Lorna Brown at 6:30 AM

Because there is far too much beauty in the world for me to spend so much time griping about Dell, go see the trailer for Winged Migration. And then go see the movie.

posted by Lorna Brown at 5:00 AM

DELL UPDATE:

It took them all of a day to delete my post! But no worries, there are still over 100 others that all say the same thing, and more are getting posted daily. For anyone who's interested, Morton Topfer was formerly the lead advisor of quality and manufacturing at Dell. He shared the office of Dell CEO with Michael Dell and Kevin Rollins. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, he was referred to in a Business 2.0 article as the genius behind Dell's continuing high standards of quality. He now sits on the Dell board of directors.

Not that I'm advocating that you should bother such busy and important people as the members of the Dell board, certainly not by writing a polite, well worded letter of complaint, but I can tell you that Morton Topfer is the name of the man whose reputation was once synonymous with Dell quality. From what's you can find Google, he seems like a genuinely good human being - he even gives generously to education and philathropic causes. He might be interested to hear how far it's gone downhill since he moved on.

Even if I had his email address, it probably wouldn't be right to publish it, but... it would probably be OK to tell you that the Dell email system formats addresses like this: Firstname_Lastname@dell.com. Morton Topfer. Former co-CEO. I bet his Dell email address is still active.

posted by Lorna Brown at 11:38 PM

Dude, I'm returning my Dell!

All I ever really needed to know I learned from reading a blog. Or some forwarded email spam. You know, floss, wear sunscreen, all that stuff you don't really think about until you hit 30. And this is my little corner of the web, where for only the basic cost of monthly bandwidth, I can share my hard earned wisdom with the world:

Look both ways, and use your x-ray vision to scan for any red lights behind buildings before crossing any street in Westwood... If you're going to imprison people of Middle Eastern descent without regard for the fourth amendment, try not to pick on the ones with American friends who make webpages... and sometimes even my own version of Martha Stewart domesticity, How to turn those extra Arrowhead water bottles into stylish and decorative modern furniture.

But seriously. This is the age of information. There's lots of wisdom to be found in this pop-culture morass of a free press, and the very best and most helpful thing I can offer to you is this piece of advice.

DON'T BUY A DELL. Really. Just don't. If you're seriously considering it, why don't you take a quick look through Dell's support forums. I just added my own comments today, on the sixth page of only one of many threads that are popping up, devoted to how amazingly poorly manufactured the new Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop is.

Go see it quick, I'm sure that the moderators won't leave it up for very long.

Guys,

I just got my i8500 last week, and I was really astounded by how bad the keyboard / trackpad design and quality were. This was to be my third Dell - the first one caught on fire, and the refurb replacement they sent me lasted all of four months before the touchpad stopped working. So against the better advice of my friends and coworkers, I bought another Dell.

Four days of phone and email tag with support later, I have an RMA number. It's going back tomorrow, and I couldn't be happier to get rid of the thing.

Folks, if enough of these machines get returned, Dell will have to do something about the quality. I'd urge anyone who is waiting for a solution to be careful. If they don't even have an official support response to this problem, I can promise you that they won't have a hardware fix ready to send out to you before your 30 day satisfaction guarantee expires.

We got $uckered. We paid $3000 for a laptop that's so low quality you need an external keyboard and mouse. At least the screen is pretty, eh? Good software package, too - just too bad nobody can type on the thing.

For $3000, nobody should have to wedge sticky tape under the keyboard.

--Lorna

The very most amusing thing about this is that my initial post was rejected, due to having the word "suckered" in the post: "Message Body: Message body contains invalid content. Please do not use profanity in your post. Profanity is not tolerated on these boards. (Word: suck)"

Dell filters out the word suckers!

I don't know why I didn't get something else after my first Dell caught on fire during shipping week. Maybe I'm just stupidly optimistic. But after the third incident, my friends are losing sympathy for me. I've lost the right to even complain about having to listen to the Alan Parsons Project while waiting on for hours on hold for support, or having to pay for the return shipping, despite the fact that the product is so low quality - everyone I try to whine to just shakes their heads and say "Why on earth did you buy another Dell? After the last one? And then the one before that? Why don't you get a ThinkPad? Or a nice Vaio?"

So that's it. No more Dells for me. The Inspiron 8500, squooshy keyboard and all, will be sent back to meet its maker. It's comforting to know that my suffering hasn't been entirely in vain: at least the people I care about most won't be buying any Dells, either.

posted by Lorna Brown at 4:20 AM

Tonight Mike and I both got citations from the LAPD in Westwood Village. I've never received a ticket for being such a bad citizen before, so it was something of a new experience. I will say this much: I have never been treated so poorly by an officer of the law. He refused at least twice to tell me his name and badge number when I requested that information, saying only "I'll be the one asking the questions here."

Oh, there's more, but you don't need to hear about that, and I don't really want to dwell on one individual's poor comportment. (Or for that matter, personal grooming. Have you ever noticed that the really sexy cops don't tend to behave like jerks? I would expect that in Los Angeles the police officers should be at least as good looking as the rest of the general population. If I have to be detained for 40 minutes and then cough up the cash for such a frivolous ticket, I think the least the city of LA can do is to provide me with a really fine-looking cop.)

We were cited for violating Code 21453(d) at the intersection of Broxton and Weyburn Ave. The exact notes were: "Obs violator cross in crosswalk against a solid red phase tri-light, (S/E corner to N/E corner)."

What's our side of the story? There were quite clearly no cars within two blocks of our intersection. Being the kinds of responsible citizens that wish to not be run over by an errant Pontiac Aztek, we looked both ways, in all directions before crossing. And you know, from where we stood, there was quite clearly no visible red light, anywhere.

See for yourself. Click the image to enlarge it:

We'll be contesting this. I think the moral of this story is that if you're a bored cop on a Wednesday night, looking for people to harrass, you don't pick on the ones who are armed to the teeth with an arsenal of digital cameras. We have Photoshop, and we're not afraid to use it.

posted by Lorna Brown at 2:18 AM