An Unsealed Lawsuit Indicates Dell Hid Faults of Computers

Source: New York Times

November 19, 2010 - SAN FRANCISCO — Documents unsealed Thursday in a three-year-old lawsuit against Dell have raised more questions about how the company handled an unprecedented number of faulty computers sold to governments, schools and corporations from 2003 to 2005.

A judge in the Federal District Court in North Carolina unsealed hundreds of documents linked to a lawsuit filed by Advanced Internet Technologies that had accused Dell of trying to hide defects in its desktop computers from customers.

For instance, the court documents show that the City of New York filed incident reports with Dell on 20.2 percent of a batch of 5,000 computers purchased during this period. A purchase of 2,800 computers by Microsoft resulted in issues with 11 percent of the machines; General Electric, William W. Backus Hospital, Denison University and the Montana Justice Department were among dozens of other organizations that experienced similar results.

The documents also show how Dell had resisted informing many of its customers about the extent of the problem. Despite widespread reports from the field, Dell salespeople and technicians were encouraged to keep customers in the dark about the known defects that left computers inoperable.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/technology/19docs.html?src=busln

now Gateways, I've had 2 that I had nothing but problems with.

Never could get it working properly, just a piece of crap - faulty disk drive, a hard drive that skips, software doesn't work, etc. I used it for one year and replaced it with a HP that still works perfectly, six years later.

I got it used, so I can't take part in any class action. But my frustration means I will NEVER buy another Dell. Mac all the way for me.

I bought a Dell a while back and owned it for about 4 years. It was not the actual machines that I had problems with, but the support. Every support call ended with me almost pulling all of the hair out of my head. You call support and reach somebody in India who has no clue about your computer. They are very polite, but not very well trained. When I went to buy my new computer, my starting point was "Anybody but Dell" and I was not alone I found out after talking to people. I now own a Lenovo Thinkpad and their support is also equally pathetic. They do not outsource their support to india, so instead of some polite, but totally clueless guy that you can not even understand, I can now speak to somebody who speaks decent english, but is still equally incompetant and also very rude. After getting very frustrated, I did some research on the web and found that basically every PC company has an average of 50% satisfaction ratio. Yep, 50%. How sad is that? The only company that has a high satisfaction ratio is Apple, at 85% satisfied customers. So, in short, they are all the same. Ask any PC owner what they think of their computer and they will be very ho-hum about it....Ask a Mac owner and they get excited about it. They used to even hold parties for people who opened up their new computers.

In short, if you want to be happy about your computer, buy a Mac.

i've been rocking homebrewed systems since '98.

I've been doing the same myself since the early 90's.
:thumbsup:

I check out the reviews at Newegg and buy each individual part based on its record of reliability. My PCs last for years with zero problems.

I couldn't find much for current statistics, but a 20% fail rate is probably not far off the norm over a three year period if you do some looking around. Apples are much better, but of course you pay up front for the increased reliability.:shrug:

The "news" here is in the headline, not the fail rate.

Apple, HP, Nintendo, Nokia, Microsoft, Sony, etc. They're all made in the same Chinese factory by Foxconn. Apple started suckling at the Chinese teat some time ago, outsourcing American jobs to make more profit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

I think that the overclocking community (through websites like HardOCP) was among the first to spot and best document the range and extent of the problem, probably because running systems outside of specifications is a good way to induce early failure. By 2006 some enthusiast motherboard makers were advertising all-Japanese capacitors as a feature.

Edit: Sorry, I missed the point. Because Dell always ran with nerfed BIOSes and annoying proprietary "features," the overclockers never touched 'em, but everyone knew exactly why they were crapping out.