[lug] Who sells good Linux computers?

[George Sexton]

I had one of the first Dell 486's, a 486-25. It was top of the line, and
vastly expensive. It was a horror. I must of went through 3 motherboards.

Later, I had one of the first Pentium's a Pentium 60. It too was vastly
expensive and filled with problems. As I recall, it didn't work with Adaptec
SCSI controllers because of a BIOS problem. I had to buy a Mylex adapter.

One of my customers has a program that I wrote that talks to devices on a
serial port. On Dell machines, the serial ports are broken. To use the
program requires a USB/Serial interface. The serial ports on Dell laptops
are broken as well. Unfortunately, uninitiated Dell customers think they are
getting the highest quality machine and your software must be broken.

Dell's pricing is pretty high. I built a P4 2.4 w/ 200GB HD and 1GB of RAM
in a 1U rack for about $1,300. It's been running for a year now. White box
is the only way to go for desktop and rack mount PCs.

George Sexton
MH Software, Inc.
http://www.mhsoftware.com/
Voice: 303 438 9585
  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: lug-bounces at lug.boulder.co.us 
> [mailto:lug-bounces at lug.boulder.co.us] On Behalf Of Jeff Schroeder
> Sent: Friday, October 01, 2004 1:40 PM
> To: LUG Boulder
> Subject: Re: [lug] Who sells good Linux computers?
> 
> Ferdinand wrote:
> 
> > Pre-loaded with Linux or not - their support is horrible if you
> > purchase as a lonely end user.
> > (snip)
> > Their business support is better but still far from great.
> >
> > So - if you want good all around I would stay away from Dell - no
> > matter what OS they install.
> 
> I concur.  For years I built my own systems, and two months 
> ago when I 
> needed some serious rack-mount servers I decided to go with Dell 
> because it seems like everyone uses their servers.  I bought three of 
> them, installed them at my co-location facility, and within a 
> week two 
> were offline.  One had a bad power supply; the other had a bad 
> motherboard (!!).
> 
> It was nightmarish getting my "next day premium support" 
> service (yes, I 
> had bought these as a business, not an individual) and in the end it 
> took *six days* for them to dispatch a tech... and he brought 
> refurbished parts!  Part of the reason I bought new boxes 
> from Dell and 
> not used ones from Ebay was because I wanted *new* 
> components.  So much 
> for that.
> 
> After the whole experience, I called Dell support to 
> complain-- not so 
> much to demand my money back or anything; just to let them 
> know that as 
> a first-time business customer I was extremely unhappy.  It turns out 
> there's no one who handles complaints (???) and I would have 
> to write a 
> physical letter to their Legal Department to voice my concerns.  Even 
> the classic "Well, can I speak to your manager?" failed-- 
> they refused 
> to allow me to do so.
> 
> As you can tell, I'm very disgruntled about the whole thing 
> and won't be 
> ordering from Dell again.  I understand that things break sometimes, 
> but the way the process was handled bordered on incompetence.
> 
> $0.02,
> Jeff
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