OK, I'm a little late on this one, but I haven't been in the office much
of late.

Dell:
Yes, Dell's servers are pretty decent. We have 4 of their 6650's (Quad
Xeon boxes) here. They come with some nice features such as
battery-backed write cache included. They have some nice Flat Panel
monitors too, but if you buy one, expect to have to RMA it first before
you'll get one that doesn't have blurring problems.

That being said, here's the reasons my company doesn't buy Dell anymore.

Their Optiplex workstations have had about a 75% failure rate. While
they came with a 3 year warranty, getting service was such a hassle that
we replaced them with workstations from HP. The CD-ROM drives in said
workstations had about a 90% failure rate in the first 3 months.
Thankfully, we didn't really need them.

Their service is truly awful. All of their phone support is overseas.
There's a dead laptop sitting on my workbench. We set up a service bill
where they were going to ship me a box and I would send the laptop back
in it. The box never arrived. I've tried several times to call the
service department using the phone number they gave me and all I've ever
gotten is an automated message that says they're too busy to talk to me
and the system hangs up on me.

The sales department is just as bad. When we purchased our last 6650 (a
$10,000 server) I couldn't reach my sales rep by phone. I sent her an
email saying we wanted to purchase (not get a quote, but PURCHASE) a
6650. I didn't even get a call back. It took several more attempts on my
end before she finally would accept my company's money. That's one
example of many when it comes to their sales. The other, broader issue
with that department is that you get a different sales person every 6
months or less. I'm guessing that some of it has to do with employee
retention. But then they audit their customers' purchase habits every
few months and re-assign you to sales reps who they think can get the
most out of you. This way if you only make purchases everyone once in a
while, you never know who to call! Very convenient. 

In short, Dell may be cheaper, but it's not worth it. Buy from HP if you
have a serious business.

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Brian Chrisman
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 12:30 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [RLUG] Dell laptop explodes in Japan

Dennis Bagley wrote:
> And another reason why I do not buy from Dell.
>
I've had some pretty good successes with their servers, and with
incredible delivery times.  I ordered one on a Friday, must've been a
common config because it arrived Tuesday tested and working well.
They hosted a debian installer thingy for the sata chipset they used as
well which wasn't supported by vanilla debian.
>
> http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32550
>
> _______________________________________________
> RLUG mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.rlug.org/mailman/listinfo/rlug


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