On the Dell subject.
Read this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/technology/29dell.html
"After the math department at the University of Texas noticed some of its Dell computers failing, Dell examined the machines. The company came up with an unusual reason for the computersâ demise: the school had overtaxed the machines by making them perform difficult math calculations. "
"Documents recently unsealed in a three-year-old lawsuit against Dell show that the companyâs employees were actually aware that the computers were likely to break. Still, the employees tried to play down the problem to customers and allowed customers to rely on trouble-prone machines, putting their businesses at risk. Even the firm defending Dell in the lawsuit was affected when Dell balked at fixing 1,000 suspect computers, according to e-mail messages revealed in the dispute. "
"A study by Dell found that OptiPlex computers affected by the bad capacitors were expected to cause problems up to 97 percent of the time over a three-year period, according to the lawsuit. "
Yes, the actual faulty computers (with exploding capacitors on motherboards) were made a few years back... but lawsuits take years. So, all the recent info is mostly about recalls due to health and safety issues alone.
See
my earlier post on more recent problems with Dell produce.
It doesn't take long to replace a faulty product line. What takes much longer is to replace the corporate culture: "use the cheapest components possible, cross your fingures and hope the customers won't complain. If customers complain, lie to them that no one else has problems with this product line. Even better, tell customers it's their fault for actually using the computer."
To summarize, the problem with Dell is not that they made and sold faulty computers. Every manufacturer makes a faulty product once in a while: think of Intel's recall of X58 chipset earlier this year. The problem with Dell is the refusal to take responsibility and make good to the customers.