Gadjimatronics: I Don't Think You're Getting a Dell, Dude

I Don't Think You're Getting a Dell, Dude

I'm fairly happy with the Apple computers that Miranda bought a few months ago. They seem to still be working. Peej seems to think that they are more reliable, and he likes the keyboard that came with one of them. I can't be bothered to work up any interest in debating the merits of an Apple vs a computer that isn't an Apple. Who cares? That was all settled years ago.

We still have a Dell laptop that, after five years, is still kicking around on the Admiral Hassenpfeffer. It's the go-to computer that seems to work best with the satellite system. Nothing else seems to work as well with it. Go figure.

So I don't come at this as a partisan. I don't really think about brands anymore. I do lament the fact that Dell seems to have found a way to end up in the toilet at a company:

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 computers’ demise: the school had overtaxed the machines by making them perform difficult math calculations.
Dell, however, had actually sent the university, in Austin, desktop PCs riddled with faulty electrical components that were leaking chemicals and causing the malfunctions. Dell sold millions of these computers from 2003 to 2005 to major companies like Wal-Mart and Wells Fargo, institutions like the Mayo Clinic and small businesses.
“The funny thing was that every one of them went bad at the same time,” said Greg Barry, the president of PointSolve, a technology services company near Philadelphia that had bought dozens. “It’s unheard-of, but Dell didn’t seem to recognize this as a problem at the time.”
Documents recently unsealed in a three-year-old lawsuit against Dell show that the company’s 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.
The documents chronicling the failure of the PCs also help explain the decline of one of America’s most celebrated and admired companies. Perhaps more than any other company, Dell fought to lower the price of computers.

So sad.

The article goes on to describe Dell as a once-innovative company brought low by incompetence, greed and mismanagement. That's a great lesson for our times. A business model that looks infallible right now can turn into an albatross around the neck of a company that refuses to change or adhere to ethics that it once held.