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06 Oct 09 - 05:31 PM (#2739933) Subject: BS: Dell Suck From: Richard Bridge Why is it that nearly everything inside a Dell computer can only be got from Dell at inflated prices? The rest of the PC world works on commodities - standard disk drives, standard memory modules, standard cables, standard fans. And in most cases the carriers for additional disk drives are in there too. Dell? I should coco! I want to add an IDE (PATA) drive to an old-ish Dell - I have to rummage about on ebay to get a non-standard disk carrier (or caddy). I have to get the standard dual-header IDE cable because Dell use a single header. I bet when I get them I find some other Dell-specific mutation too. Bah. |
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06 Oct 09 - 06:11 PM (#2739964) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Amergin Dells are over priced doorstops....better off building your own.... What sucks is that here practically every business uses dells...and they're always so damn slow.... |
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06 Oct 09 - 06:24 PM (#2739979) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Bill D "Why is it that nearly everything inside a Dell computer can only be got from Dell at inflated prices?" *shrug*...Because it is a profitable business model...their computers are reasonably priced and moderately dependable, but when stuff DOES happen, they are the source. |
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06 Oct 09 - 06:54 PM (#2740003) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: artbrooks Having experienced the same thing, I bought an HP the last time around. |
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06 Oct 09 - 07:31 PM (#2740026) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: katlaughing Hmmm...we've been quite pleased with our Dells, one, two, three, and maybe soon, four. I did really like the HP we had years ago, too. |
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06 Oct 09 - 07:39 PM (#2740030) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Q (Frank Staplin) Very happy with Dell. An "oldish" model?? Should have been replaced years ago? |
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06 Oct 09 - 11:53 PM (#2740164) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: EBarnacle If you read "The Road Ahead" by Bill Gates, his comment 15 years ago was that the smartest thing IBM did in the home and laptop computer was to make the architecture generic so that others could use their concepts. Keeping the system parochial almost sank them early on. What works for mainframes does not work for smaller stuff. |
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07 Oct 09 - 12:00 AM (#2740168) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Stilly River Sage I haven't had to go to Dell for replacement parts in the last few years. My daughter's power supply went out around christmas last year and she ordered a new part from NewEgg. It needed a little coaxing to fit (I think she said she cut the case a little) but with drives and such we haven't had to do any surgery. I wonder if it is because of older equipment? I use an HP, the kids have Dells. One of these days I will build my own computer. I'd like to give it a spin. SRS |
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07 Oct 09 - 01:58 AM (#2740181) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Janie I have two Dell desktops, one ancient and one merely elderly, and have never had a significant hardware problem with either. Of course, I also haven't tried to upgrade or add hardware. Also have a Mac desktop, which is pretty fool-proof, a near top-of-the line HP laptop that is my son's and has had some problems with hardware, and a toshiba laptop that is a bit slow but has not given me any problems. |
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07 Oct 09 - 10:42 AM (#2740409) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: number 6 "Dell Suck" ... ????? well, I did know a girl by the name of Adele back in high school. oh ... never mind biLL |
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07 Oct 09 - 11:02 AM (#2740424) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: vectis I have a computer technician for a husband and he wouldn't buy Dell if it was the last manufacturer on the planet. Nuff Said? |
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07 Oct 09 - 02:39 PM (#2740587) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Richard Bridge Oh, I didn't buy it, and it does work, but it would be really handy to be able to do things to it to improve it! Some Dellishness is sort of neat - I really like the green plastic cooling ducts, and the hot swappable SCSI drives in the old Poweredge servers were nifty - but again non-standard so if you want to add drives you have to go back to Dell. Tiny also had their vices (while they existed). THe way you had to remove the cage under teh floppy to change the hard drives for example - although they always put all the caddies in even if they were not needed so an upgrade was not too bad. I am however also having an argument with an old Tiny at the moment. THe PSU blew, and I replaced it with a quite nice 450watter in place of the original 230 - but now that I have the right front cover to use with two optical drives (a DVD writer and a CD writer that is actually smaller than any of the plain CD drives I ahve lying around) I can't put the front on because if I slide the optical drives all they way in they foul the oversized PSU (and blank off its air intake too)! Of course changing the PSU for a physically smaller one means taking the motherboard out and that in turn means wholly stripping the case! |
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08 Oct 09 - 01:18 PM (#2741269) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: GUEST,mg I have had nothing but bad luck with them and their terrible support. mg |
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08 Oct 09 - 01:34 PM (#2741275) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Rasener Just realised a bit of spoonerism with the titke makes it Sell Duck |
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08 Oct 09 - 01:48 PM (#2741288) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Bill D Out of curiosity and not relevant to the topic, does the UK actually treat the company name as a plural? I am sure everyone over here would say "Dell sucks"...treating the name as a collective noun referring to the company 'as a unit'. |
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08 Oct 09 - 02:14 PM (#2741322) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Don(Wyziwyg)T Good while they work. A disaster for spares, and a catastrophe on speed for support. I wouldn't touch 'em. I have a complete homebuild, and a hybrid, much upgraded HP, and anything I need for either one comes from Medway City Computers at Frindesbury, for less than you pay at Maplins, and their counter staff know the products, and will happily spend all day selling you what you actually NEED. Don T. |
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08 Oct 09 - 02:17 PM (#2741324) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Don(Wyziwyg)T No Bill. We would say Dells suck referring to the individual PCs, and Dell sucks for the Co. Don T. |
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08 Oct 09 - 02:21 PM (#2741328) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Bill D right, Don....I shoulda explicated my query more explicitly. In any case, it seems 'different' over there. |
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08 Oct 09 - 02:46 PM (#2741361) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Rasener It sure be different over here |
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08 Oct 09 - 02:50 PM (#2741363) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: VirginiaTam Dell is of the Devil. Dell is Hell. I hate this laptop. Slower than a constipated slug and keeps randomly getting stuck. Spastic is what it is. I hated the last desktop. My daughter's Dell that she had to buy through university deal because it had uni specific LAN card (we are talking 1999), was a piece of malfunctioning shite from the first term. Cost us 2000 and she had to nurse it through her whole school career. They would never replace it. Only repair which meant she went weeks without usually at crucial end of term paper writing times. In fact there were a number of students suffered that same crap. My next laptop will be an Acer. My mom's first and only PC is an eMachine desktop bought at Circuit City in 2001 and it is still going. A bit clunky but WOW! |
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08 Oct 09 - 03:09 PM (#2741381) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Rasener I have an Acer laptop. I rate them very much |
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08 Oct 09 - 03:44 PM (#2741430) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Bill D I have an HP that is...ummmm..5-6 years old. It's doing fine. My wife just bought a Dell less than a year ago. No problems..so far. Makes me nervous to read stories. |
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08 Oct 09 - 03:48 PM (#2741433) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: MMario we bought Dell's for both kids in college with the extended warranty. One sailed through 4 years w/ no problems - the other extended his college carreer into 8 years - twice had problems and both times dell had a tech onsite within 24 hours. |
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08 Oct 09 - 04:25 PM (#2741450) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Sandy Mc Lean I was once going to purchase a Dell laptop. They wanted me to pledge that I would never take it to Cuba. I told them to stick it where the sun seldome shines and bought a Toshiba. |
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08 Oct 09 - 04:36 PM (#2741456) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Amergin I had a bad experience with Dell...many years ago....the motherboard went out...and they told me they would replace it for free...and then after I sent it in...they said no it is not covered by the warranty....and wanted to charge me a fortune....for the money they wanted to charge me I could have bought a new one....i told them to go to hell...and they sent it back without fixing it....ended up buying a new base for it...with motherboard, keyboard and everything....a while later on ebay...alot cheaper than what they wanted to charge.... Additionally, I got laid off after they refused to fix it....and still owed money, and couldn't pay...and they kept ringing me up several times an day....sometimes three times in the same hour...and were rude and nasty with me, in barely understood East Indian accents....finally i got onto a special repayment plan...and they still were ringing me up...claiming the plan was not valid... Once I got back to working I paid the bastards off....and swore never to do business with them again. I fucking hate Dell |
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08 Oct 09 - 05:16 PM (#2741487) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: katlaughing Hmm...so this question may not be for those of you who hate Dell.:-) For anyone else, have you tried one of their mini-laptops>? We are looking at one as a network station here at home. It seems the easiest, fastest, cheapest way to add another terminal which I can use to access my regular HD plus have mobility if wanted. I would put an external monitor and keyboard to it. |
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08 Oct 09 - 05:29 PM (#2741497) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Stilly River Sage I'd also look at the Acers they sell at NewEgg.com If you visit the Acer site you'll see they have tons of combinations of features, screens, and OSs, so I'd see what I like out of their options and then go look at what NewEgg is charging. You can price in an extended warranty any number of ways, and then compare it with Dell. Putting the external equipment on is a great way to make it work more like a regular computer, but if you look at the prices of regular desktops, they've come way down. Will you ever want to bump this up to a regular computer, or are you looking for a net device for it's mobility? I played that "what if" shopping game recently for a friend. By the time you add the software you want and get the operating system you want, they can come out about the same price, if you already have the monitor, keyboard, etc. SRS |
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08 Oct 09 - 06:44 PM (#2741551) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Richard Bridge If you want a netbook, I think the Asus EEEPC is the leader of the pack. Available with Linux if you want and a 9 hour battery life. I bought a Compaq because it was cheap and the battery life is like an hour and a half. In the UK it is often done to refer to a company as plural although technically the legal person is singular. And Dell still suck. I have the caddy, it is in with the hard drive (and a new IDE cable as the old one was for one drive only) and a new optical drive as well (that cable would accept two devices) but for the first time an XP machine is not recognising the second hard drive and I am getting a boot fail until I unplug the new drive (yes it is set to slave). Now I have to drop the bleeding caddies out again and re-check the jumpers and maybe try a new IDE cable, and/or format the drive on another machine or even boot to DOS and Fdisk. And while I am at it ebuyer suck big stylee too. I had bought the new optical drive for this upgrade - advertised and invoiced as being with Nero and some other shit. When it arrived (35 days ago) I checked the outside of the box - no damage. Today I opened it - just the bare drive, none of the accessories. Tried to enter the ebuyer return program interface and they say I had 28 days so sod off. They have not read the Sale of Goods Act nor the Unfair Contract Terms Act nor the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations and I am going to prolapse their arse so they will never shit comfortably again! |
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08 Oct 09 - 07:49 PM (#2741591) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: katlaughing Well, I did write a reply right after you posted, SRS. Don't know where it went. I am for supper right now, so will be back. Thanks to both of you. |
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08 Oct 09 - 09:35 PM (#2741658) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: robomatic I've had two ACeR's in succession, an XP machine and a Vista machine. I find them excellent value for the money. I've kept both of them pretty busy over the last few years. One thing they had that I liked, true stereo line-in ports, long after most other brands had dispensed with them and brazenly tacked on a second headphone jack. I am keeping an eye out for a new machine that will come pre loaded with the new MSoft OS, System 7. The newer ACeRs apparently have dispensed with their line inputs, too, alas. |
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08 Oct 09 - 11:36 PM (#2741716) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Janie Dell PC's may soon be a moot point. Dell announced today they are closing their Winston-Salem PC manufacturing facility by the end of the year. 900+ employees will be laid off. Dell opened the plant about 5 years ago after being granted hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives from the State of North Carolina (a decision that was extremely controversial) as well as somewhere in the neighborhood of 37 million in incentives, basically extorted, from Forsythe County and the City of Winston-Salem to locate there. Dell said from the beginning they were going to build the manufacturing facility in the Triad area (a rough geographic area encompassing 3 counties and the cities of Greensboro, High Point, and Winston-Salem, but were quite coy about just where in the Triad. The then Governor (the now under investigation for a bunch of stuff Mike Easley. though nothing about the Dell deal has come under investigation) called the legislature back for a special 2 day session to pressure them to grant the historically high incentives. Once those were granted, Dell toyed with the county and city governments of the Triad to extort as much as possible to decide where to land. Seems the desktop business has given way to laptops and those very small laptops (I forget what they are called) that are mostly geared toward internet access rather than applications.) All the laptops are produced overseas, at considerable better profit margins. This because of a combination of labor costs and shipping costs. Light laptops cost a lot less to ship overseas than does the components of a desktop. While the recession has probably had some effect, this is mostly DELL missing changes in market trends from desktops to laptops. These jobs were not high wage jobs by USA standards. The higher paying positions at this Dell plant would have paid something like $12.00 per hour Dell promises to pay back the incentives received from the County and City governments. It remains to be seen if they will pay back any of the State tax dollars. The incentives were spread out over 15 years, so not all of the huge incentives offered have been paid out. Forsythe Co. commissioners are trying to put a positive spin on their misjudgement by talking about what a nice manufacturing facility was built and saying that another manufacturer is certain to want to move in after Dell leaves. The Triad area, where Winston-Salem is located, has lost 10,000 manufacturing jobs over the last 20 years. The region had lots of textile and furniture manufacturers, and all those jobs have been lost as the manufacturers moved their production lines overseas, mostly to southeast Asia, and some of the textiles south of the border to Mexico and Central America. The current unemployment rate in Forsythe Co. is just over 11%. It is about to go up. More at the WUNC "The State of Things" Winston Without Dell |
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08 Oct 09 - 11:41 PM (#2741717) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Janie And my apologies for all the mispellings and grammatical errors above. It is even worse than is usual for me. |
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09 Oct 09 - 12:26 AM (#2741746) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: katlaughing Yikes, that is NOT good news! I will have think about whether I want to support them with my custom or not. Thanks for the info, Janie. |
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09 Oct 09 - 03:29 AM (#2741781) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: VirginiaTam TheSilentOne still swears by Dell and won't have anything else. I only swear at them. We have that Asus EEEPC netbook, unfortunately purchased just before US holiday Summer 2008, so we didn't get the 9 hour battery. Can I buy the 9 hour battery for my old EEPC? I love this little thing. We carry it with us on all trips, download photos instantly and show to family without printing out. Can log on to interwub in any hotspot in the world. I am considering loading all my lyrics to it and not carrying the big mucking book o' worms to sessions and festivals. But it needs more battery life. |
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09 Oct 09 - 05:16 AM (#2741812) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Richard Bridge VT, you need to check that with Woodsie, he has the 9 hour battery. I think I remember seeing bitching somewhere on the internet that the new battery did NOT fit the older ones. I bought an inverter for twenty quid that plugs into a car cigar lighter and lets me use the use the mains charger to recharge the netbook anywhere the car (or caravan) is. |
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09 Oct 09 - 06:04 AM (#2741830) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: VirginiaTam Or I could get the external 9 hour battery. It would be a bit bothersome to have to leave mid session to juice up my notebook. Even more so if the car is not parked nearby. |
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09 Oct 09 - 12:02 PM (#2742092) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: GUEST,number 6 Ahhh .... all pc's suck. and then there's those Macs .... whew !! you don't know what sucks mean until you tried one of $$$those$$$. as per that Dell facility closing down in Winston-Salem ... it's not the first time Dell has pulled a stunt like that. biLL |
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09 Oct 09 - 12:16 PM (#2742108) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: EBarnacle We just bought a Dell Optiplex from a friend of ours who is a computer recycler. The machine is three years old, which means that it should be burned in. We will keep our fingers crossed. |
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09 Oct 09 - 02:04 PM (#2742197) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: JohnInKansas Re Janie's post above: GearLog report on Dell shutdown. Some other changes to Dell operations are noted, including the migration of operations in Ireland to Poland - which might be of interest to some of us. John |
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09 Oct 09 - 02:20 PM (#2742209) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: GUEST,number 6 I posted a thread about the Dell migration from Ireland to Poland some time ago .... not many response to that thread .... I guess Dell didn't suck back then. biLL |
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09 Oct 09 - 02:46 PM (#2742237) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: artbrooks I'm afraid that a move from one EU country to another doesn't have the same immediacy to people in the US as does the closure of a domestic plant by a US company. |
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09 Oct 09 - 02:53 PM (#2742243) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: GUEST,number 6 ok . . . . but tell that to the laid off workers in Ireland. and tell that to the laid off workers in Poland when they decide to move the plant to Romania (or wherever) biLL |
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09 Oct 09 - 03:02 PM (#2742255) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: Richard Bridge I think I have sussed the immediate problem. 1. Dell in their wisdom will not permit the drives to be set as master and slave, but demands CS settings on both. 2. The BIOS on Dells as old as the one I am tarting up do not recognise hard disks over 400GB, and the new one was 500. Swapped in a slightly used 350GB - the bitch boots! |
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09 Oct 09 - 03:04 PM (#2742258) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: GUEST,number 6 "the bitch boots" now does this mean Dell doesn't suck ? biLL |
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09 Oct 09 - 04:16 PM (#2742327) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: GUEST,Richard Bridge having booted a Dell Result! I initialised and formatted the 500GB drive (in NTFS) on a different computer, and it is now recognised. I have also got a USB2 PCI card added to add extra USB ports. The optical drives play - but I now need to find which of my MANY copies of Nero (all came as part of a retail pack with a drive so refuse to work except with that drive) will talk to the optical drives I have in! And hunt for a lot of software and install it - then dump a clone of the C drive in the new partition on the new drive and use the rest of that drive for data. A while back I used to be able to format C and be back up again in 15 minutes on one of the computers - until the partition I had the Ghost of the OS and programs in corrupted. Aiming to get back to that using a bit of Avanquest software and to back the clone up on a DVD too if I can get enough data on a DVD. Dell still suck - it has taken me far too long to get to this stage! |
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09 Oct 09 - 04:31 PM (#2742342) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: VirginiaTam I am swearing at mine right now. Can't have google chrome open and WORD at the same time. Just wanted to copy shallow brown lyrics to my lyrics file. crash crash and burn baby. |
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09 Oct 09 - 09:28 PM (#2742543) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: robomatic I believe it is possible to partition the 500 GB drive into units of less than 400 GB and have it function on the older computer. As for Dell. Sadly, they are no different than most companies which exist in a fast changing environment. A couple years ago I paid $400 in Best Buy for a full laptop with DVD/CD r/w drive, a couple of Gigs RAM, and 80 GB hard drive and Vista Home Premium. It has stood up for two years, I'm using it now. But ACeR has made a killing with units that have smaller memories, no DVD/CD drives, and are physically smaller much smaller/ cheaper LED/LCD screens, and fewer ports. They sell for $200/$300. They must have a substantially higher margin of profit on them, and tha's what sells. If the factory is not set up for those units and employs expensive labor, the decision is all but inevitable. If Winston-Salem has the number of lawyers I think it does, there should be some hefty penalties for moving out of the territory within a prescribed period of time, to help provide a softer landing for those who couldn't follow the jobs. |
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10 Oct 09 - 07:46 PM (#2743168) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: MarkS Got an Acer laptop and it works great. Only problem is the keyboard is smallish, making accurate typing difficult. Even after years of typing and years of moving around frets and strings, my fingers get confused on the Acer. |
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11 Oct 09 - 05:22 PM (#2743697) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: robomatic Mark: Are you writing on the new little internet unit ACeR? They seem to be the new successful incarnation that is selling so well. I'm still using their laptops. The first one I bought, the XP machine, had its touchpad 'centered' on the wrist-rest, NOT to the keyboard. Drove me crazy. When you put your hands in type position (as I was taught in high school), the meat of one's right hand is on top of the touch pad and unless you adopt a 'raised right' position, proximity wreaks havoc with the mouse pointer. My second ACeR came with the touch pad centered to the keyboard, much more preferable if one is going to write a lot. This means it looks left-of-center on the wrist-rest portion of the keyboard. Anyhow, I'm saving up for something nice when System 7 comes out. Don't know what yet, but it probably won't be a MAC. |
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11 Oct 09 - 05:48 PM (#2743728) Subject: RE: BS: Dell Suck From: wysiwyg A smart former corporate bulk-PC-purchaser (and Catter) told me that Gateway and Dell wrestle for supremacy in a number of ways requiring knowing who's om top for what, updated at the time a purchase is planned. The days of "brand loyalty" in any "civilized" country's companies is long gone. The global economy means that ALL companies now shift strategy at the drop of a hat, and sometimes even go into businesses one would think antithetical to their "usual" line of business or (in this case) their "usual" business practice or marketing strategy. This is what happened when most of the world was getting all excited about globalization. It created a massive, cascading set of changes, including how the dollar's worth is now calculated. ~S~ |