Sat Aug 25, 2007 8:38 pm
Lies, laptops, and shoddy paint..
Earler in the year Mrs Taw was rather taken by some adverts in one of those rotten magazines that she reads (Heat?) for a girly-coloured laptop, pink or silver with a flower on or some such nonsense. After I finished a good ten minutes of mirthful scoffing I checked out said advert to find that it was, horror of horrors, made by Dell. So I said that she couldn't have one (and believe me, comrades, 'tis not often I refuse Mrs Taw anything!) "Why are you being so mean?" pouts she. "Because they're fookin' sh*te, my darling; shoddy cheap cr*p from China that won't last five minutes even if the battery doesn't explode" replies Your Mullah, "especially not with you, luv, seeing as you break everything electronic as soon as you touch it!"
("and don't go ordering one behind my back 'cos I'll send it back!" I added as a parting shot.)
After some remonstrance on her part, the boss concedes the point, although continues to look wistfully at pretty coloured Dell laptops in cr*ppy magazines. So it was with a touch of wry amusement that I noted this week that those geniuses at Dell have said that they can't supply any other colour than black at the moment, because the paint that the Chinese sweatshop manufactory uses is full of dust and can't meet the quality standards. Personally I don't see the problem, the factory that makes the Mattel stuff has several thousand gallons of perfectly good paint going spare, if you don't mind a bit of lead on yer laptop!
Poor old Dell, all that hype (and marketing money spent!) only to be let down by a cheap-as-chips supplier who can't get the paint job right. Strange that, you choose a supplier 'cos they're cheap so you can keep prices down and profits up, yet bizarrely get problems with quality and end up with egg all over your face and a lot of angry customers.
This is only one of many problems affecting Dell these days, the shoddy manufacture and rotten service they've been dishing out to customers over the last couple of years is coming back to haunt them with ever-extending delivery times v. rapidly declining sales. I learnt a long time ago in the IT game that if you buy cheap, you get cheap, and if it's too good to be true, then it probably isn't true, and you're a fool to think that it is. Especially if you're just trying to make "Hi, I'm a PC" into "Hi, I'm a Mac" with a "flakey" paint job and a gimcrack operating system such as Vista.
Marketing people. They never learn.
Edited by - Tawakalna on 8/25/2007 9:41:56 PM
("and don't go ordering one behind my back 'cos I'll send it back!" I added as a parting shot.)
After some remonstrance on her part, the boss concedes the point, although continues to look wistfully at pretty coloured Dell laptops in cr*ppy magazines. So it was with a touch of wry amusement that I noted this week that those geniuses at Dell have said that they can't supply any other colour than black at the moment, because the paint that the Chinese sweatshop manufactory uses is full of dust and can't meet the quality standards. Personally I don't see the problem, the factory that makes the Mattel stuff has several thousand gallons of perfectly good paint going spare, if you don't mind a bit of lead on yer laptop!
Poor old Dell, all that hype (and marketing money spent!) only to be let down by a cheap-as-chips supplier who can't get the paint job right. Strange that, you choose a supplier 'cos they're cheap so you can keep prices down and profits up, yet bizarrely get problems with quality and end up with egg all over your face and a lot of angry customers.
This is only one of many problems affecting Dell these days, the shoddy manufacture and rotten service they've been dishing out to customers over the last couple of years is coming back to haunt them with ever-extending delivery times v. rapidly declining sales. I learnt a long time ago in the IT game that if you buy cheap, you get cheap, and if it's too good to be true, then it probably isn't true, and you're a fool to think that it is. Especially if you're just trying to make "Hi, I'm a PC" into "Hi, I'm a Mac" with a "flakey" paint job and a gimcrack operating system such as Vista.
Marketing people. They never learn.
Edited by - Tawakalna on 8/25/2007 9:41:56 PM
But Seagate have only just acquired Maxtor (and Mirra) - if so it's a very fast move by Dell to secure its supply of Maxtor drives. Maxtors have been popular with Dell for a long time now.