Yeah, dude...they're hosed...

[asbrand.livejournal.com]

Pardon me while I actually rag on our company's "IT support" guy.

I've been in "the business" for, oh, 15 years now. I know what tech support is like. It sucks. That's why I moved on to network engineering. No customers to deal with. :)

I understand that 98% of the time when your users bitch about computer problems, THEY are the problem.

However...when 95% of the Dell Latitude laptops given out a few months ago to everybody in the NOC (replacing our desktop PCs) are getting BSODs on a fairly regular basis (mine does it once or twice a night), sitting on your ass and making folks jump through hoops to get 'em replaced is NOT a cool thing.

Even told one guy here "don't like it? Call my boss..." So they did. Funny that...got his laptop replaced ASAP after that. He's finally replacing mine tomorrow...after almost a MONTH of having a ticket open, nagging, e-mailing, and finally having to threaten to "go up the food chain".

Yeah...not all problems are user caused. Sometimes we get crappy equipment. :)

Comments

[xforge.livejournal.com]

For the record... don't buy Dell, they suck. = ) Hope this helps. (duck, hide)

After two years of replacing their desktop printers under warranty after them being on the desk for *maybe* two months TOPS, rotate another one in, it either works out of the box or doesn't, two months, lather rinse repeat, we FINALLY got them to start replacing the crap bustedass 1720s with a better model at no additional charge. We tried their desktops for exactly one month before we all looked at each other and said, "Yeah these are f*cking crap" and switched back to HP. And don't EVEN get me started on their laptops, JFC I could get more work done on a folded piece of cardboard with letters drawn on the bottom half.

[ghostdandp.livejournal.com]

I don't know. We have 1500 latitudes and optiplex's running, hardware based issues on newer machines (first 2-3 years) is virtually non-existent. We do buy next day warranties on all machines (and gold support so we're not being sent to india) but I'd say in the 2 years I was on the HD team I probably called a half dozen times for warranty repair.

You go out and buy consumer grade stuff for business though, and you'll notice a problem.

[emt-hawk.livejournal.com]

My question is did they give you a pooched image to begin with? My GEneral company does that to us every so often. Right now I have two sets of folders on the data drive: "Documents and Settings" and "Users", either one of which should hold a profile. It's a secret, and they never bothered to tell us which one we're supposed to use.

--Hawk

[bamatone.livejournal.com]

Ditto here.

[green-ogre.livejournal.com]

I personally find that Dells frequently have hardware problems.

But with NBD support, I don't care and they get fixed.

But they're support and software works great.

You can get a significant savings on "consumer" grade equipment. But you need to explicitly state all componenets, since a single bad componenet can ruin your day, and there can be higher day-to-day support costs.

Given a choice and no budget constraints, I'd go for Dell.

Though in the end it comes down to volume. If you buy enough machines from Dell, the price gets down to essentially the same as a well built clone.

[hairbrush.livejournal.com]

I agree with Dell frequently having hardware problems. My mother's laptop has been running like shit since she bought it (even beyond things that are just typical Vista suckage) and the memory finally gave up 2 days ago + the machine won't stop bluescreening.. Meanwhile, the fingerpad has been unresponsive 40% of the time, 80% of programs crash, etc.. Total hunk of junk. If I didn't get credit from Dell, I'd ignore them entirely based on that machine alone.

[ptstech.livejournal.com]

THIS.

Had to talk the CFO out of trying to roll w/consumer-grade hardware because it would "save money." A quick run of the numbers on the end he WASN'T considering sorted that right quick.

[buckaction.livejournal.com]

Shrug. I've had my 1720 for over 2 years now and it runs like a champ.

[curmudgn]

Sounds like she got either an Inspiron or a Studio, in which case allow me to express my total lack of surprise. It's why I refuse to have either product line come in my house.

Latitudes, OptiPlexes, and Precisions, however . . . I can run one of them for years and make you a pair of pants afterward.

Moral: buy the corporate-grade machines if yer gonna buy Dell at all.

[jecook]

THIS.

For my company, it's all the USFF Optiplexes and Latitudes for the desktops and laptops. The servers are generally the same; Poweredge all around, unless there's a 'damn good reason' otherwise.

[asbrand.livejournal.com]

Could have been a pooched image. Either that or just poor quality hardware would explain it. I'm not kidding...of the dozens of laptops they handed out, I know of like 1 that isn't acting wonkey.



-Az

[curmudgn]

I'm with emt_hawk on this one. I smell an image where somebody got lazy and cut corners, and tried to kludge an image they had already built for some other platform, and that other platform has features or device drivers that are causing the blowups you're talking about.

IME when an entire deployment (totality minus one equals "entire," for all practical purposes) is failing, hardware is not the first place to go look for a root cause. The odds of twenty systems (to pull a number out of the air) failing in a similar way more or less simultaneously due to hardware . . . well, I'm not sure they make numbers that big.

[curmudgn]

Well, that's easy: if it's Vista (yee gawds) or XP, use Documents and Settings. If it's 7, use Users. Those are the built-in defaults.

[tuba-man.livejournal.com]

YES. We're managed IT, our entire corporate strategy is to specifically target companies and execs who don't need that particular talk. :)