Dell Computers acquires Plural (and Plural should be worried).

World Tech Tribune.com (Copyright 2002) ^ | June 1, 2002 | Scott McCollum

[Scott McCollum]

Late afternoon on a Friday, Dell announced they are buying Plural. Plural, a New York-based consultant and services reseller will be the first company Dell has purchased since it bought ConvergeNet in 1999. I’ve worked for Dell during the late 90s (everyone that lives in Austin has worked for Dell at sometime during their careers) and want to give the 7,000 employees at Plural a little bit of advice:

“Start sending out your résumés now so you can get a better job when the economy is booming sometime next year.”

[Scott McCollum]

A great story for anyone laid off by a high tech company or has ever seen the movie "Office Space."

[SamAdams76]

So can I assume that working for Dell is not a good thing?

[StockAyatollah]

Plural employees: "Dude your gettin' a Dell, whether you want one or not!"

[Incorrigible]

Dude! You're gonna be bought by Dell!

[Gladwin]

I hate Dell tech support - it has been especially bad the past couple years.

Rather than buying from Dell, I went to my local parts store and built my own computer.

[SoDak]

Same with Gateway here. They get in a fresh crop of workers every year and spit them back out next year. Everyone here has worked for Gateway at some point it seems. They completely poisoned me on working for any Fortune 500 company ever again.

[Kay Soze]

Dell has the worst support I have ever enountered!

I can call dell and report an erorr message upon boot up that says "invalid system disk remove floopy and hit any key " and the dell guy will ask me to reinstall windows to solve this error!!!

[Gladwin]

I think that Dell must be think they can make more money by providing such bad tech support. I don't know why though. It seems like a short term strategy, similar to US auto companies in the 1970s.

[Gladwin]

Same with Gateway here. They get in a fresh crop of workers every year and spit them back out next year. Everyone here has worked for Gateway at some point it seems. They completely poisoned me on working for any Fortune 500 company ever again.

That sounds like Boeing... my friends went there right out of college and were back in the midwest before 5 years had gone by.

[Cicero]

I hate to say it, but Dell probably has the best tech support of any computer company. Which is not saying much, of course. Given the small margin of profit on a computer, it's probably impossible to provide good tech support. You get what you pay for.

Over the years, I've had to learn about computers out of self-protection, because no one who sells a computer to you is going to help you. There are some forums on CompuServe that I have found to be very helpful, although even there you may need to know who to ask, and they are not as good as they were before the AOL takeover.

[Gladwin]

The best forums are Anandtech. I get nearly instant responses in the general hardware forum (usually within a half hour).

[kezekiel]

I hate to say it, but Dell probably has the best tech support of any computer company. Which is not saying much, of course. Given the small margin of profit on a computer, it's probably impossible to provide good tech support. You get what you pay for.

Which is why from here on out, I will either buy IBM or build my own. Sure, IBMs cost more, but I've used my ThinkPad full time for over a year without the slightest hiccup--not your typical laptop experience. It's fast, rock-solid, and the support is pretty good. I've bought HP and Compaq desktops, and they suck hard. Dell is better, but they're no IBM.