Dell eyes "white box" market

CNET News ^ | August 20, 2002 | John G. Spooner

[HAL9000]

Dude - you're gettin' a Naked White Box?

[js1138]

It's hard for me to believe that "white box" computers are cheaper than mass-produced pcs. The main reason for avoiding dellcompaqhpgateway computers is to have something made to spec, rather than the vanilla stuff they offer.

[Mygirlsmom]

Shhhhhhh! The black boxes will be asking for reparations!

[ConsistentLibertarian]

Poor taste.

[ChuckHam]

Yep, you're right. We must never offend anyone.

[Texas_Jarhead]

LOL! Thanks for the laugh.

[ConsistentLibertarian]

Bad inference.

[joesnuffy]

that was a dirty crack

[Nitro]

That was rude, crude and socially unaceptable!

I love it!!

[gdani]

The main reason for avoiding dellcompaqhpgateway computers is to have something made to spec, rather than the vanilla stuff they offer.

On a related note, I feel it is my duty to inform all interested that I bought a Gateway computer about 7-8 months ago.

Within about 6.5 months, the modem died, the hard drive crashed and the video driver was bad. I took it into the Gateway service center to have them replace the hard drive and fix the video driver (if that is indeed the actual problem).

One month later, the computer was returned to me with a new hard drive but nothing was done about the video driver. They didn't even examine the problem, according to their own work order.

If this post keeps even one other person from giving money to Gateway, it was worth it.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Always buy Dell computers:

Contributor	Occupation	Date	Amount	Recipient
DELL FAMILY INTERESTS AUSTIN, TX 78746		12/31/1999	$7,500	NRCC/Non-Federal Account
DELL, MICHAEL AUSTIN, TX 78746		9/29/2000	$500	Majority Leader's Fund
DELL, MICHAEL AUSTIN, TX 78746		11/7/2000	$1,000	Grams, Rod
DELL, MICHAEL AUSTIN, TX 78746		11/6/2000	$1,000	Ashcroft, John
DELL, MICHAEL AUSTIN, TX 78746		12/21/1999	$7,500	NRSC/Non-Federal
DELL, MICHAEL AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER	3/20/2000	$1,000	Abraham, Spencer
DELL, MICHAEL AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER	9/20/2000	$1,000	Frist, Bill
DELL, MICHAEL AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER	11/7/2000	$500	Brady, Kevin
DELL, MICHAEL AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORP	11/6/2000	$500	Oxley, Michael G
DELL, MICHAEL AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORP	8/3/2000	$500	Tauzin, W J "Billy"
DELL, MICHAEL AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORPORATION	5/15/2000	$500	Sessions, Pete
DELL, MICHAEL AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER/CHAIRMAN & CEO	11/6/2000	$1,000	Smith, Lamar
DELL, MICHAEL AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTERS	11/6/2000	$500	Dunn, Jennifer
DELL, MICHAEL MR AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORPORATION/CHAIRMAN	12/14/2001	$5,000	Dell Computer
DELL, MICHAEL MRS AUSTIN, TX 78746		9/29/2000	$500	Majority Leader's Fund
DELL, MICHAEL S AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER	6/12/2000	$1,000	Republican Majority Fund
DELL, MICHAEL S AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER	11/6/2000	$500	Roth, William V Jr
DELL, MICHAEL S AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORP	10/18/2000	$1,000	Santorum, Rick
DELL, MICHAEL S AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORP	11/7/2000	$1,000	Bryant, Ed
DELL, MICHAEL S AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORP	10/24/2000	$1,000	American Renewal PAC
DELL, MICHAEL S AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORP	10/20/2000	$500	Granger, Kay
DELL, MICHAEL S AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORPORATION	7/23/2001	$10,000	National Republican Senatorial Cmte
DELL, MICHAEL S AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORPORATION	9/21/2000	$200,000	RNC/Repub National State Elections Cmte
DELL, MICHAEL S AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORPORATION	7/27/2000	$50,000	RNC/Repub National State Elections Cmte
DELL, MICHAEL S AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORPORATION	11/8/2000	$1,000	New Republican Majority Fund
DELL, MICHAEL S AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORPORATION	10/20/2000	$1,000	Hutchison, Kay Bailey
DELL, MICHAEL S AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORPORATION	3/31/1999	$1,000	Bush, George W
DELL, MICHAEL S MR AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORP.	12/31/2001	$5,000	NRCC/Contributions Non-Federal #2
DELL, MICHAEL S MR AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORP.	12/31/2001	$20,000	NRCC/Contributions Non-Federal #2
DELL, MICHAEL S MR AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORPORATION/CHAIRMAN	4/11/2002	$5,000	Dell Computer
DELL, MICHAEL S MR AUSTIN, TX 78746	DELL COMPUTER CORPORATION/CHIEF EXE	5/31/2000	$1,000	Bush, George W
DELL, SUSAN AUSTIN, TX 78746	SUSAN DELL INC	9/21/2000	$50,000	RNC/Repub National State Elections Cmte
DELL, SUSAN L MRS AUSTIN, TX 78746	SUSAN DELL INC./CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFF	5/31/2000	$1,000	Bush, George W
DELL, SUSAN S AUSTIN, TX 78746	SUSAN DELL INC	3/31/1999	$1,000	Bush, George W

[GraniteStateConservative]

Buy Dell -- he gives mucho coin to the GOP.

[serinde]

Buy Dell -- he gives mucho coin to the GOP.

However, I read a while back about Dell not selling a computer to a gun dealer, and not contacting him about their decision, either.

[discostu]

Sorry until they stop puting that f$%#ing "utility partition" on the harddrives I'll never buy a Dell. In the history of stupid computer architecture putting the BIOS (or something doing all the same stuff as the BIOS normally would on a well designed computer) on the harddrive (ala Compaq) is the king of the hill.

[js1138]

I don't think reliability can be associated with any brand, but perhaps service can. I have bought three IBM 60 gig drives for myself and family members. When one of them came up with enough bad spots to require low-level formatting, I looked at the on-line reviews. I was horrified to find they had a miserable reputation.

I don't know anyone who does anything about service except follow the service manual. If you don't know someone who reads all the on-line chatter about drivers, you're out of luck.

[Bush2000]

However, I read a while back about Dell not selling a computer to a gun dealer, and not contacting him about their decision, either.

Michael Dell apologized to the gun dealer personally and took care of it. It's a non-issue.

[gdani]

I don't think reliability can be associated with any brand, but perhaps service can.

To be fair, a co-worker has a Dell that is less than a year old. His hard drive just crashed but Dell sent a rep within 48 hours to replace it.

As I pointed out earlier, that's a big difference from Gateway which requires you to take the computer to a service center where they do who-knows-what. (Granted, we're talking about the service center in Manhattan but methinks a high-volume store should *gasp* hire more employees to handle the workload).

Anyway, one of the great things about the Internet is what a boon it is to consumers seeking out info about the reliability of different products.

[js1138]

I'm not aware of any computer that cannot be reformatted and have the OS installed from scratch. But there are surprises. The hard drive on my sister's ABS computer developed bad spots that prevented it from booting and defied attempts at system recovery. I was able to reinstall windows, copy her documents to CDs -- but I couldn't get the drive to be reliable without a low-level format.

Before anyone tries this, be sure to get the repair utility supplied by the drive manufactuter

This fixed the drive, but erased all the secret stuff that ABS had put on the machine. Now the recovery disk won't run because it is expecting a recovery partition on the drive.

The solution was a clean windows install, followed by an update of all the drivers. Very time consuming, but now the machine has a clean install of everything.

[Paulus Invictus]

Boy! Just think if they could make a PC that doesn't crash, freeze and die every day! That would be a triumph for Dell, but it won't happen. How to avoid this catastrofe? Easy, it's spelled iMAC. Flames anyone?

[discostu]

A format only formats one partition on the physical drive (the drive letter, which does not have to have a 1 to 1 relationship with phsycial drives). If you scope out your drive (assuming you have a Dell or Compaq) in something that looks at the partitions (Win2K drive manager, Partition Magic, some equivalent) you'll find there's a "hidden" partition. If you whack that the machine is pretty well toast. You can reconstruct them, but it's not easy (hardest part is finding the stuff you're supposed to use to reconstruct).

My big problem with this is that it's just a bad combination of unreliability and absolute necessity. Those utilities do most of the same functionality as the BIOS chip does in useful architecture (well, it stores the data the BIOS uses). Without that info/ software the computer literally can't talk to itself. Putting the most important information on the computer in the 2nd least reliable part (the only thing that breaks more often than harddrives is modems, and if we could outlaw lightning modems would become much more reliable) is just a stupid combo. Keep all this stuff on a chip on the motherboard. Most of the things that will kill the BIOS chip on the motherboard will have already killed just about everything else anyway.