Posted on 02/27/2002 10:49:15 AM PST by SAMWolf
Here's what I wrote -
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Mr. Dell:
A number of large American businesses have, over the last few years, found out the hard way that angering American firearms owners is Not A Good Thing. I rather imagine that you're now pretty well convinced of it yourself.
I have used Dell computers for years, both at home and at work, and I've recommended Dell to about a bazillion people, both privately and professionally.
But your "from the desk of" message is far from being sufficient in assuaging the damage caused by the cancellation of Mr. Weigand's order. He has nothing in his business' name that suggests that he exports anything, or that he's a terrorist or supports terrorists. He is a pistolsmith, i.e., he works on guns, specifically combat-oriented handguns. And there is nothing in that which should suggest anything about "terrorism" or "staying within the law for exports" such as you've suggested, any more than if he repaired refrigerators instead of firearms. In my opinion, both Dell's initial act of cancelling his legitimate order and your subsequent lame apology and explanation constitute what a very large number of us consider to be a very serious error in judgement.
I've been to a number of websites today where gun owners and non gun owners alike are saying that they will NOT buy or recommend Dell ever again, unless and until you issue a much more specific notice of policy change. I'm sorry to see that happen, because as I said, I've used Dell for years and would like to continue to.
Mr. Dell, there is NOTHING "terrorist" or even potentially illegal about being a gunsmith, and to think that your policy is to actually cancel an order just because a customer is a gunsmith, while you pursue checking out whether the customer might be a terrorist or be exporting illegal firearms is ludicrous at best. And to require him to sign a special waiver because he works on firearms is preposterous.
Remember K-Mart?
They made some major blunders when it came to firearms owners too, and they're filing bankruptcy. A number of very large financial institutions have been forced, due to the cancellation of so many business deals by so many firearms owners, to change their policies in regards to loans, etc., to gun owners and gun oriented businesses.
Please do the right thing and keep Dell going. Your computers are the best on the market, in my opinion. But neither I nor several million other firearms owners will continue to support Dell unless you change your policies and unless you make it plain that you have done so. I'm sorry, but offering a free laptop to Mr. Weigand just isn't going to cut it.
Sincerely,
Jefferson Adams
They didn't even do *that*. Read it again, they offered "free shipping".
Stay Safe !
You might be surprised to learn that I do know what I'm talking about. We recently got rid of 16 Dells.
I work as I.T. Administrator for an NBC television station. We have 6 discreet internal networks running 166 PC's, video on demand, satellite synch. (computer controlled satellite dishes),4 external networks including internet, Doppler radar in 4 locations controlled by computer. We also have Media One installations (dual Macs for graphics in each).
I assemble new PC's from cherry-picked components so we can get the best sound card, best video card, best hard drives, etc. That gives us a PC with the best of everything in it. In order to make them anywhere near affordable, Dell, among others, can't do that and stay in business. I've been inside way too many Dells (and I do like the easy access their boxes allow) to think otherwise.
I just upgraded to a better motherboard and processor(s) for the home machine that I'm using now. I'm using dual 1Ghz Pentium 3's (the Pentium 4's still have problems and are actually slower with throughput) and this units smokes. I do a lot of graphics, 3D and otherwise that needs the horsepower especially for 3D rendering and my son is a game enthusiast where processor speed makes a world of difference...we'd never go back to a "shelf box" as by the time we upgraded the components, it wouldn't be cost effective.
At work, we donated our Dells to a local college as they were not fast enough for the applications they were running and we kept a few for uses that are not considered mission-critical (receptionists, shipping/receiving, etc. for MS Office apps). Wasn't because there was anything wrong with the Dells...simply not enough computer for our needs. As I stated, I have always heard good things about their customer service and now I read in InfoWorld where they dropped the ball on that. In my opinion Dell computers are like Chevrolet and Ford cars...they're good computers for almost everybody in normal everyday use. But a lot of things I do on a computer can't be done on a Dell without taking too much time (rendering) and my son in on-line gaming would forever lose to his opponents on faster machines...it's just that simple.
My job requires a lot of use of MS Visual Studio, specifically Visual C++ programming and the processor power allows compiles to go fast enough that I can do a quick series of re-compiles to locate and eliminate any glitches where with a normal computer it would take me four times as long. That's four times as long sitting, waiting for the machine so I can continue. That would add an hour, at the very least, to my work-day with no more accomplished to show for it.
What if all CCW holders suddenly went nuts and started shooting up everything? What if the moon suddenly exploded? Same logic; DOESN'T HAPPEN.
The gov't has an official list of dangerous/objectionable organization which should be used for any name-checking; btw, none of the names on that list have "explicit" names.
Technically true. HOWEVER...
Anyone can easily put together an AR-15 from parts found at a gun show. Which would you rather have: a hack-job AR-15 or a genuine Colt or Bushmaster? why? Computers are similar: yes, you can hack one together, but there are easily-missed nuances and tuning that make hack-jobs malfunction more. Professional assembly makes things work smoothly. I'm currently replacing a friend's no-name tossed-together PC with a Dell because the former is a buggy piece of crap.
Yeah sure Dell. If Handgun Control Inc. orders a Dell computer, its no problem, right???
Leftist, anti-Constitution, gun-grabbers!
I've had at least 15 high performance Dells since 1987. The first was a Dell System 310, 20 MHz 386 with 16 MB or RAM. At the time, no PC type machine was faster. It was made like an army tank…
Out of all the Dells I've had not one has had a main board failure. In fact the only failures that I've had were a Haromon-Kardon speaker amplifier making popping noises and a CD ROM drive that failed. Both of these failed parts were replaced by Dell without any hassles on warranty. The CD ROM failed two and half years after purchased. I've not even had a fan failure. They've always had top name components for peripherals. 3-Com for the NIC cards, US-Robotics for the modem cards (when modem cards were important), Turtle Beach, Yamaha and Sound Blaster sound cards, and excellent top end video cards as well.
I'm a design engineer. Time waiting for the computer to do its tasks is lost time and money. I use Mentor Graphics (Veribest Pinnacle PCB) design capture and layout software, Xilinx Foundation FPGA development system and many other programs that are extremely CPU and graphic intensive. Raw power and reliability have always been top concerns for me.
For example my previous Dell XPS B1000r is still faster than about 80% of the 1.5+ GHz machines sold today. That includes game play (Unreal Tournament & Quake III) as well… Old review here. At the time it was pretty much the fastest PC machine available at any price.
My current machine is a Dell Precision Work Station 530. It is a dual 2.0 GHz Pentium 4 Xeon processor with 512 kB advanced transfer L2 Cache, Intel 860 Chipset and 512 MB of error correcting (ECC) RamBUS RAM. The memory bandwidth is 1.6 GB/s. The system bus is 400 MHz with dual PCI buses. The PCI buses run at 33 MHz for the 32 bit slots and 66 MHz for the 64 bits slots. The video card is a 64 MB NVIDIA Quadro2 Pro with 4 x AGP. The machine has two USB ports on the rear and two on the front. It has one Firewire port on the rear and one on the front. The drive is a 40 GB ATA/100 7200 RPM Maxtor. I could have gone SCSI put I chose not to. I'm not very fond of SCSI. I've used it in the past.
It has a three-year warranty as they have for many years now. The first year is on site (you can extend it to four years on site if you want). I've never in the 15 years of owning Dell's required the on site service.
Dell has always provided ALL the programs that came with the machine preloaded and on CD ROM for backup. Non of them have been "drive image" backups on the CDs.
This machine is about 4 months old now. It can hardly be called second rate or a slouch by any standard… You'd by hard pressed to exceed its performance by 5% in PC land for any price.
You go on, on how Dell uses second-rate parts, are slow and basically unreliable. Only useful for a secretary, etc… You are simply wrong and misinformed. Dell makes a wide variety of computers, from low budget not so fast machines to topnotch high performance workstations and servers.
My time is important to me. I don't want to spend it piecing together machines and working out the compatibility issues between varies pieces of hardware and software. I don't want to keep warranty information on a bunch of individual parts. I don't want to worry about down time if something does fail. With my Dells I have that covered and can spend my time using it instead.
By the way, I right code too, lots of it. Mostly assembly for controllers and DSP.
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