Crap Components Cause Consternation. Or some such.

Dell are back in the news again.  Dell are quick to point out that the (knowingly???) faulty components they were using a few years ago also affected other PC suppliers it goes to highlight the fact that your IT hardware supplier generally gets all his parts from the supplier with the lowest cost.

Now we all know that cheap = cheerful (unless it packs up repeatedly and has to get changed out under warranty) then you’d rightfully be pissed off.  “But Dell machines aren’t cheap!” I hear you cry.  “And aren’t they supposed to be one of the best manufacturers?”  Well, I’ll leave you to decide for yourself.

And for Dell sympathisers who think I’ve got it in for them:  News of Foxconn employees throwing themselves out of windows due to overwork and under-pay highlights just how avaricious these shyster IT hardware suppliers are.  “Who the fuck are Foxconn” you say.  Foxconn are far east manufacturers of  nasty OEM motherboards (among other bits) that last, if you’re lucky, until just after the warranty runs out.   Motherboards that you wouldn’t use yourself if they were the last board manufacturer in the world.   But perfectly fine if your company is called Apple and you want to fit them to your flagship £400 i-Pad.

So while you’re swanking around with your new top-of-the-range yuppy i-Pad, some of the people who assembled it are throwing themselves out of windows.   But people are dying on the streets of Africa every day so it’s not likely to make you lose any sleep is it?

DELL=DOH!

Another whammy from Dell this rant.  In fact it’s a double whammy.

1.  Flagship Dell model the XPS.  Recently called to repair a XPS with (among other things) a duff CD drive.  Now unfortunate XPS owners will already know that these delightful IT instruments come with optical media drives with an internal ejection system and not the tried and trusted tray mechanism that we all recognise as being standard technology for over 20 years.

So the boffins at Dell, keen to demonstrate their intelligence use this trayless design for reasons best left to them to explain.  Queue the expected issue of CD’s and DVD’s that wont eject using the nifty touch sensitive button the DB’s also added to the design.  No problem, I hear you say.  Just use My Computer to soft eject the tray.  Great.  Except when you cannot start the operating system.  ‘Well, what about the little eject hole where you push a pin in?’ What hole.  The design doesn’t incorporate one.

So if you’ve got an unbootable PC and need the installation CD to repair your O/S then your are well and truly stuffed.  I hear you say ‘well the CD tray is knackered, get Dell to fix it’.  As it was under warranty, they did.  6 months later it went again.  Now it’s isn’t.

Enter PC repair man.  After disassembling the laptop to remove the stranded CD from the drive I discover the drive is, in fact, working perfectly.  The problem is the ‘signal’ (electronic, or lack of) from their rather stylish touch sensitive eject button.

To add to the irony of it all the CD unit itself comes with it’s own eject button which the Boff’s design covers completely.  So, after drilling the hole back in the place where deDell removed it in  the first place this user now has a CD tray that works and ejects.

Moral of the story: DON’T FIX SHIT THAT ISN’T BROKEN.

And No.2

A Dell Inspiron (I think; can’t remember, it’s been a busy week).

You remember the old days when mobile phones were crap and you’d put it in your pocket then it would randomly dial every number in it’s memory until you’d no credit left?  Yeah me too.  I  swore only ever have a clam after that.

Then some smart Phone Boffin said ‘lets make a phone with a number lock so they don’t keep ringing people up when the phone’s in your pocket.  No, better still, let’s design one with a switch instead!’.  Visualise that Eurika sort of a moment.

Well, laptops have had that oh, since, well; EVER.  Like some design features are so fucking obvious we’ve always had ‘em.

So when it comes to wireless functions on a laptop you’d expect them to be turn on and offable.  And, so they are.  Any design boffin would use a switch (good idea) and put it in a position which cannot be accidentally switched OFF if you pick the laptop up or move it about.  No fucking chance.  Or, if they are too dim to do that well what about a ‘soft switch’ which uses a key combination on the keyboard to activate and deactivate the wireless hardware?  Still with me?

Well, the majority of laptops I have seen use a combination of Function keys (thats the ‘F’ keys) along the top row of the keyboard which also are used for shortcut commands and a (usually blue marked) key.  This effectively stops you pressing the number 2 key and accidentally turning your wi/fi hardware off.

Now the muppets at Dell have obviously been on Microsofts ‘let’s mess about with things that people have always done this way because it’s sensible and do it this way ‘cos we think we’re clever’ design course, because this on/off keystroke has now been switched so that turning the hardware off becomes the primary keystroke and the F2 key becomes the secondary function.  So what, I hear you say?  Well if you accidently slip off the No2 key and catch the F2 key without realising you turn your wireless off.  One early Sunday morning it took me half an hour to realise what Dell have done.  Look at an old 6400 inspiron and then look at a new one.  Storm in a teacup?  Buy a new 6400 for your next laptop and see how long it takes you to realise you’ve switched your wireless off and that email you’re writing isn’t going anywhere.

Moral of the story: DON’T FIX SHIT THAT ISN’T BROKEN.

Dell: your designers are ARSES.  As a reseller for Dell (who gets a 10% discount on all purchases, no less) I still cannot think of one single reason why I’d buy a Dell.