Forum Overview :: American McGee's Honda Civic :: I think Dell might be worth avoiding.

[quote name="laudablepuss"]In my career, I've seen: 1) a class action lawsuit they've lost over the AWFUL keyboards on their laptops (early 00s) 2) a desktop model, Optiplex GL270 I think, that every single motherboard had to be replaced due to bad capacitors. 3) another desktop model, Optiplex 320, that mysteriously had BSODs with Symantec corporate antivirus. Nobody was ever able to figure out why, and it wasn't just us with this issue with just this model. Actually, I think I blame Symantec for this one, but not sure. 4) my own laptop, a Vostro that I mostly love, has a worthless keyboard that broke after the first week. Live and don't learn, that's my and Dell's motto! 5) the latest -- the Latitude E5420 laptops are terribly designed. You can't pick it up without ejecting the CD drive, the network jack cannot be unplugged if the display is up, and they also have some kind of electrostatic discharge problem with their power supplies that causes them to snowcrash (maybe not literally but the display turns to shit) when switching from wall power to battery or vice-versa. I believe this product is being recalled. (<a href="http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/p/19411044/20024572.aspx#20024572">See this angry dell support forum thread for more.</a>) Add to that the fact that for years and years they had an anti-competitive arrangement with Intel to get their products cheaper while excluding AMD, and I think their negatives outweigh their positives at this point. And they do have positives -- their support and warranties have generally been pretty good to great.[/quote]