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Dell Selling Faulty PCs
An anonymous reader writes "PC maker Dell has been accused of selling thousands of desktop PCs despite knowing the machines contained faulty components, according to recently unsealed court documents first reported about on Tuesday by The New York Times."
... of course it is faulty.
Disclosure: I once worked for Dell (briefly), right around the time we learned about the faulty capacitors in GX270 boards. I frankly don't give a crap about the company, I just like their prosumer LCDs.
So Dell found out about the flaky capacitors, right around the same time everyone else noticed motherboards were going "POP-SSsssss..." and dying. It's not Dell's fault that they were sold shitty caps, every other large manufacturer was duped just the same. I also don't think Dell was in the wrong for being cautious about disclosure, because it does indeed depend on how hard you push your PC. Some people still use their "faulty" eight-year-old GX270 without issue to this day; others had them fail within months. It would have been financially irresponsible to replace every single GX270, so we waited for people to call us, and they did. I, for one, was very quick about dispatching new GX270 boards, and with my influential position I encouraged the other 200 techs at our site to do the same. No beating around the bush, no idiotic mock-troubleshooting, even if the warranty had lapsed just swap the board and get on with it. A few weeks later we learned my proactive replacement had become the official policy, as it is the only honest and respectable thing to do.
Dell did right, in my opinion. What do you think Asus, Gigabyte or MSI would do if you reported bad caps, six months after your warranty lapsed ? They'd ship your board back, unrepaired, and charge you for shipping + a diagnostic fee, effectively saying "Our bad, but fuck you anyway".
-Billco, Fnarg.com