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Dell to go private in landmark $24.4 billion deal

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By BARBARA ORTUTAY

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I remember 15 years ago, Dell was selling like hot cakes! . . . . . . .. . . . . The key today is, not only producing a state-of-art product, but managing to stay on the cutting edge in this competitive 'change-fast-as-lightning' high- tech environment.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

Dell Alienware PC's are the best gaming laptops around.....

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2 billion US$ of the money is a loan from Microsoft - are they looking at a hardware tie-up?

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Yeah DELL have sold many PCs over the years, but from my experience DELL is an acronym for: Doesn't Ever Last Long.

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I don't think staying on the cutting edge is as necessary for PCs. Yes, when it comes to smartphones and tablets, it's best to keep throwing out faster and faster products, when it comes to PCs, no one really even knows anymore.

PCs are quick and most users won't notice the difference between a quad-core i5 and a six-core i7. What they will notice is when you have bad customer support. It's impossible to make an electronic product that is flawless, so you better have some awesome customer support to go along with it.

@wanderlust

It's in MS's best interest that Dell doesn't go bankrupt. That's less sales of Windows. Even if no one were to buy Dell computers, Dell would still be buying copies of Windows for their machines.

@Disillusioned

I have an Inspiron 5000e laptop that I bought in 2001. It still works today, although the floppy drive broke and the battery doesn't hold a charge. The thing still boots up and runs like the day I bought it.

I've never had a problem with my Dell Inspiron, Everex Stepnote, Alienware m11x, HP TM2T, or Acer W700. The only laptop/tablet I've had issues with so far has been my HP Envy 17. They used crappy thermal paste for the cpu/gpu and they globbed a lot of it on. All the threads I read on it, repair service ends up doing the same shoddy work. I just pulled it apart last week and scrapped all the thermal paste off and used a thin layer of Arctic Silver 5. No issues now.

I'm more inclined to blame users for their PC headaches, except during the "desktop P4s crammed into a laptop" era. Those simply ran too hot and killed themselves.

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I don't trust dell computers, I try once dell but it did not work good for me and switch back to IBM .

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Yeah DELL have sold many PCs over the years, but from my experience DELL is an acronym for: Doesn't Ever Last Long.

Since 1999 the school division I work for has purchased Gateways, Dells, and HPs. Gateway's Government and Business division (our school division's supplier of Gateway computers) was purchased by Micron PC - who went bankrupt a year later at the end of 2008. Our Gateway's have been performing well, but all our warranties went up in smoke when Micron PC went under. HP's computers work, but God forbid you need to get them serviced. I still have an HP laptop sitting in my office waiting for warranty repair, even though I called five times over three weeks to get their tech to come out an fix it. As for Dells, they last a long time and their service has been top-notch. After buying literally thousands of Dells, the only real problem we've had was with some Optiplex GX260 towers that had a bad batch of motherboards with leaky capacitors. Dell replaced them all as they failed under warranty and even replaced a few free of charge that were "late leakers" after the warranty expired. In no case did we have to wait more than a couple of business days before the computers were back up and running.

As for "Doesn't Ever Last Long", just yesterday I took down from a shelf a Dell Optiplex GX240 mini-tower that had been held in reserve. I needed to replace a Gateway tower that had failed. This particular GX240 had served for years as the cafeteria manager's desktop before it was replaced by a newer Dell four or so years ago. The GX240 still had it's original OS installed: Windows 2000. I wiped the hard drive, installed WinXP, and put the computer back into service. It's currently working like a champ at the head custodian's desk. The computer's purchase date? June 7, 2002. So much for "doesn't ever last long".

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I don't trust dell computers, I try once dell but it did not work good for me and switch back to IBM .

IBM sold their PC division to Lenovo in 2005. The IBM brands have been Chinese since then.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

IBM was awesome and then Lenovo took over. I figured that'd just ruin the brand, but Lenovo has been doing a very good job. They still have solid Thinkpads, but some of the Thinkpads that spawned out after Lenovo took over don't feel as solid. Still good machines though.

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I've had Dells since the late '90s. The first couple were great. Then I got a laptop that wasn't bad. I replaced that with a laptop that had intermittent troubles out of the gate, and finally bit the dust after about 2.5 years. My current laptop is an Asus. It works great.

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semperfiFeb. 06, 2013 - 11:08AM JST

I remember 15 years ago, Dell was selling like hot cakes!

I remember 15 minutes ago when Dell was still selling like hotcakes. They still practically own the business computer market along with HP, and there's probably more business oriented computers out there than personal ones.

JohnBeckerFeb. 07, 2013 - 01:58AM JST

I've had Dells since the late '90s. The first couple were great. Then I got a laptop that wasn't bad. I replaced that with a laptop that had intermittent troubles out of the gate, and finally bit the dust after about 2.5 years. My current laptop is an Asus. It works great.

I've also had them for that long, and other than nvidia graphics card issues, all of them worked just fine. I turned my old laptop into an RDP server even, perfectly stable. Only issue is batteries getting used up, but that's perfectly normal. I also use a few other companies though, and Asus is definately one of my favorites, I even got some desktop components from them because they are good quality and cheap!

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They still practically own the business computer market along with HP, and there's probably more business oriented computers out there than personal ones.

Yep, Dell workstations are beasts. Still rocking my Dell Precision 490 Dual Xeon + 16Gig RAM.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I think most times people complain about a broken Dell, it's an issue that isn't their fault. Like the faulty Nvidia graphics that was hitting all the manufacturers. Only Dells I see breaking at work (which is around 2000 users, each with 2 computers) are the really old 5+ year ones. Oh, and the ones that ppl toss under their desk and keep kicking, which ends up destroying the hdd.

I like Dell machines. Would I buy one? Not a desktop, as I build my own, but I would for a laptop. If they put out something I wanted. I'd lean more towards Alienware, which is essentially a Dell anyways. My last job, I was using a Dell Precision T7500. Dual quad-core Xeons (with hyper-threading) and 32gig of memory. Awesome machine and I wish I had it, cause my current Dell Optiplex 760 is so slow.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

As the school's net admin, my office is located in the server room. The school's server is a Dell PowerEdge 2900 and it's been running 24/7 for 120 days. IIRC, the only reason I rebooted it then was a server-side app hung. Manufacture date: November 18, 2008

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