Comment by toss1
4 years ago
Years ago, that kind of behavior got Dell crossed off my list of suppliers I'd work with for clients. We had to setup 30+ machines of the exact same model number, and same order, and set of pallets -- yet there were at least 7 DIFFERENT random configurations of chips on the motherboards & video cards -- all requiring different versions of the drivers. This was before the days of auto-setup drivers. Absolute flaming nightmare. It was basically random - the different chipsets didn't even follow serial number groupings, it was just hunt around versions for every damn box on the network. Dell's driver resources & tech support even for VARs was worthless.
This wasn't the first incident, but after such a blatant set of quality control failures I'll never intentionally select or work with a Dell product again.
Is this like 5 years ago or more li3le 20? Trying to judge relevance today
As they mention no automatic driver downloads and talk about Chipset drivers I'd say at least before Windows 7. So a thing or two might have changed.
Yes, this was pre-Win7
What has changed is that most of the drivers are self-updating, so they can configure that at the factory. So, yes, the basic configuration has gotten better.
What has not changed is that Dell basically does grab-bag components in their systems and just because you have two machines of the same model# and rev#, does NOT mean that you have the same two machines.
This means that Dell has substandard abilities to 1) control their supply chain, 2) track and fix problems, 3) diagnose problems in the field, 4) prevent problems.
But sure, because Microsoft is now doing a far better job of auto-configuration in it's OS products, the setup problem is mitigated.
I avoid Dell like the plague, and advise everyone else to do the same. Sure, you may know someone who got away with it for a long time — there's usually some good items in a grab-bag — but the systemic reliability is just not there.
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