CNET Australia recently got a chance to sit down with Dell founder, Michael Dell, for an interview, and here’s the resulting transcript.
Among the issues posed to the founder of the World No. 1 PC vendor were his early experiences with PCs, his decision to start Dell Corp., and the future potential of both Dell and the PC market in general.
Give it a look.
Dell may not have the very best technical support service among the top branded PC vendors, but it still scored a mean B+ in LAPTOP Magazine’s recent investigation.
This was higher than what Hewlett-Packard, Acer and Toshiba scored, though lower than what Lenovo, Fujitsu and Apple garnered. Phone waiting times were still pretty long, with 22 minutes being the longest time LM investigators were kept on hold (compared to under 1 minute for Lenovo and 8 minutes for Apple).
In total, nine vendors were investigated - with only Gateway having the exact same tech. support rating as Dell.
I know we’ve been a bit heavy on the exploding laptop news in recent weeks, so I promise this will be the last case we’ll talk about for a long time to come. Anyway, this piece of news hails from Singapore, and comes in the wake of two earlier incidents - one in Japan and another in the US.
In this case, while the notebook didn’t really combust, smoke and flames poured out of the notebook. According to the victim, Dell replaced the notebook with no questions asked, but without giving a proper explanation.
That was in November last year though. Dell, or rather, the online community, has sharpened a heck lot 9 months after, with Dell being forced to acknowledge battery failure as a possible cause due to pressure from community news sites publicising the issue. It has also replaced notebooks comfirmed to have uhmm… caught flames.
[News via Sydney Morning Herald]
Well, this time the laptop didn’t really explode, but “bursting into flames” is probably a bad enough mess for the guys over at Dell’s recently launched one2one corporate blog to handle.
Yes, you did catch the “this time”, right? Because if you recall, this isn’t the first time we’re looking at a publicly-reported incident of this nature. Just last month, we saw news regarding an exploding notebook in Japan - which Dell quickly resolved by providing a replacement.
What do you think will happen this time? Will Dell take the initiative by reaching out to the unlucky owner through its weblog?
[News via Tom’s Hardware Forumz]
Intel takes the lead again with today’s launch of the Core 2 Duo processor, or more accurately, 10 Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors.
While the average consumer will certainly be thrilled by the sheer power packed within these processors (which apparently consume 40% less power too), those who have yet to receive their Dell XPS 700 gaming desktops and have opted for Dell’s Core 2 Duo upgrade scheme will surely be the happiest.
After all, now that Core 2 Duo has been unveiled, it shouldn’t take “too” long for Dell to get some of it and pump those XPS 700’s out the factory door.
[News via Geekzone]
Read more news and reviews on the Dell XPS 700 .
Let me first tell you that I initially thought that this was a joke when I read it over at The Inquirer a few days back. An exploding laptop? What’s the chance of that happening? 1 in a 100,000?
But no… it really happened. A Dell notebook actually did explode at a conference in Japan. Luckily, no one was hurt, but I bet Dell’s image has been - especially in Japan.
According to a The Inquirer reader, this was most likely a problem with the built-in cuttouts for the laptop’s battery, and the “multiple explosions” witnessed were likely to be individual batteries within the battery pack igniting. I sure hope this wasn’t a 9-cell.
Anyway, this sort of thing usually gets preempted by battery recalls, so Dell engineers and QCs must have missed this batch. Let’s just hope our batteries weren’t part of this “explosive” batch.
About a month back, five U.S. K-12 schools won the Dell, Microsoft, and Intel-sponsored FutureReady Mobile Lab Contest, and received mobile computer labs, i.e. a mobile cart with six notebooks, a wireless access point, and other mobile devices, worth around US$10,000 each.
But while the prizes look lucrative, this contest is merely one of the many initiatives planned for the FutureReady programme - an initiative by Dell, Intel and Microsoft to “…help students reach their full potential through technology in the classroom.” Other FutureReady programmes include the Dell Intelligent Classroom Sweepstakes and the K-12 IT Visionary Contest.
[News via Dell]
Not sure if you’ve heard of this already, but it was recently reported (or rather, rumored) that Dell (Dell Corp.) has sued Paul Dell - a “…relatively smalltime Web site designer based in France…” - for various legal infringements related to dellwebsites.com. Dellwebsites.com was built by Paul Dell in 2001 as a front-end for his website design business, but is now being hit with various accusations of trademark infringement, unfair competition and “parasitism” due to the word “Dell” being used throughout his website.
Now, ZDNet hasn’t been able to get confirmation for this from Dell Corp., so we don’t really know how true this lawsuit is. But so far, all signs point to a rather high degree of truth, with reputable websites like ZDNet publishing the story. Additionally, if this lawsuit was actually fake, Dell would have all the more reason to sue Paul Dell. So, this lawsuit is most likely (and disturbingly) true. But why in the world would Dell bother with a small time web designer?
Note: Paul Dell has already launched a donation page at his website, asking for donations to help fund the costs of the court case. But until the lawsuit is actually confirmed, I don’t think it’s advisable to donate.
There’s a pretty unique post over at Blogcritics.org on how the PC wars could pan out in the near future. It talks about how a “serious rivalry” could be forming between Dell and Apple in the wake of Apple’s recent achievement at surpassing Dell’s market capitalization, and of course, Apple’s foray into the Dell-dominated Windows-Intel notebook market. This “rivalry” is compounded further by Dell’s inability to produce and market a strong media center PC to compete with Apple’s various consumer product successes (e.g. iPod, iTunes, Mac Mini).
Of course, Apple is not the only enemy of Dell in this fake scenario. Intel is another. Why? Because Intel provided the means for Apple to venture into Dell’s and Microsoft’s sacred turf.
And the last act in this fake, yet somewhat possible scenario: “…Microsoft, Dell and IBM teaming up against Apple, and Intel in a fake future battle royale.”
