That’s why I’m not saying anything about quality!
Sorc, I got my PS2 a couple days after Christmas in 2002, so that’s a fun coincidence. I’ve only moved it twice (once to go on a trip not long after I bought it, and once to take on a business trip), and I’ve only dusted the surface.
THANK YOU. Glad to see I’m not alone thinking that. When 'd you work at Best Buy, why 'd you stop and why are you at CC? I don’t like CC, their employees are all assholes around here. They’re chattering in small groups , ignoring customers and act and look like dumasses. Best buy has better prices and service.
As a kid whose parents work for the union, I’m probably biased in my view towards it, but I don’t particularly care on the subject, but maybe not. Regardless, Wal-Mart blows ass.
And we’ve always used Best Buy, never Circuit City. I’ve yet to get a broken product.
I’ve always gotten the “wrong side of the mall and kinda ghetto” feeling from Circuit City. Best Buy has the “look, yuppies buying plasma TVs while the teenage whore behind the counter regrets blowing two guys from the geek squad in the same night and not Emilio, the hotty who cleans the bathrooms” feel.
Am I the only one that gets those impressions?
I wouldn’t exagerate Best buy like that, but yeah.
Best Buy always advertised itself as the happier place.
Circuit city sucks so hard they went bankrupt in BC so there aren’t any here any more. And the Best Buys in Vancouver are great, they have good deals, good merchandise and everything is in good condition. So your Best Buys just plain suck.
I’m going to jump on the WalMart train here, and add, i <i>fucking loathe</i> that store, but moreso their buisness model and execution. =(
And heh, this boondocks strip reminded me of this thread 
<img src=“http://images.ucomics.com/comics/bo/2005/bo050306.gif”>
EDIT @sat: Yea, dell needs to be put in their fucking place. They sell cheap products, built with shoddy chips and breadboards, and their tech support is not only bad, but a disgusting example of outsourcing in action. They also are slowly killing an entire industry, because they are so staunch against innovation. It’s a damn shame people are too stupid to realize they can get something better than a dell for cheaper, and better quality too.
How dare Wal-Mart be so successful! How dare Wal-Mart do exactly what every other corporation in the world would do if they had a chance! I’ve always been a bit perplexed by people who think Wal-Mart is pure evil, but other large corporations aren’t. Any corporation in the world would gladly switch places with Wal-Mart, given the chance.
I’ve always heard good praise regarding Dell’s customer service. This anti-Dell sentiment is completely new to me. You guys aren’t simply bitching because they have Indians doing what we paid Americans too much for, are you? They also get props from the industry every year…what gives?
I’ve had nothing but good experiences from Dell all three times I had to send them my laptop for replacement parts. They did it free and fast. Maybe the US service sucks but the UK one does a bang-up job.
I have to agree with SoF. I’ve been using Dell computer for the last 6 years and I just bought a new one. Aside from our wireless router not working, which I blame on my father’s lack of understanding how a router works, I’ve never had a problem.
Well, it’s not exactly luck. Having worked at game stores for a long time, about 1 in 4 new PS2s come back defective, and about 3 in 4 used ones come back defective. If you bought it new back then, the odds are still with you. 1 in 4 is still ridiculous, though. 10% is too much.
I worked at BB after getting fired from EB until last month when I went to Circuit. Basically, CC is under new management, and one of their theories is that they’ll hire former BB employees to try to turn their company around. About a full third of the employees at the CC I work at used to work at BB with me. Oh, and CC pays more, and is more generous with hours/overtime.
I don’t say any other corporation is any better, and, given the possibility, any other company probably would do the same thing. It’s just that, having worked retail, I don’t appreciate Wal-Mart’s policies; they underpay their employees, they offer no benefits to over 50% of their employees, and they take a loss on the biggest items just so they can sell them for less than the competitors. I find it to be unfair. As a customer, though, I could give a shit less.
As a computer technician (you know, the guy who has to fix the computers), Dells use inferior parts, below industry standard, and keep the specs for their average computer well below those of HP/Compaq, or Gateway/eMachines (the other two biggest PC manufacturers, along with Sony and Toshiba). For example; you might see a commercial frequently for a Dell PC for “only $399!” Look closer; this computer has 128 MB RAM, a 40 GB HD, no monitor or printer, and “a free CD burner upgrade.” Wow. Just, wow. At any consumer electronics store (BB, CC, CompUSA, etc), you could get a eMachine with 512 MB RAM, a 120 GB HD, 17" flat screen CRT, dual-layer DVD burner, and a Lexmark printer for $459 after rebates (it’d be $499 in store with no monitor/printer). The HP/Compaq equivalent would be $200 more, and the Gateway would be $250 more, but it’s still cheaper than if you wanted the same machine from Dell. And, as stated earlier, Dell outsources their tech support to India, so most US customers have a hard time understanding the service tech over the phone, and often are told that they’ll have to pay for service, thus they bring their machines to me. The funniest part is when those customers then try to say that I should fix it for free because they bought it there with a warranty (in case you don’t know, Dell only sells direct, not through stores).
My Dad just got that PC with a 15" flat screen monitor for 400 bucks. His only beef is that it didn’t come with a floppy. I also had another friend who got one of their deals a few years back. She asked for a bunch of ridiculous stuff for free, and it all happened to be “part of a special deal”. After she got a bunch of free stuff, she told them she was going to shop around online and in person some more before she made a choice. They gave her a free printer and she finally went with it. She spent more than my Dad, but she got way more stuff.
Okay, for 400 bucks, though, what do you expect? If anyone thinks their 400 dollar Dell is an amazing machine is an idiot. But thats not where Dell shines. Dell’s always been the posterchild of customer service. It wins awards every year because it goes above and beyond the rest in the industry. HP/Compaqs are more expensive and I’ve known way to many people who had problems with HPs (myself included). Haven’t heard much about Compaq though. Finally, emachines are big time pieces of crap. And there’s a reason why Gateway had to close all its stores last year. If you’re going to buy a PC from one of those big companies, your best bet is probably Dell. And its pretty much the cheapest out there.
I have a kick-fucking-ass Dell laptop, but I had to get the vid card change cuz the fan was defective. The customer service was in the US as far as I could tell and it FUCKING SUCKED. I made a thread to rant about it. I sent it to Dell, they sent it back to me with 0 changes. They even told me to go on their site to SEARCH for drivers and to install them myself after the customer service rep TOLD them to change the card cuz it fried. The second time I sent it in , they fixed it and their shipping service fucking sucked.
I got Indian customer service for my usb internet adapter and it was awesome. Linksys wins points.
Of course, I didn’t pay for the laptop, I got it from my lab. But I shopped around to see what was worth getting and the Dell was a good deal. It was 1350 with shipping for a Pentium M 1.4 (I think could be 1.6 Ghz) , 512 MB ram, large wide screen, 128mb vid card, 40 gig hd (yeah yeah ) and internal wireless internet. Simply put, this baby runs doom 3 on high detail with no lag. That says a lot for a laptop. The M chip rocks because I don’t burn off my foreskin for it being a laptop and since it doesn’t use up so much energy to burn off my dick (while still performing very well), the battery lasts almost 6 hours, instead of the less than 3 my friend’s P4 does.
It always bugs me when people have problems with overseas customer service and then blames it on their overseas rep. My company is kind of in the middle of a transitional change, some of which is going to India. The biggest complaint I hear about India, is that there is a language problem. This is dumb because there are more native English speakers in India than the US, Canada, Australia, and UK combined. I’d wager to say they probably have more English teachers and Professors than all those countries combined, too. What it comes down to is an accent problem, not a language problem. If you’re willing to put up with an annoying Boston accent, why aren’t you willing to put up with an Indian accent? Its good to see you’re not blaming your problems on the Indians, though.
People like to blame outsourcing to India in general because it is a convenient target. People like to point to the evils of corporation for outsourcing to save costs. They like to use it because it is socially acceptable to blame people in other countries for your own problems, since those people are so evil for taking away hard working americans’ jobs. Pardon my sarcasm.
About Compaq and HP: I’ve heard compaqs are hit or miss machines: either yours works wonderfully (like my desktop) or its a piece of shit (I think Sorc and my gf’s brother can attest to that - my gf’s brother’s laptop is a fucking piece of shit that’s been to the shop a lot). Whether you get a good deal on a compaq depends on timing, like when you shop for a Dell. Compaq does the same as Dell when it comes to screwing people by restricting what parts they can use for upgrades.
Wow. Awesome.
Yeah, in my lifetime I’ve owned three compaq computers, and over the course of time they all eventually just died. The first one wouldn’t stop rebooting, and we later found out that not only was the ram fried but the little slots you put the ram into were fried as well.
The second one’s processor melted.
During a routine reformat, the third compaq’s hard drive crashed and became fragmented beyond repair. This computer was so trashed that not only did it only have a 8GB hard drive, but back when I played CS and TFC all day, I only got about 3 frames per second. And that was if shit wasn’t exploding.
Compaq’s and HP’s alike all use cheapo parts and generic HP type hardware. The only name brand part in the thing is probably the processor chip. Upgrading these computers is almost hit or miss - in many cases the mother board will refuse to recognize name brand parts because they aren’t distributed or manufactured by Compaq or HP. You usually have to order new parts from the companies - which is ridiculous, because it’s just more faulty equipment. Thankfully, the HP I’m on these days has withstood the test of time, and in the three or four years I’ve had it I only had slight disc error or something in the Hard Drive, which was fixed with a few reformats and a fresh windows install.
By the way, since we were talking about how our PS2s have gone nutty, I called Sony today and they said they would let me ship them my PS2 and they would fix it for free. That’s not cool, thats just leet.
That’s a helluva lot better than Sony normally does. Kudos, Sony.
And, having worked on about 400 different computers in the last year, I’ll tell you which ones are the hardest to work on: Sony Vaio’s. It’s damn near impossible to get something in there, and sometimes they won’t even work with a KEYBOARD OR MOUSE if it’s not Sony brand… screw them.
Dell laptops are normally okay. That’s where they shine. And don’t knock eMachine. Sure, they used to suck hard, but modern eMachines are pretty damn fine machines. Gateway shutdown their stores because no one would go to them to buy a computer when you could just get one at Best Buy while you were getting a few CDs. Thus, now Gateway (who owns eMachines) sells their computers in BB and CC. New Gateway machines are probably the best ones I’ve seen lately. Athlon 64, high memory (some as much as 1GB), big HDDs, dual layer DVD burners, plenty of open bays, some even come with Radeons (typically all-in-wonder 9600s). HP/Compaqs (they’re the same company, they’re the same computers) have been awesome for laptops lately, as have Gateway/eMachines, but HP desktops just feel like they’re going to fall apart (the Compaq desktops, ironically, feel rather sturdy though… O_o). The one thing I can say, though, is HP/Compaqs are VERY easily upgradable… once you figure out how to take the case apart. They tend to use MSI boards with VIA chipsets, so there’s no “custom” to them.
Everyone’s going to have a horror story with one computer or another, hell I personally have horror stories for Compaq (pre-the HP merger), eMachine (pre-the Gateway merger), and especially Packard Bell (though they’re gone in the US, thankfully). But, based on talking to the customers who bring in the computers, and what effort needs to go into fixing them (not counting spyware/virus problems, as that’s a customer problem), HPs fix the most easily with the most generic parts, and they usually give good phone support. Gateway is, from what I’ve heard from customers, the best at phone support, but their machines sometimes require me to squeeze a part in to get it to work, or they have defective hinges on the laptops, or the glue on the power button fell off. Nothing major, but annoying. Dells, I’ve been told, have terrible customer service, and every customer who brings one in tells me a horror story. Hardware is a bitch to fit into a Dell case, which is surprising as they’re almost 1 and a half times taller than most other computers. Dell is also the most infamous at not providing a place to mount a second hard drive. Most importantly, though, selling a computer with Windows XP and 128 MB RAM is just inexcusable. I’ve never heard anyone tell me a good story about Vaio customer support, though. And getting replacement parts to work in a vaio is a total bitch.
There’s my review, based on the work I’ve done. If you have a different experience, great. But, based on prices, quality, etc, I’ll stick with building my own desktops (though if I had to buy one, it’d be a Gateway/eMachines), and I’ll go with HP/Compaq for laptops everytime (until someone trumps them).
[edit] Note: I’m talking about machines made within the last 3 to 5 years. Prior to that, HP sucked really hard, Compaq couldn’t be easily upgraded, eMachine was just a shit sandwich, Gateways were equally shit, and Sony’s were practically awesome. Funny how that happened… At least Sony’s still look pretty.[/edit]
