Not that there is a ton of it, I'm not a huge corporate consulting conglomerate or in the Fortune 500; but I've been
recommending them for years and have probably made or influenced purchasing decisions that have put several tens of thousands of dollars in their pockets over time.
This morning, in a not terribly unusual scenario, I surfed over their their website to put in a quick order for a client who needs a reliable machine quickly for a time-sensitive project--something I have always been comfortable turning to Dell for, with their quick assembly and shipping and reliable hardware. This client, however, runs an XP Pro shop. So when I got to the choice of operating systems in the configuration section, I was surprised not to find the most commonly run OS in corporate America, Windows XP, as an option. All I saw was Vista. I couldn't believe it at first; did a quick search and found
this poor gent who confirmed it. You can't get Windows XP on Dell's least expensive (and therefore most attractive) business PCs.
And that's not going to work; neither I, nor my clients, are going to get backed into a situation where multiple operating systems have to be supported for no good reason. That quickly develops into a scenario that costs a lot more to support than it costs to find a new vendor who can provide homogenous systems over a predictable lifespan. Interestingly, this same client yesterday, as I was discussing this purchase with them, indicated they had heard some terrible things about Vista and wanted to talk about moving to Apple as the standard for their office during their next major upgrade cycle. Incidents such as this aren't likely to reverse that opinion. Although Apple themselves are extremely limited when offering options, the homogenity and functionality of the product is legendary and goes some ways toward mitigating a need for additional options.
It's not as if Dell has been without blemish all this time; they've had their share of lousy website layout, poor customer service, and limited configuration options. Still, I've always found them superior to their competition in the whole. And when Windows XP came out, you could still select Windows 2000 as a choice for operating system for years afterward--a boon to my clients who chose to hold off on their upgrades and make them when their business logic militated for it rather than when Microsoft told them they should.
There are still options I could use involving Dell--I could tell the client to pony up and spring for an Optiplex model (which you can still get with XP), although they need none of the additional functionality and won't benefit in any way from spending the extra money. After recalling a story a few months ago that Dell had begun to sell clean systems, with no OS installed, I did some further digging (there is no easy way on the Dell site to find and purchase these, incidentally--I had to find an external link--what's up with hiding products that people might otherwise purchase?) and found their
n-Series Dimensions, intended for open-source operating systems. I could get one of those and install a retail package of XP Pro--but those Dimensions won't allow the basic hardware configuration that this particular use requires and are more expensive than a stock Dimension in the bargain.
This is ridiculous, and it's losing Dell whatever further decades of referrals they might have gotten out of my operation. I'll be checking out
Lenovo and
HP and if anyone else has any recommendations I'll be happy to look into those as well, and sending my business, and that of my clients, to them instead. I'm aware this was probably a business decision on their part, and that unlimited choice is not an option from any vendor--but their competition are managing it just fine, and from where I sit, that's looking to be the better business decision at this point.
indigoMOONsystems
