lol.Quote:
Originally Posted by Soul Assassin
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lol.Quote:
Originally Posted by Soul Assassin
You are aware there's more people in this discussion than you and I, right?Quote:
Originally Posted by ImaNihilist
Pudad said "I could build anything those assholes make, for 10x less." They're assholes for charging a lot of money? Sounds like anti-capitalism to me. I suppose I could make efforts to quote more people and respond specifically to them, but it's a public forum and it's late, and I'm tired.
As for your Miami statement, Miami isn't Cuba, and Cuban immigrants in Miami will probably slit your throat for saying it is. I have been to Miami. Have you ever been to Cuba? I have. Beautiful place, not very free though. I also find saying that Miami = Cuba to be very disrespectful knowing what many Cubans have gone through to escape to the US.
Having been through both Dell and Alienware's support on numerous occasions, I can guarantee that it may appear that they are the same as Dell, but it only appears that way. Are there thousands of horror stories about Alienware's support? Of course there is.Quote:
Originally Posted by ImaNihilist
Let me give you a nice example, straight from resellerratings:
"1700 dollars wasted. I bought a brand new PC from what I thought was quality. It arrives with a fan that sounds louder than most car engines. ... As far as I am concerned, they did not deliver the PC I ordered. Instead it is a 1700 paperweight."
Yes, because it has a loud fan it's a $1700 paperweight. I'm not too jazzed on using this type of person's opinion on whether Alienware makes quality PCs or not.
As I said in the very first place, I'm not disagreeing that Alienware is going downhill, just as fast as Newegg. I'm not disagreeing that they are becoming Dell/2. I'm not disagreeing with ANY statement other than the ones that indicate that Alienware has generally been crap in the past, since this couldn't be any further from the truth.Quote:
The only reason I even bring it up at all is because...and I don't really know how it happened, but I do a lot of support for Alienware systems. This summer I had a few of them in my closet. A friend of mine who had one kept having trouble, and I guess a few other people in his guild had Alienware's giving them trouble, which were out of warranty (or 1 still was), but Alienware couldn't give any turn around other than "up to four weeks." 2 systems just needed new coolers, 1 needed a new PSU, 1 had a stock overclock that was too high and the system was actually unstable.
Because they use a sliding scale they start out cheap, and are cheap, but then the price scale goes up on things like the ALX, but the quality is still cheap. However, you do get a free t-shirt if you spend like $4,000.
When you go from competing with Falcon Northwest, to competing with Dell you've completely changed your products, your image, and your entire business strategy.
You are a very angry person. Or maybe just a fanboy. Or maybe a little of both.
Cheers. :p
Nah, just a defender of decent things that people attack because they feel threatened by them. Counter-culture thinking at its finest.Quote:
Originally Posted by ImaNihilist
"Everyone thinks Alienwares are so good, I hate them!"
"Everyone thinks iPods are so good, I hate them!"
"Everyone thinks Intel is so good, I hate them!"
~ to infinity.
An anti-fanboy, if anything.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Soul Assassin
You've never owned a powerbook have you. :)
Yeah I can only speak of what I have seen in the past. They don't look particularly special. I'd rather just buy a dell business class system.Quote:
Originally Posted by ImaNihilist
Quote:
Originally Posted by ImaNihilist
I means he is a sucker for stuff that doesn't work. :p
I've owned a few actually. Went through the old Tibooks like candy. I have no doubt that the newer aluminum ones are better, but that's like saying a car that runs is better than a car that doesn't. When you set your baseline as low as Apple's previous effort, it's easy to beat.Quote:
Originally Posted by pudad
ipods that scratch from dust in the air, cubes that crack from being looked at, batteries that fail extremely quickly, etc.
Apples history of build quality problems is well-renowned, so even people who have never had the pleasure of owning an Apple product are probably aware of their problems.
I just have to wonder, because you actually mentioned BMW, why is it that PCs have such shitty warranties? I mean, I'd expect 3-year warranties on parts and labor to be an industry STANDARD today. It's gone the complete other way...90 days. What good is 90 days? Even when you get the extended warranties these companies put you out such a long time for the repairs, it's not even worth it. Is that to discourage you from sending it in? If BMW told me I'd have to wait a week for them to fix my car, I'd go apeshit on them.
It seems like the only way to get a REAL warranty is to get an hp or Dell business line product....or do something like throw down $1,000 extra for the kind of warranty you get with Falcon NW. Le sigh.
Why do you think it is that service has more or less dissappeared from the PC industry? Am I the only one who expects something I buy to last more than 90-days? I pretty much base everything electronic I buy on warranty. It's extremely hard to do in the notebook arena. The only one I know of who has a warranty worth a damn is hp for the business notebooks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Soul Assassin
well the pbook I had was a aluminum one. But I do agree that apple's build quality should be a lot better. I am thinking that using all of intels hardware will improve it dramatically.
The standard Falcon warranty (according to their site) is one year for an overnight service. To extend this to three years it's an extra four hundred dollars.Quote:
Originally Posted by ImaNihilist
Comparatively, for Inspiron machines it's a 550 dollar to upgrade to Dell's four year warranty which is a superior onsite service and that's also full accidental damage cover rather than just a standard warranty. I know which I'd rather have.
Alienware mainly use the Clevo chassis barebones, Rock are a UK company which similarly sell their own versions of Clevo barebones machines, but they ship with a three year warranty as standard, and still usually cheaper than the competition.
Service hasn't disappeared, if you want it, you pay for it.
John
The lenovo/IBM thinkpads I'm looking at seem to have good waranties too.
The only problem with that is actually trying to get them to break to begin with :DQuote:
Originally Posted by pudad
I don't know how well Lenovo 'books are and will be, but I know so many people here with Thinkpads that still work for years with 100% original parts
When you're a seller of goods, service is (or would be if cost-cutting measures didn't exist) the single most expensive aspect of a sale.Quote:
Originally Posted by ImaNihilist
Goods are simple. You have something, a widget. Widget costs x amount of dollars to make. You sell widget for x amount of dollars and make profit.
Service, on the other hand, is very difficult to measure. If you sell the same widget to 100 people, 90 people will probably have no problem and the 20% markup you factored in to support them will be pure profit. The other 10 people will have varying degrees of issues and this is where it gets tougher.
How much do you suppose the average tech phone support person makes an hour? $10? I have no idea. Let's say $10 for ease of use. Now, it doesn't matter if the customer bought your cheapest widget or your most expensive widget, you need to pay this TS person $10/hr to provide support.
So let's say Dell can make a PC for $250 and sell it for $350. So they have $100 after production costs to use. Now a certain percentage has to go to pay their employees. Another percentage has to go to marketing. So on and so on until you get to support. By the time support rolls around, you might have $20 to play with. This means that the average customer can get 2 hours of phone support without costing Dell a nickle.
Now, 2 hours of phone support isn't very much. I'd say the average PC user will screw their PC up within 2 weeks let alone 90 days. People clicking here and there and everywhere, it happens.
At the same time people are extremely frugal about spending money on service. They want the part and think it's going to function perfectly no matter what they do to it. So they don't buy any service. I bet most people would drive without insurance too, if it wasn't illegal.
Anyhow, let's compare this to BMW. BMW offers 4 years of total service. How can they do this? Because they don't expect people to screw up their cars the way people screw up their PCs. Think about the average person on a PC. They get on the internet, maybe steal some music, chat with their friends, look for porno, download cursors and wallpaper, etc. And what happens? Along the way they click yes to spyware, yes to trojans, yes to adware, and so on. They purposely or accidentally destroy the functionality of their computer.
Dell knows people will do this and doesn't want to support them for doing so. If BMW knew that people were going to put sugar in their gas tank, overinflate their tires, change the electrical wiring, etc, they sure as hell wouldn't provide total service either.
I think service has decreased for computers because the average computer user is almost 100% ignorant of how a PC works and does stupid things that are a b*tch to fix. Computers also sell for 1/10th of what they did 15 years ago. Companies are run by marketers and stockholders and not engineers.
Agreed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ashpool
By the way, they are still made by IBM. And will be made by IBM for 3-4 years iirc. Lenovo just started slapping their names on them.
And I doubt that ThinkPad quality will go down once Lenovo makes them. They work together very closely with IBM. I know that in Vienna, Lenovo actually has their offices in the IBM building. No idea how this is in other places where IBM is, but I'd guess similarly.
It's the other way around: IBM is putting their names on the laptops and Lenovo is the one that's building them, but only keeping the Think and IBM names for five years. Lenovo also moved their Headquarters to New York StateQuote:
Originally Posted by PCJ
But you're right, Lenovo and IBM are very close together: IBM owns 19% of Lenovo anyway :D