Bill Wood's Web Site, Since July 2, 1995 |
Click here to return to Bill Wood's Blog Pages.The Flaw In The Machine.Watertown, Massachusetts 02472 14 July 2008 Michael S.Dell, Chairman and CEO Dell Computer Corporation One Dell Way Round Rock, TX 78682 Dear Mr. Dell: I know, of course, that you will never see this letter. That said, it is my hope that someone of some responsibility within your organization will take the following story to heart. It has been over 14 years since I took delivery of my first Dell Computer (service tag XXXXX). Counting that first Pentium 90, I have purchased twelve separate Dell computers. The most recent purchase was a Vostro 400 (order number 000000000). It was delivered to me Wednesday 9th July. It was returned to Dell barely 24 hours later on Thursday 10th July. I don’t expect that I will ever buy another computer from Dell. Before I give you the reasons for this sad decision, let me tell you what your company did right. First, when my order was delayed in production, Dell agreed to ship it next day delivery without charging me anything extra. Second, when I determined that I had to return the unit, Dell was completely cooperative and shipped me a pre-paid return airbill within minutes. Third, just yesterday, a scant three days since I dropped the unit off at UPS to be returned to Dell, I received an acknowledgment that my American Express card was being credited back for the full amount of the purchase. This is great customer service and despite what I am about to say, I want you to know how much I appreciate the way Dell handled the return of this computer. Now, on to the reasons for my returning the Vostro and my decision not to buy another Dell computer. When my Vostro arrived, I encountered a strange problem. The first screen visible when I turned on the computer required that I press any key to accept Dell’s terms and conditions. But I was stuck because the USB interface to the mouse and keyboard wasn’t working. A reasonably savvy technician was able to assist me in fixing this problem once we determined that the problem was isolated to the USB ports on the back of the machine; happily the USB ports on the front of machine were working just fine. I noted at the time, with some concern, that the only way the technician knew to restore the USB ports in the back required that we first gain access to the Windows operating system from which we then reinstalled the relevant drivers from the utility disk. This obviously required our using the working USB ports on the front of the computer. Now I had purposefully ordered the Vostro because it was the only small business desktop computer I could find in Dell’s lineup that still offered Windows XP as an operating system. (The fact that I had to pay extra for Windows XP seemed very unjust, but I assume that is a pricing decision that comes from Microsoft, not Dell.) It was critical that the operating system be Windows XP because I planned to install an Intel Dialogic D4PCI card which was currently running successfully under Windows XP on a four year old Dell Optiplex (service tag XXXXXXX). Driver support for this device was complicated under Windows XP and presumably non-existent under Vista, well known for its myriad driver deficiencies. So I spent some fifteen hours configuring my new machine (including installing a valid license that I had purchased on my own for Norton Anti-virus) in anticipation of adding the Dialogic card. I first installed a brand new a RS-232 expansion card (i.e., a com port) onto one the two PCI slots. What should have been a 15 minute exercise dragged on for over three hours but, finally, was fully successful. (I have no idea if there was any way in which my Dell system contributed to my installation difficulties with this device; for purposes of this letter I will assume the problems were all caused by the device itself and the accompanying software drivers.) And then the moment that changed my attitude toward computers forever. Shortly after my wife had left for work, I powered down the Vostro. I removed the power cord. And, following the exact instructions I had successfully used to install this same card in my Windows XP based Optiplex four years earlier, I seated the Dialogic card in the remaining PCI slot. I then carefully screwed down the clamp holding the cards, replaced the cover and plugged the machine in. When I pressed the power on everything booted up perfectly. In less than sixty seconds I was looking at the desktop that I had painstaking configured during the 15 hours I had just spent preparing my new computer. Except there was a problem. The mouse and the keyboard did not respond. It seems that the presence of the Dialogic card had somehow trashed the drivers that control the USB ports. But this time was different from a day earlier when I first tried to power up my new machine. This time both the front and back USB ports were completely gone. I called technical support and got connected with a remarkably uninspired technician in the Philippines. (I am no fan of outsourcing but I can tolerate it when the people employed have a familiarity with American English. When they don’t, as was the case with this woman, a great deal of time was expended explaining that my e-mail address was at billwood.com, not dellwood.com.) Your Filipino tech support person meticulously instructed me to remove the cables from my harddrives and CD devices and to then remove the battery. I then, following her exact instruction, replaced the battery and reconnected the cables. I then re-attached the power cord and... Well she had told me that removing the battery would reset the CMOS which would allow the USB drivers to function properly. Except that it didn’t. Now I was stuck looking at a DOS screen that demanded a keyboard input that I was unable to deliver. She then went on to explain that all I needed to do was to replace the motherboard. Replace the motherboard? I knew from past experience (for very different reasons I had to have the motherboard replaced on my Dimension 4600, service tag XXXXXXX) that this would monkey with some of my software installations (including, not insignificantly, the Norton Anti-virus which had already registered my subscription to the MAC address on the existing motherboard). I was also far from sure that this technician was even correct when she said that replacing the motherboard would fix the problem. (She hadn’t exactly proved herself reliable in the steps she had had me take leading up to this debacle.) When I tried to explain that I wasn’t really sure why a new motherboard would keep my Intel Dialogic card from causing the same problem all over again, she indicated that she thought that this card, apparently because it wasn’t plug and play, was not an approved device for the computer I had just purchased. That, as they say, is the straw that broke this camel’s back. I told the Filipino tech and the south Asian sales manager (who spoke with me after I had told Dell that I was returning my Vostro) that in my opinion the design of the Vostro is defective. Put simply, any computer that depends on drivers that can only be controlled and installed at the operating system level to start its most basic functions (e.g., to enter setup to change the boot sequence or to go into safe mode to fiddle with driver configurations) is prone to exactly the kind of cataclysmic failure that I experienced during my 24 hours of ownership of my Vostro. The south Asian sales manager urged me to reconsider my decision not to purchase a Dell computer. When I responded that I would be happy to purchase a Dell desktop with Windows XP if it had hardware supported PS/2 ports for the mouse and the keyboard, his response was the he was in sales not engineering. Hmmm.... So there are a couple of forces at work here that are likely to keep me from buying another Dell. I will not move to Microsoft Vista. Since it is clear that Microsoft does not intend to support XP indefinitely, this limits my options. At the moment, I run three Dells: two desktops and one laptop. When the desktops die, I will probably discontinue running applications like my own mail server, my own web server and my own telephony system (the reason for the Dialogic card); instead I will outsource these functions to commercial servers. When my laptop dies I will buy a Mac which runs only basic software (e.g., Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat). The only way I will buy a Dell in the future would be if I decided to take the plunge into Linux and your Linux based desktops had hardware supported pointing devices and keyboards. The essence of the lesson I have learned from the failure of my Vostro is that the personal computer has gone from being a tool to an appliance. If this trend continues, how much longer will it be before there is no longer even an option for user installed hardware and software? I have seen the future and I do not like it. Sincerely, William H. Wood |
