Dell Desktops, Notebooks and Servers Are Overpriced and Overhyped

I've had the misfortune of using Dell laptops in both corporate and personal settings. As a new system administrator for a telecommunications company, I wasn't able to choose which computers we worked with, and after a comedy of errors you'd think I'd have learned my lesson. Instead, I purchased a Dell notebook for personal use within the past year, and the one I originally ordered is not the one sitting here on my lap as I write this.

As a system administrator, I had my work cut out for me when it came to keeping up with Dell fallouts. About three years prior to taking on that position, our company had purchased ten Dell Latitude laptops for use throughout different offices. All ten laptops' hard drives died within the same week, four years after acquiring them. Luckily, I was able to salvage most of the hard drives with a free download called, "Darik's Boot and Nuke". Normally used prior to recycling computers, I used it to wipe out each hard drive and fix errors, allowing me to successfully reinstall Windows XP Professional back onto it.

We also owned Dell OptiPlex desktops and PowerEdge Servers, both of which had longer lives, however neither could live up to the stability and longevity of Solaris servers and workstations. Unfortunately, fewer system administrators are fluent in Solaris operating systems than Windows. Despite Solaris' power and reliability, they aren't as prevalent in the workplace due to the computers' prices and the learning curve of potential end users. Not once in the five years I worked there did we have to replace a Solaris server or SPARCstation. I lost count of the times our Dell servers went down.

About a year ago, I decided to buy a Dell Inspiron laptop to replace my 64-bit Acer laptop. Its motherboard died after four years of solid use. I tricked my laptop out with 2GB RAM, 2.4GHz Intel processor, a tight graphics card and the fastest hard drive available on their site. I paid a pretty penny for my laptop and when it arrived, the first thing it did was shock me as I took it out of the box.