What can I say except that nothing about Dell's poor numbers surprised me one bit. Dell (NasdaqNM:DELL) has been missing the mark in so many ways in recent quarters that it had to catch up with them eventually.
Two days ago I ordered a new Dell notebook. It will probably be the last one I buy. I got another Dell this one last time because I prematurely destroyed my old one well before the end of its useful life. And since my batch of accessories -- including docking station, extra power supplies, DVD writer, and a few others -- are still current, getting a slightly newer model from the same manufacturer made sense. By the time I upgrade again, all these parts and accessories will probably be obsolete and then it'll be time for a new brand.
So let me walk through the experience to show why Dell is missing the mark and why it's across the board, not just in one area: product selection, the ordering process, service, etc.
Service: OK, I didn't just decide to trash my old Latitude D600 without at least considering that I might be able to get away with just replacing the cracked case and screen. At one of my previous employers, the IT guy used to keep a bunch of extra pieces around to do just this kind of job and I figured I'd try.
Unlike most of my friends, who purchase their Dimension and Inspiron systems as "Home or Home Office" users, I've always pretended to be a "Small or Medium Sized Business" so I could get access to some of the better workstations, dockable notebooks, and other things that Dell does not want to sell to mere "home" users. (Why this should be the case is beyond me.) I also typically get somewhat better service on the phone, and in this case I did. Or at the very least I got a guy who wasn't obviously sitting in a foreign country and who had some understanding of the problem I was having and the solution I was trying to work out.
It was obviously a waste of time. A mere mortal like me was clearly not going to be able to order parts for a notebook that they considered to be "not user servicable." Pulling out my old MCSE certification and IT-guy experience didn't help. I could pay to ship it to them round trip, they would give me an estimate when it got there and if I didn't want to pay, they would ship it back. I decided to pass.
Purchasing: My thought was that I would buy a newer system with as few of the optional pieces as I could get away with, because I already own many of them. I quickly decided on the widescreen D620 to replace my dying D600. A D610 would have been a more direct replacement, but I decided I might as well try for something a bit different while I was at it.
In purchasing the D620, you are offered three preconfigured setups, each of which you can further customize.
OK, that makes sense. Lots of people have less knowledge than me and may want to be pointed in the right direction, or maybe just order one of the standard configurations. If that's your level of sophistication, their ordering process is fairly simple and sensible.
Product Options: But that's where the sensibility and simplicity ended. I recall that in the past, once you selected your "base" configuration, you were then offered the full suite of options from which you could pick. No more. These days, the people who pick the "good" (low end) configuration get one set of options, people who want "better" get different (typically more expensive) options on many items, and those who want "best" tend to lose access to some of the cheaper components -- like a basic CD-ROM drive rather than a DVD/RW.
I quickly figured out that since most of the "high end" options were components like the DVD+RW drive that I already have, so I went for the "good" (cheap) configuration and started customizing it. I picked a slightly faster processor and a couple of other little add-ons that I wouldn't mind having but didn't really need, and tried to continue.
Choosing memory forced me onto the phone with Dell again. I'm picky about this stuff, I want what I want, and it's always going to be the fastest stuff available for my machine. While the D620 I coveted comes with a 677Mhz front side bus on the processor (and for best performance should use memory of the same speed), Dell mostly is offering 533Mhz memory. I can't see why they would do this except to keep the price down and maybe because they have too much of the old stuff in stock. Anybody who knows what they're doing would want memory which can keep up with the max speed of the processor bus.
But, to get the faster stuff, they force you to buy a full 2GB of RAM, which is far more than I need in a notebook, and pretty expensive too! I was looking for just 1GB of the fast stuff.
The guy on the phone was no more helpful than the website. If I were ordering a whole bunch of units, maybe they could work out a deal to put together a custom option, but right now if I want the fast memory I have to pay up and take 2GB.
So what did I do? I ordered the minimum amount available (512MB) of the slower memory I didn't want. I'll be able to sell it on eBay for $30-40. And I ordered 1MB of the memory I do want from Crucial.com. It'll be here tomorrow.
I thought the whole point to having a machine built to order is so that you can specify the options you want. I understand that no manufacturer can offer me every option out there, but memory is pretty generic stuff. Why am I forced to go to outside vendors for something as simple as the right memory in the quantity I desire?
Oh yeah, there's one option you can't get on any Dell machine. One that is making it harder for them to compete on all fronts. An option that I'm increasingly finding myself specifying for my clients. It's an option called "AMD" which offers both great performance and a great price. Had I not wanted to preserve the value of my still-useful accessories and expensive docking station, I too would have gone with a manufacturer offering that option.
Fulfillment: So far, so good. I ordered on Friday and it looks like it'll ship tomorrow. Much faster than they indicated on the initial order. But then again, maybe they don't have quite as much business as they're used to...
