So obviously, Dell has succombed to the immense pressure that the 2 readers of my blog placed upon them after hearing about their exploding laptop batteries.
TG Daily reports that:
An estimated 4.1 million Dell notebook computers sold worldwide are being voluntarily recalled by the manufacturer, cooperating with the US Consumer Products Safety Commission, after admitting to having received six reports of notebooks spontaneously catching fire. All the notebooks in the recall list have lithium-ion batteries manufactured for Dell by Sony’s Japan and China factories.
The comeplete list of recalled batteries can be found on the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s website. If you have one of the batteries on the list… STOP USING THE BATTERY. Take it out, and use AC power only. More details on actually returning the battery can be found at www.dellbatteryprogram.com.
In Other news regarding Dell. You may have heard about the loooooong delays most customers have been seeing while waiting for the new XPS 700, a top-of-the-line gaming machine. The original reason given for the delays was due to faulty installation of the cooling assembly. But now, Dell has decided to throw the burlap sack over the head of Nvidia, maker of not only the best 3D card available on the market, but also the highly-rated chipset manufacturer (chipset controls things like memory, hard drives, bus, network, etc.).
From the TG Daily article:
This afternoon, senior Nvidia spokesperson Bryan Del Rizzo disputed the likelihood of reports emerging from Dell that the first Pentium D 900-series-based XPS 700 units being shipped do not contain Nvidia’s top-of-the-line nForce 590 chipset as advertised, but instead a solution reached in Dell’s own laboratories. “Based on my understanding,” Del Rizzo told TG Daily this afternoon, “they are in fact using the Nvidia nForce 590 SLI MCP.”
Accounts from several people, quoting emails from Dell Representative (keep in mind this IS the internet folks), say that they will be including a custom solution presumably because of issues with Nvidia’s chipset.
My take on this is that Dell is having serious issues. Real serious. There is no doubt that ther customer service has taken about 12 steps backward, with constant complaints about getting *anyone* who can speak clear english on the phone to help you with your problem let alone getting one who knows anything other than what is on their prepared script. Add to that some potentially dangerous quality control issues (setting your lap on fire), and now to compound the difficulties in getting these high-dollar, high-performance systems built (delays of MONTHS are common) they are bad-mouthing one of their bigggest vendors.
I used to recommend anyone looking at a computer to go get a Dell. They worked. Gave good (not great) performance per dollar. Were a recognized name. And they sent it to your door. I can’t do that anymore as I’m afraid somebody will now wait months for a computer that will arrive broken, and then get frustated talking to someone who doesn’t speak english who tells them to re-install windows when it just came from the factory.
So now, I have to go find new hardware to recommend. Unless of course, you want me to build it for you :)