Thanks for sharing the link, Bruce. Looks like awesome equipment. I've had trouble with underperformance and poor quality with my Dell Inspiron 5150 and am thinking about replacing it this year. The Sager and Chembook look to be spec'ed just like I need!
Darin. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bruce Barnes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 6:28 AM Subject: RE: [IMail Forum] OT: Customer Service (was: hardware company) Gary, We ditched DELL forever last March after we purchased another company and merged them with ours almost 3 years ago. The company we purchased had a bunch of way overpriced DELL leases, had filed bankruptcy and we rescued the DELL leases from being written off when we purchased the company. DELL refused to put the leases in our name while we sorted out the cash flow issues caused by the merger. We had no access to the DELL Financial website to get a payoff and no one at DELL Financial would return our phone calls, so, after about 11 months of attempting to cooperate, we stopped paying the leases. It took about 3 months, but finally someone from Dell called to tell us we were "late" (we had taken over all of the old companies phone numbers and pointed them towards our so we got the call without a problem). When I explained that we had been trying to pay off the leases but no one at DELL would cooperate with us, she re-stated the fact that were three months late and would have to pay all outstanding payments prior to them considering talking to us about a payoff and I told her she could wait till hell froze over and hung up the phone. About 2 weeks later, I received another call. This one from someone at Dell's collection agency. When I explained the situation and told her that I wanted to pay off all the leases in full, she found someone at Dell to contact me. In short, it cost us about $9,105.00 to pay off a lease balance of more than $18,000.00 that still had 2.5 years to go! After the payoff, Dell recalculated the "interest" on the three leases we paid off and sent us a refund of almost another $100.00. They also sent us an e-mail asking us to consider using them in the future and wanting to know what they could do to win back our business. I responded by stating that we would never do business with them again. Recently, when I needed new laptop, I asked one of the people in the office to find something to my specs, telling him to research what was available. He picked a DELL and they even offered to "finance" it for us. I nixed the Dell and went with a Panasonic Toughbook instead (www.discountlaptops.com has some great pricing). I'll spend the money on a quality product, but will NOT pay someone to screw me or give me inferior customer service. It's the same with Ipswitch. We've asked, at least 8 times, via e-mail, for a link to download a full version of the most recent iMail product so we can build a new mail server and reinstall without having to load all the patches. They've never responded. So, we're not renewing our service contract with Ipswitch and moving to another mail server next year. Incidently, CDW sells some DELL products now as well. Bruce Barnes -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Gary Brumm Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 22:19 To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [IMail Forum] OT: hardware company Hi Bruce, We use Compaq servers in our NOC hooked up w/redundant supplies as you mentioned. I don't ever remember having a PS failure in one of these servers but if one does no big deal.... We use IBM servers in the office environments and Gateway desktops. We have reps for both companies and get the usual discounts & extras with both. IBM is supporting not only parts & service for IBM but they also do the support & parts for Gateway. You can't get better support than IBM IMHO. We have tried dealing with Dell in the past several times and we have had so many problems with poor support, missed delivery times, unreturned calls, ect. that they are an absolute last resort for us. Of course your mileage may vary :-) Cheers, Gary At 07:45 PM 2/15/2005, you wrote: >re: redundant power supplies. > >I never understood why a manufacturer would have an option to use a single >power cord to connect to a power supply with two redundant power supplies in >the same server. if someone trips over the single cord, as in the example >below, then both supplies go down. > >why not have all servers with dual power supplies connected to seperate UPS >units so that if either the power supply fails, the UPS fails or the circuit >to which the UPS is connected fails, the redundant power supply can take >over. > >i know, many people would consider that kind of redundancy redundant, but we >do not, too many strange thing have happened. i'd rather spend the money on >prevention than waste a day "fixing" something that could have been >prevented while 50 angry office workers and untold numbers of customers are >screaming at me on the telephone and thru the doorway about the fact they >can't get the pictures that their grandkids sent them via e-mail. > >Bruce Barnes > >-----Original Message----- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Doug Traylor >Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 21:24 >To: [email protected] >Subject: Re: [IMail Forum] OT: hardware company > > >Dell. We have a sales rep, not that it's a big deal. I got a 10% >discount last time I bought some little thing. > >The big deal is their service. It's nice to get a new hard drive air >mailed in four hours or less when one decides to die. > >..And their dependability...we have been using the same 150 Dell >computers, more or less(desktops and servers), for four years with few >failures of anything but ~10 cpu fans becoming squeaky and ~5 power >supply fans. A couple of scsi drives in one of our raid systems have >been replaced without incident or noticeable downtime, and that's it. >Not counting the usual programmer/sysadmin induced system meltdowns! >:o) Like the guy who was walking behind the servers and tripped on >and pulled out one power cord from a raid with supposedly redundant >dual power, that corrupted the container and caused us a day of >downtime and lost work. Good times, good times. > >:o) > >Doug Traylor > >On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 15:03:23 -0500, Matrosity Tech Support ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > yes, don't screw around pinching pennies with your revenue, get a dell. > > > > > > Internet Relations wrote: > > I'd 2nd that. > >Dell. > >To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html >List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ >Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ > > >To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html >List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ >Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/ ComsecNet Dedicated Data Services Stockton, CA Phone:(209) 463-2809 Fax: (209) 938-0481 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: www.comsec.net This message is intended for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential, and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. 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