Dell Shows its Fading Stripes

I've long said that Dell Computers are not a wise choice in any environment, home or enterprise. There have been arguments, and denials, and scoffing. I've never agreed with the operations model and the "do more with less" hardware decisions you see when you open the case. I've felt that those few I've met who strove to emulate its "just in time" inventory and parts management schemes were asking for trouble down the road. Well, our friends at Dell have apparently not only proved me right by getting caught trying to conceal their problems, they are finding themselves roundly sued and even foolishly pissing off their own lawyers by refusing to acknowledge hardware failures in 12 million Optiplex systems sold over a two-year period.

Ars Nova provides an overview while the New York Times provides more details. It's nice to see this long string of poor dealing nearing a close. The suit itself looks to be about three years old already but the documents have been unsealed and hopefully Dells stock will react like a housefly hitting a bug zapper.

"After the math department at the University of Texas noticed some of its Dell computers failing, Dell examined the machines. The company came up with an unusual reason for the computers’ demise: the school had overtaxed the machines by making them perform difficult math calculations..."

"'The funny thing was that every one of them went bad at the same time', said Greg Barry, the president of PointSolve, a technology services company near Philadelphia..."

"In other documents about how to handle questions around the faulty OptiPlex systems, Dell salespeople were told, “Don’t bring this to customer’s attention proactively” and “Emphasize uncertainty.”"

So. What exactly -do- you do when 2 million Optiplex computers shipped to tens of thousands of private, institutional and enterprise users (including your -own lawyers- ) experiences a 97% failure rate over three years? Well, if you're Dell, apparently you deny there's a problem, train your support staff to try to up-sell the victims to more expensive systems to "fix" the problem, ship equally faulty replacements, cover up the problem, cook the books, lie to investors and the SEC (that one is going to cost them approx $100 mil), get caught and wind up getting sued by some of your biggest customers, and etc.

The Ars Technica article is overview, the NYT report has details but is still only two pages. Interesting reading that exposes where Dells "Just In Time" inventory system and cost-cutting strategies eventually led the company: another "winner" in the Race to The Bottom.