'puter repair

Now you know why those of us who mess with our own computers, do not like Dells.

ahaha- to the leaf blower part.

I tried to blow out a squirrel cage blower once, but it ran too fast and self destructed. It stopped really really fast as the blades ran into the housing and pieces of them flew out.

After suffering several failures of cheap no-name power supplies over a short time period, I started buying Antecs. Antec supplies are mid-range in price, and my impression is that they're a good value. I haven't any failures with three supplies in 3 or 4 years.

Indeed.

Gunner

Dell has gone the route that Packard Bell and Compac did, for years. Proprietary guts

When Packard Bell was THE low end computer, I only bought NEC stuff, as it was made of high end "generic" stuff.

Gunner

HP did the same.

I've been having good luck with Rosewill's mid-range lineup. $30-40 range. The units are good and heavy (they used enough copper in them) and I haven't had one die on me in the 2 years I've been using them at work. (Machine shop with oily environment).

Like I said, power supply. Like I said, DELL from HELL.

Like I said - DELL from HELL

I told her, Yes, you did buy a brand name computer, but it was the cheapest computer ever made."

Did you know those Pathetic Bastards computers were built with NEC parts that fell through the bottom of the NEC barrels? Have you looked at the NEC web page lately? The last time I did, it had some PB computers listed.

BTW, to you remember when PB made overpriced consumer electronics? The old game shows, like 'Lets Make a Deal' stated that the retail prices were over $1000, for a $400 color TV. I only saw ONE PB color TV in Ohio. We had the only shop that would touch it. I was VERY happy that I worked for the industrial electronics group, that day. :(

Actually, its "Dell? YOU bought a Dell? What the hell is wrong with you? Dude, you're going to HELL!!!" ;-)

The road to hell is paved with empty Dell computer cases. :(

Dell is a contraction of Damnation and hELL.

Actually other than the lack of the power switch the Dell machines are (except for the XPS box) standard parts now. Personally I have a LOT of Dell machines and have had better service from them than any other machines I've had. They also derate there power supplies a LOT. The "250" watt unit in this machine is just loafing along at 250 watts, I have run it through a couple tests and can get 400 watts out of it without any problems.

Oh, that brings back nightmares, all right... Uncle Wes helped engineer that 19" all-tube monster, I think one of his co-workers was Earl "Madman" Muntz with his insulated side-cutters... ;-P

He got us a deal, but told us to get the extended warranty. (He knew the MTBF was abysmal, but you can't come out and say it and keep a job...) And over the course of about 12 years every single component in the set was changed at least once. Two picture tubes. One or two complete tuners.

And I was in there in between calls, the young kid with the plastic tuning screwdriver cleaning up the color when things drifted. Even had my own Killer Cord and degaussing coil.

(Amazing what you pick up when you quietly watch what the repairman is doing, and exactly how he does it. And you take it to heart when he says "Whatever you do kid, do NOT touch here, or here, or here!" as he points out the flyback and the HV anode pickup cup and such. And since I never got knocked on my ass, I must have learned something.)

When they wouldn't renew the contract any more, we dumped the set the second time it died - the first retail repair call was a very expensive lesson. And by then solid state sets were starting to hit the market.

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Sounds like power surge damage. We get a lot of it here. It's hard to talk people into buying good surge protectors. One surge destroyed over 60 computers in our town. That was about 4-5 years ago.

Steve R.

The world would have been better off if someone had pinholed those dammed cutters.

You couldn't understand the guy who worked for Sears, when our Tv failed under warranty, and he didn't know what not to touch. I cringed as I watched him shove a metal shank screwdriver against the output electrolytic in the double circuit, while holding the steel chassis. He threw the screwdriver and screeched, 'OOOOHHH dat stil got jook in der' as he rubbed his hand that stopped him from going through the wall.

I have the first color TV my parents bought, in 1966. One of the very first Motorola Quasar TVs. It was repaired five times in 42 years, including one new CRT to get rid of that lousy 23EGP22, and two lightning strikes that blew out the RF stage in the VHF tuner.

Antec is fairly decent, but wander over to the badcaps.net forums, and you'll see plenty of complaints about them -- for instance:

The Dell Optiplex machines have been the MOST standard, universally compatible machines I've used. I tend to be most focussed on the parallel port and Linux compatibility, though, so I may have missed other stuff that wasn't compatible.

Jon

Well, I have FIVE Dells I use here, two are on 24/7, the kid's one is on all day every day, and my desktop at work is on 24/7 too. I have found them to be great. All are Optiplex desktops, from their commercial-grade systems. I did have to replace the CPU fan on my desktop at home, and the kid's computer crashed when the CPU heatsink clogged up with dust. Otherwise, they have been running for years. I have sold about a dozen off-lease Dell Optiplex machines to EMC cnc customers, and had only one that had a problem.

Jon