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Dell is trying to make up for the decreasing quality of their machines and their poor customer service. I'm betting declining sales is also the reason for their

Dell is trying to make up for the decreasing quality of their machines and their poor customer service. I'm betting declining sales is also the reason for their decision to start putting Dell machines in retail stores. I applaud them for putting out Ubuntu laptops, but I doubt I would ever buy a computer from them again. I'll stick to building my own desktops and buying Apple when it comes to laptops. All their efforts to put out Ubuntu laptops and go green won't make up for the fact that I had to waste over a week with their customer service to replace a broken hard drive (especially when I paid extra for next-day on-site support)

SwellJoe 18y ago
I've not been a Dell consumer often enough or recently enough to really know about declining quality. My current Dell has been solid, but it's a few years old now, so things could have gotten worse since then. It does have a crappy audio signal flaw (the power is fed into the ADC unfiltered so it has an atrocious buzz when recording), which apparently existed through multiple revisions of the board, without a fix from Dell, despite awareness of the problem and dozens of posts in the Dell forums about it (I guess a redesign was more expensive than sending a USB audio adapter to the few people who complained). Anyway, I'm tempted by the XPS M1330, which has gotten excellent reviews, and lots of recommendations from HN readers and on reddit. I am about due for a new lappy...the Asus and Thinkpads also look good, but Dell being a bit greener certainly isn't a bad thing.