LINK

Dell Inc., the personal-computer maker that pioneered selling custom-made machines directly to clients, is moving away from its build-to-order model to reduce costs.

Dell is limiting the degree to which buyers can dictate specifications while expanding its line of prepackaged models, operations chief Mike Cannon said Wednesday. Dell will also outsource more PC manufacturing to partners, he said.

To my eyes, this looks like a bad move - as far as I'm concerned the only reason to buy a Dell is for the customisation, if they get rid of that then I'd be more inclined to look elsewhere.

Yeah, that's the first impression I got too.... All the people I know who bought Dells did so because it was easy and customisable.

But they're only just scaling it back from the sounds of it, which does make some sense

There was a comment under the Slashdot story implying that they might move to only customising PCs for businesses.

Which would suck mightily for all the home users.

They're really only doing it as a cost cutting exercise - its cheaper to have minions in India put together 5 combinations of hardware, than it is to have them build to order.

But for businesses ordering 100s at a time, its still cost effective to pass the minions a new design for a little while.

ahhhhh.... yeah, I can see why they'd do that....

And yeah, wouldn't bode well for personal users

There might be some limited customisation left for us, but not on the current scale.

This is all really quite annoying - I liked Dell because instead of hunting through pages of individual systems with fixed specs, trying to find one with a good balance of stuff at a reasonable price I could just pick one and swap the components about a bit. Then try the same spec on the other 3 in the range to see if they customise to it any cheaper (very often the case for no apparent reason).

Depending on how scaled back we're talking (I don't mind if they cut the choice of case colours, or the overpriced optional extras) this would really put me off buying a Dell.

I'm suddenly glad I'm a HP fan, since I just saw this!

I'm using a Dell and have to say they suck. Paid  a couple hundred$$ extra for next day service and they took 3 weeks to repair it after it carked in less than two months. (The computer first arrived with no speakers - two weeks more wait for them ..... after 3 days on the phone to report it) and they absolutely load them up with bloatware - much of which is crippled unless you fork out more dollars.

But the service is the killer . When I say 3 weeks for next day service I mean that's 3 weeks after a full week of telephoning!!!!!!!!!!! - so say 4 weeks for pre-paid  next day service!!!!! Everyone I know in Australia who has had  problems with Dell has had the same thing happen. Everyone. And everyone I know who has had a Dell has had problems.

If your computer will simply not even boot they like to spend a couple of hours on the phone  with you despite you telling them it doesn't boot. That's if you can actually get anyone on the phone - good luck. I eventually ended up with their legal department who promised a n upgraded replacement for all my time and trouble and after a month of waiting for it, then simply denied they promised anything. Just google Dell and see the millions of horror stories. Unacceptable, and not very nice or honest. Don't believe me ? try ringing them - look in your local phone book.Their local numbers outside the States(usa) are all routed to India - try it yourself, USA customers complained so badly ( with the good old american class action suit threat) they stopped it there but still inflict it on the rest of the world. Want to complain to the boss? you can't get through, all their local numbers in Australia are secret.And you soon see why. Lovely company eh? I could go on, and on, unlike their computers which tend to stop a great deal.

Cheers.

Yeah I was pissed and amazed. And found I was not alone.

Whoa!

I use their email support normally, they seem a little more human there. Luckily my laptop had a long warranty period.

It takes a couple of messages back and forward for them to go through the standard steps they're required to go through to filter out the clueless idiots who just need to plug it in, but after that I've never had a problem. Busted CD drive, got sent a replacement under warranty + instructions how to yank the old one out and replace it (one screw and push on a tab). Fan making nasty noises, someone sent out to fix it (ended up replacing half the insides).

The bloatware is annoying, but the secret is that if you ask for it persistently enough, they'll provide you with all the discs, meaning you can do a proper reinstall of just Windows (and any of the bloatware you might happen to find useful). They'll try and fob you off with the recovery partition they put on every hard disc, but I told them I wanted to reformat to reclaim that space and they didn't argue.

For all the bad stories.. I'm a happy customer.

Usually the techie customers are the happiest ones...

Actually, that's not true....

thinka's story shocked me, cos most of the Dell owners I know have been happy with their purchase