Dell Hardware Follies
Ten months ago, I purchased a PowerEdge SC420 server when Dell had one of their crazy one-time deals. I got a system with a Celeron 2.53Ghz CPU, 512M of RAM (since upgraded to 1G), 160G SATA hard drive, CD-ROM, and gigabit Ethernet for $265 shipped.
This morning I got an email from Dell, informing me that I’m two months from having the support contract (e.g., one-year warranty) expire, and would I like to renew? I’ve never needed to call them for service, but I thought I’d see how much they wanted out of curiosity.
I paid $265 for the system originally. Dell wants $295 for a two year warranty extension, believe it or not. I just don’t understand their economics. I can go to their website right now and buy a Dimension 1100 with pretty much the same specs (CPU-wise) as my SC420 for $299.
April 10th, 2006 at 10:55 am
Obviously, they expect their machines to fail more than once per year.
April 10th, 2006 at 11:31 am
I think the comparison to the Dimension system is a little bit misleading. If you compared to a low-end server (the SC430, say), it would be $599 (ignoring their current rebate special).
The other thing is going to be response time. How fast is the repair going to be versus the time to build and ship a replacement server?
Even still, I think $295 is too much.
I just paid about $100 for a one-year warranty extension on my Dell laptop. I figured it was worth it because the replacement cost would be about ten times that, and I don’t have the same service options that I do for a desktip. Turns out it worked out well for me. I had a keyboard problem and they express shipped me a replacement the next day.
April 10th, 2006 at 11:41 am
For my purposes (headless Linux, now Solaris 10, server) there’s no real difference between the SC420 and any of their other low-end boxes using the 2.53Ghz Celeron.
I normally don’t buy Dell hardware, but less than $275 for all that hardware was (at the time) less than I could build it for using parts from Directron here in Houston.
For a laptop, a service contract/warranty is almost a necessity and is well worth the money.
April 12th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
We have lots of Dell shitheaps in our office. Some had failures that required a service guy to come out and swap boards per the service contract. A kid no older than 20 showed up wearing jeans and what appeared to be a womans blouse. He also turned out to be high on ecstacy and could not function.
Dell wanted to charge us additional for requesting a different engineer. Moral of the story is if you use peecee hardware you get what you deserve.