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Because my ancient 1995 computer would finally only run for about one hour before seizing up, a good friend of mine stood up to guarantee a $1500 bank loan earlier last year (anno 2000) so I could by a new Dell computer.
Dell's price and service were great, but the Dell computer turned out to be a cripple - crippled so severely that is a barely useable computer. |
First of all, the Dell computer came with Windows ME, which is such a joke of an operating system that even Microsoft itself made fun of it with its "missing the blue screens of death?" ads for Windows XP. This is not exactly Dell's fault, but Dell could have easily shipped their computers with either Windows 98, or even better with Windows 2000, which is, by all accounts, a very stable operating system. So, Dell has at least some degree of responsibility for foisting this joke of an operating system upon its customers.
The second aspect of this computer cripple is entirely Dell's doing - and absolutely inexcusable. I had upgraded Dell's cheapest computer package from 56 MB of RAM to 128 MB of RAM, because this was recommend for running Windows ME.
However, when attempting to run my new Dell computer, I got one "blue screen of death" after another. I could not believe it. I could hardly do anything without the computer crashing and displaying the "blue screen of death". I phoned the Dell Help desk and the fellow who answered knew right away what was wrong. He asked me to type "msconfig" into the "run" window and to tell him all the programs which were displayed in the "Startup" window.
There are 36 of them in the "systems tray", all running silently in the background and taking up so much of the 128 MB RAM that I had only 7 (yes - only seven) MB free RAM with only Windows ME, and no other program running. Dell has stuffed the "systems tray" with so many third party programs (for fees of course) that there is only 7 MB of free RAM out of the 128 RAM the computer has - with only Windows ME, and no other program running.
Of course, with the large code base of today's programs, I quickly run completely out of RAM with only an HTML editor, a Note Pad and a file manager running (the Windows file manager is another well known joke). No wonder I got one "blue screen of death" after another. Dell had sold me a barely useable computer.
Together with the chap at the Dell Help desk we went through the list of programs running in the systems tray and suspended 23 of them. These programs cannot be removed he said, just "suspended" when the computer is run in the "selective start-up" mode, for trouble shooting the computer. Consequently, and ever since, I've been running this cripple of a computer in the "trouble shooting" mode, in which many things do not work - like email hyperlinks in IE, faxing out of a word processor, the MS fax program not recognizing .doc files, and things like that.
Still, and although this helped somewhat, I had to install "MemTurbo", a program which cleans and frees-up the RAM memory constantly in the background, in order to have sufficient RAM to run the few programs - an HTML editor, a note pad, a file manager and a small photo editor - I need to build these pages. And despite the great help of this little program, when I open "MSWord" I cannot run anything else. That's it. Windows and "MSWord" and nothing else. "MSWord" won't run - not sufficient memory - if any other program is "open". It's just like the early "Dark Ages" of computing again - when you had to close the sole running program before you could open another. Similarly, when running CorelXara, a "slim" (no bloat) graphics program, I have to close all other programs in order for CorelXara not to hang up with another "blue screen of death", and so CorelXara can recognize the around 150 installed fonts - which is only a quarter of the recommended maximum of 600 fonts. Nevertheless, the "blue screen of death" is still an almost daily factor, and I have to reboot this severely crippled computer at least once a day.
Further, and after sitting unused for about an hour or so, this Dell computer cripple becomes so sluggish that it reminds me of my ancient 12.5 megahertz Atari computer. It takes forever to do the simplest thing - like opening a program. This requires another reboot to bring it back up to its 700 megaHertz speed.
I had complained bitterly about this Dell Computer cripple to Dell Help, first with a fax, and then followed with a letter. But there was no reply; not even an acknowledgement that Dell Help had received my fax, or my letter.
Consequently, I've had it up to here with this Dell computer cripple and, rather than continuing to suffer in silence, I have now taken this route of making public what a severely crippled computer Dell has foisted upon me - and going by the instant familiarity of the Dell Help desk with this problem - upon many other customers as well. One thing is certain. I will never buy another Dell computer, and I am telling everyone I can about this Dell computer cripple.
Most sincerely;
Peter H. Weis
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