We had a commodity (local cloud) computing Dell infra in the mid 2010s and were constantly replacing/returning “simple stuff” (fans, support flanges, memory, NICs).
“Dude, you’re gettn’ a Dell” became—-nope, never again.
Dell: the land of motherboard dying and dog shit trackpads.
Asus: dead soldered RAM.
Most BIOS: too long to boot, it's fucking 2024 what is your BIOS doing it needs more than 2s to boot? It was taking the same time to boot 30 years ago.
Every mouse: double click problem due to wrong use of the actuators.
And every hardware company has to try to cram some badly designed software and require you to create an account.
We all had the same OS (NT) to the same patch level, same trackpad config, and same model of Dell laptop and every _single_ trackpad felt different. They weren't strictly "defective", but just wildly disparate physical feels and responsiveness.
I will give shout-outs to: 4th gen Kindles (has physical buttons and lasts forever), first gen iPhone SE, and Microsoft Mobile Mouse 3600.
Me crying in first-gen Ryzen/x370 with my upward of 20 seconds POST time.
I haven't used it much in recent years, I built it for gaming but had kids a couple of years later, now I game on whatever is convenient in the small burts I get; which is also the reason I haven't bothered upgrading it.
> tho@phobos:/usr/local/src/sbcl$ uptime 11:31:50 up 250 days, 21:10, 1 user, load average: 0.60, 0.37, 0.40
I kinda like my desktops.