What really impressed me was that we bought the laptop in the US where we live and she was going to school in Canada.
Interestingly, I got nowhere with phone support. The support person told me there were no keyboards available and didn't know when it would be back in stock. So then I contacted Dell support on Twitter (as it was known back then) and they immediately got back to me to find out what happened and arranged the repair.
There are funny aspects too, we had a laptop with a broken rubber handle and Dell didn't have the available part, or replacement laptops of the same model, so they gave us an equivalent system a three years newer model.
At the desktop tier Dell Command Update is probably just the best driver/firmware update tool for a business.
Their server side can be a harder sell, it's a lot pricier than competitors sometimes without a ton of justifiable benefit for choosing them.
From past experience, vendors like SuperMicro aren't much cheaper at scale because Dell can give 80% discounts on volume, and most Dell server sales are done via Channel with an MSP who will manage and administer the system.
Ofc, this continues to reinforce my belief that the "AI boom" in it's current form (and once you remove the scooby doo monster mask) is basically a "Datacenter/Telecom Bubble" 2.0 like back in 2000-01. The multiples, messaging, vendors, and margins are almost the exact same.
During the Dot-com Boom, Telecom and hardware companies were also expanding DC and telecom capacity massively (to surf and host a website on the Internet, you kinda need Internet and web hosting), and when the Dotbomb happened, the Telco bubble collapsed subsequently as well (remember WorldCom/MCI?)
That's why the 2000s were horrible for anyone with a CS/CE/CSE/EE degree, because both software AND hardware industries collapsed. Imagine a world in the late 2020s where you cannot land a job as a Fullstack Engineer OR an ML Infra Engineer - that was the 2000s except with older stacks.
That's also why I'd be optimistic if a bust happens - the overcapacity in compute that arose from the Telecom and Dot-Com Busts both helped usher the Cloud, SaaS, E-Commerce, and Social Media boom because the infra has been laid and became cost effective. It is also in this context that Paul G's "cockroach" and "ramen profitability" essay came to the fore.
At least ime in the 2010s and 2020s, while you had some aspect of that with bootcamp grads, it wasn't to the same degree. Or was it? Like I said, I was a kid when the busts happened so I have no frame of reference.
It’s been a long run and I’ve seen busts come and go. It’s worked out really well for me, even while I’ve watched a surprising number of highly-credentialed new hires flop out over the years. I continue to appreciate people with oddball resumes.
Somewhat hardware oriented and worked a few tech support/helpdesk and internal IT jobs in the early-mid 90's when I got more into programming as a side-step from design/art.
Odd, anecdotally I remember people saying that, but had no issue getting a job in 2004 as a fresh CS grad.
If I had been smarter I would have bought up property at what I now know were the lowest prices I’d ever see, but alas, I did not
- 2000-20001 - "small" recession, along with the dot-com bubble bursting. Lasted through 2003 or so, though the bulk of job loss (across industries) was 2001 into 2002.
- 2008-2010 - housing market collapse - world-wide impact. Most of us probably remember that period. It as brutal for everybody, not just STEM grads. Too big to fail and all that hocus-pocus.
I was RIF'ed in Dec 2001, took a few months to find a job I wanted, but wasn't all that bad given I was pretty darn junior at the time.
Got a few interviews and offers in the defense industry, but the lack of TS/poly was a killer - even companies that were willing to do the paperwork had deadlines and Uncle Sam couldn't process request fast enough so a few offers died on the vine.
Eventually got a job through a friend (usually how it works, IME) and have been here ever since. Not .gov, but sort of government-adjacent (higher ed) so still a bit protected from the vagaries of the market and moneymen's whims.
The 'Micro's ethernets were all shot by the time we closed up shop so each had an expansion card for 10G ethernet at that point, and one we had to run VM management on 10G because the 1G we used elsewhere had shit the bed in that unit somewhere along the way and we couldn't be bothered to buy yet another card and tear down the server again for it. Plus management traffic was negligible.
I don't miss that job. Fuck being on-call.
This is a big part of the decision process. North American supply chains are slightly more expensive but also fast and responsive. The advantage of someone like Dell is also that they can do almost everything in-house, which avoids the overhead (to the business) of coordinating integration of components manufactured in Taiwan, the US, etc into the final build. I’ve done it both ways. There are real tradeoffs so context matters.
The advantage of buying Dell (or IBM) is that if you aren't buying enough computers to have your own dedicated people, you get someone to take care of you. Dell may be able to get you stuff faster, but the Taiwanese shops are also very good at having an agile supply chain.
Price-wise I don't see a meaningful difference between Dell and SuperMicro (or even "non-traditional" server vendors like Asus and Gigabyte).
IDRAC is miles ahead of SMC/MEGARAC. It's not even close.