Michael Dell buys back PC company he founded in $24.8bn deal

- But Ford doesn't need to go private because Toyota came along

The last time I ordered a customised Macbook, delivery took weeks (and was from China). This was some years ago though, so may no longer be accurate.

Seems the answer here would be for Dell to have 'off the shelf' laptops with standard configurations they can ship quickly. If they don't already, I'm kind of amazed.

That’s a comment I did not expect on Hacker News. I think it’s safe to say that the majority of HN commenters have some experience with web site development.

To do an overhaul on a site like DELL’s is a major undertaking. I wouldn't characterize it as ‘easy’. If their corporate structure even allows rethinking their online strategy, it will take considerable effort to get the site on par with the likes of Apple and Microsoft. Those, IMO, are best in breed. And DELL is certainly not alone, HP’s site is just as nightmarish.

If they ever desire to improve their brand identity (and subsequently, their website), they would do well to look at how Microsoft did it. Microsoft hired Pentagram[1] to completely rethink their aging brand and went from there. DELL’s brand could use a similar treatment.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagram_(design_studio)

Apple works the same way, in my experience. When I ordered my Air a couple years ago, I couldn't buy it in store because it was a configuration they didn't carry and it took several days after my online order before it even shipped from China.

The idea is wonderful. For Lenovo laptops, by contrast, you have to somehow know exactly what components are used in your laptop and then go hunt for those drivers. (And no, I don't want to use Lenovo's mysterious automatic update tools.)

I said that Dell's idea is wonderful, but the implementation is horrible unfortunately: you have to download the drivers one-by-one (unless you're willing to use their download manager), the order in which drivers are installed matters and Dell doesn't tell you the order, the documentation on what each driver does is very poor, they are inconsistently packaged (zip files, exe's, installers), and sometimes you get offered, say, 3 wifi drivers because apparently Dell doesn't know which wifi chipset was put into your configuration.

Like I said, the idea is great.

There's a reason customer satisfaction is high with these two brands. If Dell can bring his company back, 1997-Apple style, we might see a resurgence in its popularity (which peaked in the mid-2000s), giving us three major consumer notebook player.

This is a good time.

Also, wtf is with the lack of pg up / pg dn ?! That's just weird.

I hate Dell desktops, although I do like their monitors. Dell desktops tend to over-optimize on power supplies and other components, such that you can never really upgrade them later.

But the current place is all HP. They've been running on HP since the 80's, the core of the business still runs on an Itanium. I was literally laughed at for suggesting Dell servers or Lenovo laptops. The IT VP seems to think Dell is a joke and Lenovo is 'low quality, Chinese'.

The only advantage of going with HP in my mind, is the fact that there are two fortune 500 companies in town who run all HP. That results in them having techs in the area all the time and a decent inventory of warranty parts nearby.

Also extremely important: Dell obviously did quite some research in figuring out which components work together well. This translates in close to zero OS problems due to hardware goining nuts. In other words: no kernel panics, no blue screens. Some people hardly belive this, but the only time I saw blue screens/kernel panics in the past ten years was when doing stupid stuff myself, never because of the machine.

(note: I cannot compare to other brands here, maybe they are as good as well - I certainly hope so for their users)

Also in the pre-2000s run up, Dell's pricing was premium, and with those margins Dell provided better than average in-house, state-side customer support, most (all?) of which was eventually dismantled as PC prices dropped.

Maybe when they aren't public, Dell will be able to invest heavily in R&D & customer support without worrying about earnings per share for the next quarter.

(That said, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a negative factor associated for forbes.com. They've basically sold out their brand to clickbait nonsense)

This is the company that came up with built-to-order from their online shop, fast deliveries while maintaining small inventory, and selling most computers directly. Their computers weren't innovative per se, but their business processes were. What have they done for us lately?