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Comment by akmiller | Hacker News Reader

Some of Dell's hardware seems to be getting better again. I just purchased the Dell XPS 12" and I'm mostly satisfied with the computer (although it's a bit expensive).

However, there are two things that still drive me crazy about Dell. The first one should be easy to fix which is that the website is absolutely awful. It's slow, many links 404 and overall just a very frustrating experience. It took me awhile to get my computer ordered because of how slow the site is and I almost gave up.

The other issue is the fact that I have to wait about 2 weeks for my computer to be built and shipped to me. Most of their computers they don't even allow many configurations so why can't they have pre-built machines ready to ship. The very day I ordered my Dell, I ordered a Macbook Air for my wife which shipped in 2 days.

Dell has been pretty consistent force on the server side, but I'd like to see them regain some strength in the consumer laptop market again.

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There's a very good idea on Dell's website that I haven't seen on other laptop sites: All Dell laptops have a sticker with a "service tag" (a 6-character code that looks like, say, HYBVGX). You enter that code in the Dell website, specify the OS (say, Windows/XP), and you can download all the drivers specific to your laptop configuration.

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.

> All Dell laptops have a sticker with a "service tag"

That seems very old-fashioned to me. Why should I have to type in anything at all for the computer to know what its components are? Shouldn't it already know?

Apple’s Software Update/Mac App Store knows what computer I use. Even with the BTO Mac’s, the OS knows what components those computers have. The Mac App Store never presents me with software that's not suitable for my computer. I know x86 + Windows has way more possible configurations, but even there, it should be possible to create a report of all the components and send it to Windows Update (AFAIK, it already does that — why are you downloading drivers from DELL’s site?)

Sure, the computer knows the PCI-ID's of everything on the PCI-family of buses. Same for usb. But you presume that the person downloading the drivers is doing it from the same computer. If it needs a driver for its network interface, then that is going to be a problem.

This. The hours I've spent tracking down random network drivers for OEM PC's....

> driver for its network interface

To me, that sounds like a Windows problem, not a DELL problem. No matter what components your computer consists of, a basic Windows install should have a suitable driver for your network card, at least to get online to get better and more up-to-date drivers. In my experience, it always does. Maybe I've just been lucky?

As for downloading drivers from a different computer, I think that's mostly done by IT departments to manage numerous computers. Of them, it can be expected they know what they’re doing, and making the process easier could obviate their job, so I suspect they like the way it is now.

Perhaps the person is about to reinstall the OS on the Dell computer and hence wants to download all the drivers onto another disk...

Maybe I've just been lucky?

That about sums it up.

making the process easier could obviate their job, so I suspect they like the way it is now.

Wow.

>>Wow.

Wow what? You realize this mindset is extremely common, and that some people will in fact actively sabotage improvement efforts to keep their jobs, right?

To attribute that mindset to every IT department rather than some group of individuals is beyond cynical. Would you say the same thing about all developers? All engineers? A statement like that speaks volumes about the writer and nothing about the subject.

> Of them, it can be expected they know what they’re doing, and making the process easier could obviate their job, so I suspect they like the way it is now.

If a Windows Update-type solution could be funnelled through a locally controlled central server for large installs, then the IT department could approve each update, and the local machines would automatically pull them down.

I assume that something like this already exists (even if it's not tied into Windows Update specifically).

Yes, it exists in many different incarnations--even more than one from Microsoft, and others from third parties.

WSUS is Windows Update for small/medium-sized MIS to run.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Center_Configuration_Man... used by large IT departments to ship and deploy updates

I suspect they like the way it is now.

Having worked in a large IT department I can assure you that anything that alleviates the drudgery of basic computer maintenance is very very welcome by everybody I've known who works there.

> No matter what components your computer consists of, a basic Windows install should have a suitable driver for your network card, at least to get online to get better and more up-to-date drivers.

Including drivers for cards that were created after Windows was released? Good luck with that!

> As for downloading drivers from a different computer, I think that's mostly done by IT departments to manage numerous computers.

Clearly you've never had to wipe/restore a family member's computer because of their crippling malware, er, porn, habit.

please don't ever design anything for people to use

you're breaking the 0.01% use case at the expense of the 99.99% use case. maybe the 99.999%

Maybe on the off chance you need to download from another machine (no net connectivity, network drivers, clowns)?

Clowns are way scary, I grant you.

As for the Internet connection, I think that’s kind of expected of a computing device nowadays.

After having seen several of your comments: You assume a lot.

Online software update in general (not just Apple's, but anybody's) makes it difficult to create offline installers or make a standalone backup of everything you need.

Also, you might need a specific version of a driver, not the latest version. Online software update always get the latest.

(Not to get off topic, but creating a standalone install of Mac OS X Lion is real challenge. Installing it assumes that you'll always have a fast and reliable Internet connection.)

> Installing [OS X] assumes that you'll always have a fast and reliable Internet connection.

Oh, I know all about that, it can be quite an ordeal. Earlier this summer, I spent a month in rural France for a film shoot. A few days after I arrived, my MacBook Air started acting up, all apps would crash immediately after launch. Ran Apple Hardware Test: bad RAM. I called Apple, they wouldn't send someone out to fix it, I had to bring it to an Apple reseller for repair. Which I did, and it was fixed in three days. However, even in that larger city (Poitiers), their Internet connection was bad. They wouldn't install the OS for me because they knew their Internet connection was unreliable. Afterwards, I tried installing the OS via a WiFi network at a local bar, it took 4 hours and then it failed. I tried a different bar, same story. Eventually, I went to a cyber cafe in an even larger city, where it took 1,5 hours and went through.

OS X’s web downloader should allow for partial downloads, download suspension, and redownloading of specific corrupted blocks. It's great that you don't need a disk or USB drive to install OS X from scratch, but the process still needs work.

I don't understand. What does bad RAM have to do with re-installing OS X?

Also, even if the RAM somehow corrupted the OS, weren't you able to boot into the recovery partition? Or even install it on a USB drive beforehand? https://www.apple.com/osx/recovery/

I always format the internal disk when I send in a computer for hardware repairs. I don’t expect to get the same computer back and I don’t want my data to be out there.

It's worse in iOS. I remember hanging onto an old kindle app version for ages to keep the feature that allowed direct book purchases. The upgrade killed this when I accidentally hit upgrade all one day. The annoying notification did go away though.

What if, like, the battery's dead, man?

my usual process is to download a network driver from a network connected computer and then let windows update deal with the rest. its hard for the dell site to determine your hardware from another computer.

They also provide an option to automatically detect the service tag of your PC on the service page as well (with the installation of a plugin in IE).

My Thinkpads all have an app that's readily available from their website that automatically updates all drivers and Lenovo apps. Not only that, but one updater works on all my different Thinkpads.

It's been this way for years.

I do a fresh install of each new laptop I get, and all I do is install the system updater, wait for it to d/l the files, wait through a few reboots, and done.

Dell also has a "scan my system" function too. But it's nice to be able to download the drivers you need on a different machine. One that has a working ethernet driver, for example.

You can do that on their web site. Just enter the bit on the bottom such as 7661-12G and it'll give you a list per os.

Bonus with Lenovo is it's pre-backdoored by the Chinese government, so you don't have to worry about NSA collecting your info passively :P http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/29/lenovo_accused_backd...

I haven't looked in a long time, but it used to be that if you knew the exact model number of a Lenovo laptop the website would show you just the drivers you needed. Not the nameplate model, the model number specific to the screen and components and so on.

It's not just their laptops. It's all Dell computers. When I started working in IT as a college student they were 5 digits, but I think they're all 7 digits now. I believe the service tag also brings up warranty information and the specs of the machine as ordered if you are logged in as an account with permissions (i.e. the one that ordered it).

There is an equivalent on the Lenovo laptops - my X1 is a "3443CTO". Same issue with the horrible downloader implementation though.

> 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.)

Biased IBM supporter here. All IBM/Lenovo Think systems have a MachineType-Model (eg: 2537-25A). It's written on the button of Thinkpads, or you can find it by:

Windows: GUI: msinfo32, CLI: systeminfo Linux: dmidecode -t 1

The only possible exception, I can think of, is if you order a custom configuration - then the model part will say 'CTO'.

Source: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-and-newer-T-series/Pro...

For ThinkPads Lenovo has "Thinkvantage System Update", a program that you can download that allows you to automatically install all the drivers (& bloatware, if wanted) for your system.

Fujitsu has Fujitsu DeskUpdate that's similar.

They're pretty sweet, much better than downloading everything separately, but of course not as good as Linux with its package managers.

> [it] should be easy to fix [...] the website [It] is absolutely awful.

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)

I've been a developer and building websites for a long time. Yes, "easy" is probably overstating, but the parts that are problems I'd think could be corrected or fixed without a major undertaking. Fixing the broken links and finding a way to speed the pages up a bit should not require overhauling the entire site.

Dell, I would guess, does much of their business online so it would seem a no-brainer to make the online experience as good as possible. Broken links and consistent timeouts are inexcusable for a site like Dell.

> Broken links and consistent timeouts are inexcusable for a site like Dell.

Oh, I agree. But I doubt they’re doing it on purpose. I would also guess that they have a lot of talented, knowledgable web developers on staff. That's why I'm saying that the problems are probably not as easily solved as you may think. I don't know what their backend is, I don't know what kind of CMS they're using and how it ties into their ERP, CRM, etc.

The very day I ordered my Dell, I ordered a Macbook Air for my wife which shipped in 2 days.

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.

I've had it take longer with Apple too but that's usually been on popular releases when they've gotten back-ordered. My wife's laptop was customized with 8gb of ram and 512gb ssd and its ship date was 1-2 days and it did ship 2 days later.

My main complaint was that after ordering a computer for 1800.00 it's very frustrating to be told that it will take 10-20 days just to "build" it, much less how long it will take to actually get to me.

Judging from your comment and GP’s, it’s obvious that DELL is giving women special treatment ;)

I’ve ordered numerous BTO Macs. Most took only a few days, a few took over a week. In the cases that it took over a week, it was always when the model was recently released.

MBA 'customisation' isn't really. It's just another one of the four variants (small/big memory/ssd) that they will have on the shelf. They'll just run through one shelf faster with the 'common' setup.

When I ordered my MBA last year it also shipped directly from China and took about 10-12 days.

For what it's worth Dell does sell several configurations of most models that ship immediately or next day. Personally, I prefer to build my own, but I help my clients choose Dell PCs from time to time and it's never been an issue getting them delivered within a week. If you look for "Smart Selection" or "Quick Ship" models, you'll find quite a lot.

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.

Currently, Lenovo and Apple are the only two profitable consumer laptop manufacturers. It's pretty easy to see why; Apple is iterating and refining to the max with the new MacBooks, and Lenovo continues to push out innovative and seamlessly designed consumer products (much to the chagrin of ThinkPad traditionalists like me), like the new Yoga 2 Pro, ThinkPad Yoga, and Helix.

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.

Just out of curiosity why didn't you give up and order elsewhere? There are countless sites to buy computers from, even dell computers like the one you eventually received.

You don't really have much of a choice, assuming you're a business. Dell, HP, maybe Lenovo.

Lenovo and HP's business websites were a disaster for the longest time, they basically forced you to go through a VAR, and Dell had such a huge price advantage that it didn't make sense to go with anyone else.

bigco websites are generally bad not due to technical incompetence, but because it is difficult to organize collaboration between hundreds of teams, each with their own incentives and requirements.

Agree on the Dell Website, it's atrocious. Trying to get prices on servers a couple of months ago was agonisingly slow. Somehow managed to crash my browser repeatedly too (we're stuck on IE7 at work).

For servers, you might as well just call a rep because the price they are going to give is going to be 20-40% below the price on Dell's website.

The bay trail tablet looks pretty nice so far as well.

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