So CEO Michael Dell presented shareholders with a $25 billion buyout that would take the company private, giving it space away from the public limelight (and pressure from investors) to rethink and reposition the struggling computer company for the future.
Fast-forward to 2018, and Dell’s prospects seem far better. Dell is now worth an estimated $70 billion – nearly triple what the buyout valued it at five years ago – and it has announced a bid to return to the public sector in a $22 billion buyout. It’s an astounding transformation. Dell and his investment partners at Silver Lake transformed the company from a struggling consumer electronics company into an enterprise powerhouse.
It’s indeed a pretty amazing turnaround. A few years ago, I would’ve never seriously considered a Dell. These days, though, their XPS 13 and 15 laptops are some of the best laptops you can get, with Linux editions available as well.
A year or so ago when I was looking for a new computer I did a detailed comparison of the available high-end laptops. The XPS-13 was the clear winner. I was desperately hoping the Razer Blade Stealth would come out on top (because I wanted the excuse), but I just couldn’t ignore the data. I never thought I’d end up buying a Dell… but I’m very happy with it.
The irony is that Dell’s computer sales haven’t improved. I’d love to think the business was turned around because they started making great laptops, but according to the article it’s actually because they acquired EMC.
Bought a Dell Vostro 3555 (AMD A8) back in 2011 for about 500€, definitively not regret it, still typing this on it just right now. Upgraded to backlight keyboard, 8GB, 2TB SSHD, missing a numpad and FullHD, the sdcard slot died (pins inside reversed inside out), but everything else is perfect.
The greater drawback was their marketing department that was almost harassing me on a monthly basis to sell me support plans or even newer models not even a year after. Seriously ? Couldn’t I enjoy my machine peacefully ? Then after two or three years, they dropped my case, finally.
I brought an XPS17 more than five years ago (2012) and it was great. Best laptop I’ve ever owned.
When it’s graphics card became dated I used a special setup to put a full desktop Geforce GTX 780 Ti in it.
I used it as my main gaming, work, and entertainment rig until the beginning of 2016, and since then its been rock solid working as a temporary dev server, with no signs of it giving up showing.
At one point I was worried about the thing getting hot, so Dell sent a tech to my house who opened the case, cleaned the entire inside, and replaced the heatspreader/fan unit – all part of service.
Don’t know what you’re talking about, ‘wouldn’t have considered them a few years ago’
Edited 2018-08-14 05:15 UTC
Unfortunately, while he and management had brought the service level for business machines up to an acceptable level for a while, the quality seems to be going back down. We’re back to outsourced, scripted calls and late-arriving techs to honor warranties they don’t want to honor. It’s too bad, too. For a while there, I thought they really had turned around and was starting to like Dell.
I’ve seen people mention: we buy our Dell stuff from a third party and let them deal with Dell. We don’t want to deal with Dell directly.
From the “brink” of what, exactly? Brink of war?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloze_test
Do people these days find the idea of filling in the blanks difficult these days? The reason why they don’t do these tests after past half-way in primary school is because you’re expected to make an effort to do so without being prompted.
Your education system, wherever you may be, is not the same as ours, I am afraid. In most U.S public schools, these tests are commonplace even in later school grades.
Why do we speak in complete sentences at all, then?..
Maybe it would be easier if we all just. Or if no one would ____ speaking __ ____? I think ___ _____ ___ __ __. Don’t you ____?
Even with that many words left out, most people can see the point you’re trying (failing) to make, even if they don’t know the exact words you’re after.
At no point will anyone ever read the title of the post, and then the contents of the snippet, and think “of war”. Context, do you speak it, mother ______?
I don’t understand if you’re just pretending to be stupid or are you really failing to understand what I am complaining about.
Yes, it’s totally clear and understandable what the headline of this OSNews post meant. However, author used an incomplete sentence which looks like it was cut short accidentally. Just because “everyone understands what he meant to say” does not mean it’s fine to use sloppy sentences in the headlines. And that is what my sarcastic/rhetorical question was initially meant to show.
You may think it’s OK to tolerate sloppy and incoherent language as long as people can understand it, but I don’t. And that’s where we disagree. Does not mean that your belief is any more “correct” than mine.
Usually, I do not tolerate people who can’t put a proper, coherent sentence together. I refuse to even reply to them, since I perceive that as disrespect. If you can’t be bothered to use proper language while talking to me, it’s obvious you don’t respect me and thus you can go f**k yourself for all I care. And this same principle applies to headlines: if author does not bother to use proper sentence even in the headline, he obviously has no respect for his readers.
Edited 2018-08-15 11:09 UTC
Oh, you’re one of THOSE kinds of people. A grammar Nazi. A pedant.
Consider that you have a serious personality flaw, perhaps? Personality deficiency, even. I mean, this makes you out to be a supreme arsehole.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY
Edited 2018-08-15 12:24 UTC
I see you are one of “those” people. A moron who thinks writing like a mental retard is totally acceptable as long as everyone understands you.
I can see you are also a professional psychiatrist, capable of diagnosing people over the internet.
We are done here.
Edited 2018-08-16 09:25 UTC
Well, there we have it. Stephen Fry, according to you, is a mental retard.
I’m too lazy, for now, to read the article. How much debt do they have? My little software company (well, my employer’s) was bought by Dell in 2014. In 2016, Dell decided to basically sell off most of their software division for $11 billion because they were going to spend $55 billion on EMC. How much of that $70 billion they are now “worth” is debt?
https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/20/confirmed-dell-sells-software-divi…
My dad is still using his XPS M1530 every day, which is now almost 11 years old. Unbelievable build quality. He ordered two extra batteries when he got it, so the third battery is still clocking in at 3.5 hours.
That might have been… slightly unwise, li-ion batteries age also while simply in storage (though less than when in use / in higher temps) / it’s better to have ones that are recently made.
Three years ago, 90% of laptops purchased by the developers at the company I work for were MacBook Pros.
At a recent company event, nearly half of the laptops were Dells — mostly XPS, but there’s a few of us with the 15″ precision line. Solid laptops.
I had to get used to not having the niceness of MacOS, and had to lower my expectations for desktop interaction, but once I got over that first month of disgust — my 5520 has been a great laptop for the last year.
I bought a Dell for my daughter who is in grad school. It was 7 months old, and it just died. Warranty repair. Should be easy, right?
No. We sent the machine to Dell. We were told they did not have parts for a 5000 series laptop – for 6 weeks. I had to gather ever Email address and keep sending Emails to every one of them to get a solution. 11 weeks after sending in the old laptop, they sent a replacement – that was full of bloatware (the original from Costco had none). It took another three weeks to get the hard drive they promised (recent work was not backed up yet).
How many grad student that you know of can go without a laptop for 14 weeks? How many companies who build millions of laptops don’t have access to parts on their most popular model?
Never. Again. Dell can go straight to the place their name rhymes with. Dell is now a four-letter word in our household.
I wonder if other companies are better? I get they may all be the same, but fool me once, shame on me.
I just remember computers coming in cow boxes and, “Dude, You’re getting a Dell!” Oh, and Macs came in fruit flavors.