editor Posted May 3, 2008 Share Posted May 3, 2008 I saw this in the Wall Street Journal and got a laugh. Two of Dell's brand new models have a keyboard error. As you can see, the bottom alphabet row (ZXCVBNM) is wrong. It's been shifted one key to the right, so all of the world's touch-typists suddenly can't type on the new keyboard. And it's not just a labeling problem -- it was actually designed and assembled that way. Z is Z, X is X. But they're in the wrong locations. A statement from Dell said it is working on a way to replace everyone's keyboards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
memebag Posted May 3, 2008 Share Posted May 3, 2008 Holy xrap! I was hopimg for a Si,poms the,ed PX whem I read the title, nut that's just e,narassimg. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BryanS Posted May 3, 2008 Share Posted May 3, 2008 Surely, they will fix this ASAP. That's like trying to sell a right-hand side drive car in the US. NOT impressed with Dell. We went from HP to Dell at work... HP was better - at least their laptops... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
editor Posted May 3, 2008 Author Share Posted May 3, 2008 We had Dells at my last job. The company bought thousands of them all at once and rolled them out across several business units. A little over a year later they all started failing. Almost every one of them went bad within two weeks of one another. Our IT guys couldn't get enough motherboards from Dell to replace the bad ones fast enough because it was happening at other companies, too.Lesson learned: Don't replace all of your computers with the same make and model at the same time. A similar thing happened to all those people who bought those IBM Deskstar (Death Star) drives a few years ago.After that, the mission critical apps were switched to a rack of Apple Xserves in a closet in the back and one monster Alienware (pre-Dell) beast. To this day a lot of people don't realize the apps they're running on their Dells are just web front-ends to the Macs.The company still sticks with Dell for most of its Windows purchases, though. Unless a department specifically demands Apple they get Dell.Aside from that one (rather significant) event, the Dells seemed OK, except that the letters rubbed off the keyboards in a matter of months. But at that job, if you looked at your keyboard you were probably on your way out anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
20thStDad Posted May 3, 2008 Share Posted May 3, 2008 I don't have experience with Dell's, but my company rolled out Compaq's a few years ago, and one by one the hard drives all had to be replaced in the next two years. So if I'm looking at a laptop right now...HP, IBM? I know, most of you will say get a Mac. I'm not that evolved yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
editor Posted May 3, 2008 Author Share Posted May 3, 2008 I don't have experience with Dell's, but my company rolled out Compaq's a few years ago, and one by one the hard drives all had to be replaced in the next two years. So if I'm looking at a laptop right now...HP, IBM? I know, most of you will say get a Mac. I'm not that evolved yet. IBM doesn't make laptops anymore. They sold the entire operation to Lenovo. I don't know if the Thinkbooks are as good now as they were under IBM. My second laptop was an IBM, and it was a tough old beast. Great machine. Played many a long game of Sim City in 1988 and 1989 on its 16-shades of grey non-backlit 640x200 ECGA screen. I hear a lot of talk lately about Toshiba in the laptop arena. If Lenovo isn't your thing, you might check them out. Also, the VAIOs are nice, but if you're going to spend that much you'd might as well go Apple. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TJones Posted May 3, 2008 Share Posted May 3, 2008 Holy xrap! I was hopimg for a Si,poms the,ed PX whem I read the title, nut that's just e,narassimg.OMG ! I was laughing sooooooooo hard when I read that. Thanks meme, you don't know how much I needed that today ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheNiche Posted May 3, 2008 Share Posted May 3, 2008 OMG ! I was laughing sooooooooo hard when I read that. Thanks meme, you don't know how much I needed that today !Yeah, he really did, what with me being tempted to eat his kittens and all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BryanS Posted May 3, 2008 Share Posted May 3, 2008 Jesus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
editor Posted May 4, 2008 Author Share Posted May 4, 2008 Jesus. It was state of the art. Now it's state of the ark. Dual 720K floppy drives, 256K of RAM, 4.77 MHz 80C88 processor, and a thermal printer that clipped on the back. With the battery it weighed about 25 pounds. The best thing about it was the keyboard. IBM made some fantastic keyboards, and didn't skimp on the portable. To this day I've never found a better laptop keyboard, though this one comes very close: This was my first laptop, a GRiD Compass. They were standard issue to all members of the Reagan administration. I got it third-hand from someone who used to work at the Secret Service. It's the toughest computer I've ever seen. Magnesium case. It was supposed to be nuke-resistant. Silk screened on the handle was a list of countries where is was legal to operate the machine. Other than the keyboard and the flip-up screen, there were no moving parts. Programs were stored on PROMs and under a metal flap in the front was a bank of sockets to plug them in. Storage wasn't magnetic (probably the nuke thing) -- it was in bubble memory. And if you ran out of memory GRiD/OS would automatically dial GRiD Net and offload some of your lesser-used documents over the modem into secure storage until they were needed again. The picture doesn't do it justice -- the screen was plasma, and bright as the sun, and this was back in 1982 (I got mine around '87). A ton of radiation came off that thing, and if you aimed it at a TV, you'd lose the signal. Maybe that's where my hair went. I found this quote on the interweb: In addition to being first in space, it was allso the first laptop used as operators positions aboard naval vessels, and it was the first laptop that was attached to paratroopers that were dropped behind enemy lines. The GRIDS were used to monitor troop and equipment movements and to send back tactical data to the command center...I employed the GRID in many research projects for which I was the project manager. One of these projects is the reason we now have GPS. These screenshots seem to bear that out: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wakester Posted May 5, 2008 Share Posted May 5, 2008 This reminds me of a few years ago when Compaq thought it was a good idea to split the space bar in half and have one side space and the other side back space. I about through the keyboard through the monitor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TJones Posted May 5, 2008 Share Posted May 5, 2008 This reminds me of a few years ago when Compaq thought it was a good idea to split the space bar in half and have one side space and the other side back space. I about through the keyboard through the monitor. You would have done more damage if you threw the keyboard through the monitor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MidtownCoog Posted May 5, 2008 Share Posted May 5, 2008 You're gettin a Dell, dude! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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