Captain Obvious works for Dell’s Internet Team

dnorman — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 18:42:47 +0000

I just went to the Dell website to look something up, and was rewarded by this incredible bit of sleuthery on the part of Dell’s crack team of internet designers:

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

The web designers didn’t indicate if my being in Canada somehow altered the behaviour of the website, or if the selections were somehow tuned to my location. Just to brag that they were clever enough to detect where I’m located. It might have been more useful to have the message read something like “You are currently viewing the Canadian Dell Store.” It’s a little less braggish, as opposed to “Dude! We TOTALLY located your IP address! We are teh kool! You’re in CANADA. Dude…”

Dell’s Media PC is twice as expensive as an iMac

dnorman — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

People have said that Macs are more expensive than PCs. Until Apple made the switch to Intel chips, we had to basically eat that, because there was always the Apples-to-oranges comparison. Now that all new Macs are running the same chips that Dell etc. use, it's fair to make direct comparisons. And the result blows me away. Not only are Macs NOT more expensive, they can be cheaper. Much cheaper. Like, half the price cheaper.

Bill Bumgarner (bbum, to the WO folks out there) posted a rant about how badly the Dell online store sucks. I took it with a grain of salt, since Bill works for the Fruit Company. Then I clicked through. He was talking about Dell's new Intel Core 2 Duo "Media Guru" – obviously poised to take down the iMac. The user experience of the Dell online store is absolutely dreadful. I mean, wow does that suck. For a company with all of its business coming through their online store, you'd think they'd spend some effort to make the experience easy, efficient and maybe even not-painful. Maybe they should switch back to WebObjects…

I finally found the system Bill was referring to, and eventually managed to configure a system on par with a comparable iMac. Here's what I set up:

Dell's Media Guru (iMac killer?)

Now, for comparison, here's the iMac:

iMac Core 2 Duo 20"

Both are from the "consumer" stores, in US dollars, without any edu discounts. I had to tweak both slightly, selecting a faster processor in the Dell, and upgrading the video card, RAM, and adding AppleCare in the iMac.

The iMac is roughly half the price of the comparable Dell.

Yes. I know you can get cheaper Dells. You can get a free one just for signing up for DSL now. That's not the point. Those are el-cheapo POS PCs. For a decent system, you're looking at paying up to twice what you'd pay for a comparable Mac.

Update: Just for kicks, I tried configuring a Mac Pro with display to see what it would take for a Mac to be as expensive as this Dell. I wound up with a quad Xeon, 2GB of RAM and a 23" Cinema Display, still costing less than the Dell…

MacPro with 23" Cinema Display

D'Arcy Norman dot net » dell

Captain Obvious works for Dell’s Internet Team

Dell’s Media PC is twice as expensive as an iMac