OT: DELL SUCKS! Re: PC Gamer, best 50 classic games issue?

From: Tothwolf <tothwolf_at_concentric.net>
Date: Thu Jan 10 19:11:30 2002

On Thu, 10 Jan 2002, Doc wrote:

> The 90mHz to 366mHz Dells, while well-built, are some of the slowest
> dogs in their class. In their determination to force customers to buy
> upgrades only from Dell, they frequently used parts & sub-systems slower
> than the current technology.

The Optiplex GX1 line is a notable example of Dell intentionally building
in limitations...The earlier BIOS versions do not check the cpu's id.
Later revisions do, and won't accept faster Pentium II and III cpus. With
the right BIOS, the GX1 series can easily be upgraded to a stable P3-1GHz
using a FCPGA to Slot-1 adapter and a 100MHz FSB P3 cpu.

> And we should not fail to mention the equally notorious Dell-badged
> 3Com PCMCIA Combo cards, that were 3Com seconds and fiddled so that only
> Dell drivers worked.

Seconds? That's the first time I've seen them called that. From what I
remember, they are simply OEM versions of the same cards with their
EEPROMS slightly changed. You can easily reprogram the EEPROMS on the PCI
nics and such if you have a Linux or BSD system, but I'm not sure what it
would take to reprogram the PCMCIA cards. It's quite possible the only
real difference is the MAC address prefix. Most network cards/drivers use
the MAC address to determine if the driver matches a certain board. Dell
may have their own prefix, which would explain why the 3Com drivers would
not work. There are a number of solutions to this kind of problem, the
simplest one of all is getting rid of windows and the binary-only drivers.

> You could buy them here for a while for $10 the handful.

This would be a real bargain to those of us who don't run windows, are
they still available? :)

-Toth
Received on Thu Jan 10 2002 - 19:11:30 GMT