Every once in a while you have to take a look at a company and wonder if it is trying to self-destruct.  I think Dell is a prime candidate for the Darwin Awards.

For the last 4 years my firm has been buying Dell computers.  We have bought 12-15.  It was easy to get on line, build what you wanted and get it delivered in a fairly short order.  Well, that was the old Dell.  The new Dell is trying to make sure customers do not come back.

About 2 months ago I decided it was time to order a new laptop.  The ADAMO looked pretty good.  It is very thin and had good reviews.  So I put in an order.  Well, at least I tried to.  It turns out that Dell has assigned a representative to handle our account.  What does that mean?  It meant it took 4 telephone calls, 2 days and over 30 minutes on hold to talk to our representative so we could place the order.  Dell would not allow us to simply order on the phone like individual customer could.  O.K. so we finally got it ordered.  When it arrived, it looked pretty good - well except that the cd/dvd drive (which is separate) was "pearl" and the compute was black.  O.K. so we had to send the drive back to get the proper color. 

So I finally had my new machine.  The batter life was much shorter than advertised.  I got about 2.5 hours, which is not great when it is a built in battery.

I decided I could live with the short batter life. Would by an external that would plug in.  However, before I could order the external battery, the ADAMO crashed.  We are talking EPIC FAIL.  It would not even reboot.  Yes the solid state drive - looks like it was not that solid.  It appears that the computer also had major heat problems. 

Well what do you do with a new dead computer?  You call to get it replaced.  Due to demand they told me it would take just over a week to get the new one shipped.  Fortunately, I had been too busy to clean off my old lap top - and it has been in use ever since.  Unfortunately, shortly before the first ship date I was notified that the ship date had been delayed.  I got the same message just before the second scheduled ship date.  Now, three weeks later, I do not even have a ship date on a replacement.  I do however, get a call every couple days from a nice young lady in India ensuring me that they are doing their best to meet my urgent need.

I recently looked at a service that gave consumer rankings for websites.  Dell.com got a 1.6/10.  Can a company with such poor customer service be around long?   If I owned any Dell stock, I think now would be a good time to sell.

So, if you are looking for a new laptop, I would definitely recommend skipping the ADAMO, unless you want a nice looking paperweight.  As for me, I think I will try the MACBOOK PRO.