Quote :

"anything is either born defective or not born defective. Those hardware failures are always induced by the user."

Look up Dell Optiplex GX270's Power Supplies/Motherboards and Dell Optiplex GX620 Hitachi DVDRWs manufactured from 12/05-Now. You are getting into grey areas if you blame normal usage as defects "introduced by the customer".

Quote :

"Anyone have stats on the Dells on campus needing tech support?"

They probably don't exist on a campus-wide basis. For what I do, I can say ~20% of the Dell machines I support have needed something replaced in them due to manufacturing defects. You could probably call and try talk to somebody in ITD to get something more definite. Also might be an NCSU email listserv floating around somewhere.

Quote :

"Next time you have a support call."

PM me an email address and I can forward you a 1st/2nd support call example.

Quote :

"ok lets go by some statistics here."

Your second link dates back to 1997 and can pretty much be thrown out.
Your first link says in it:
"17 percent of Dell desktops required repair
23 percent of Dell notebooks required repair within the past year"

Where did the >10% come from?

Quote :

"I am asking you people to post real statistics"

Will look later.

[Edited on May 4, 2006 at 6:53 AM. Reason : hooray for quote bombs!]

5/4/2006 6:52:07 AM