Dell ships motherboard with malicious code

[Petey7]

pparks1, I really wanted to pick that post apart too, but you pretty much covered everything. Just to add to it, I know my ten year old desktop Dell is still in use. It has a ~600MHz CPU and 256MB ram (not sure what kind exactly). I think its a piece off crap, but for the old guy that has it now its his first computer since Windows 95 came out so he loves it.

I'm not saying building your own is not a good idea if you need it for a specific purpose. But if Dell or another company lets you costimize your order and you don't know a lot about what your doing (like 90% of consumers) I don't see anything wrong with it.

 

[pparks1]

I can usually come close or beat the price of the OEM systems as well.

Sometimes I can and sometimes I cannot. I remember that I used to tell people that you could build them and save money. Today though, I tell them to build to get exactly what you want. With the right deals on a Dell...I often find it hard to build the same or equivalent specs when you consider they might have a monitor, will have a licensed OS, and have keyboard, mouse, etc. Some would argue that you can find cheaper parts to build...however I like to keep the PC's quiet...so if my custom built is louder than the Dell...I would consider this a fail. Therefore, I maintain that it's hard to beat on price in many cases...it's the other benefits which matter more.

 

[Win7User512]

Never ever buy mass produced systems.

Or mass-produced cars...

Or mass-produced televisions...

Or mass-produced cereal...

Or mass-produced books...

 

[DeaconFrost]

Therefore, I maintain that it's hard to beat on price in many cases...it's the other benefits which matter more.

The pricing comment was meant more for systems I build for myself, as I have plenty of OS licenses. I bought an HP Windows Home Server box, and that cost less than if I had bought the parts myself, and then had to pay for the OS on top of the hardware.

If you catch the right rebates, free shipping, or just good deals on the hardware, you can often beat the price of the OEM system. Once you had in the cost of the OS, then it is hit or miss. Back when the family packs for Windows 7 were being offered, I built around 20 systems for family and friends...and thanks to the cheaper OS costs, we saved over a Dell or HP.

But, going back to my customizations, with research, you can easily build a system just as quiet as the Dell towers, as an example. I have my tower in an office next to my master bedroom and what will eventually be our kid's room. I couldn't have a loud system in that area.

 

[pparks1]

But, going back to my customizations, with research, you can easily build a system just as quiet as the Dell towers,

I absolutely agree.. My point was that if you try to find the cheapest case and cheapest power supply in an attempt to save the most money...these cheapo setups wouldn't be as quiet as the Dell...so I wouldn't consider them a comparable build. When you buy a nice case and a nice power supply and a nice cpu cooler, etc...you often start spending more money and then the Dell price might not look as bad.

I've got 2 setups in my house running in the Antec Sonata II case and those suckers make no noise whatsoever.

 

[JMH]

Dell blames staff for malware infection.

Dell said human error was to blame for mistakes which led it to ship a number of replacement server motherboards to customers pre-loaded with spyware.

The company declined to say whether it was running anti-virus software at its factory but said it had taken 16 steps to improve processes.

The infection hit replacement PowerEdge 310, 410, 510 and T410 boards. The direct seller said less than one per cent of boards were affected and complete new server systems were quite safe.

Dell is still not admitting how the W32.Spybot worm got into its systems and onto its hardware.

More -
Dell blames staff for malware infection • The Register

 

[BugOutMachine]

This is just unreal! What an irresponsible thing to do... I hope people get fired and the customers effected get new servers and a credit for anything of the same value.

 

[DjProDG]

What the... Hell is going on here?

 

[Prisoner]

Now that is messed up.
While the three of my Dell laptops (with recalls on the batteries, I recently found) haven't had any explosions happen, and my Dimension 4500 is still going strong after almost 9 years of abuse from both my parents and I, I don't think Dell would be my next choice in hardware...