Dell Hell: Computer Giant Faces Consumer Lawsuit

Consumers Allege They Didn't Get the Tech Support They Paid For

Dell is the No. 2 computer seller in the United States, but now some say the technology giant is ripping off its customers.

New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has filed a lawsuit against Dell, accusing the company of deceptive, fraudulent and illegal business practices.

"You can have aggressive marketing, and if you go too far it's consumer fraud," Cuomo said Tuesday. "In our opinion they went too far, and this is consumer fraud. They offered a product, a service that they didn't deliver."

Part of the suit claims that though Dell gave the impression of an "award-winning service" available to consumers "24 hours a day, seven days a week," consumers faced "nightmarish obstacles" to get help and technical service for their computers. Cuomo said New York had received 700 complaints about Dell -- more than the number of complaints for any other related subject.

Consumers in Dell Hell

Some Dell owners say when they sought help for their PCs, they endured a kind of Dell Hell.

Barbara Williams, a 67-year-old retiree who runs a crochet club from her computer, paid Dell for an "in-home" service plan that can cost up to $300. When her computer broke down, she called Dell thinking a technician would come to her home to fix it. Instead, the technician at the other end of the line told her to dissect her computer on her own.

"The guy told me to open my computer. And I said, 'For what?' He said, 'Well, you have to find the memory. I think it's a memory problem.' And I said, 'I don't know what memory looks like!,'" Williams said.

"He says, 'Well you have to troubleshoot.' I said, 'No I don't. I said I don't know what I'm looking at. I don't know what's wrong with this thing. I paid for in-home service.'"

Williams said she waited six weeks before a technician came to her home.

The suit also says Dell Financial Services enticed consumers with offers of "no interest" financing when in fact very few shoppers -- even those with good credit history -- actually qualified. And the suit says some people who thought they were getting zero percent financing ended up paying more than 20 percent. Over time, that can more than double the cost of a computer.

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Logo Design - 9 Keys to an Effective Logo

by Erin Ferree

The right logo, with the right characteristics, will boost your visibility, credibility and memorablity – which means more business for you!

These characteristics include:

1. Consistency in use of your logo, tagline, materials. Repetition of similar elements, used in the same or similar ways, helps people to remember who you are and what you do.

2. Memorability, so that your logo stays at the forefront of your potential clients' minds. That way, they'll think of you next time they have a need.

3. Meaningfulness, so that your logo can spread the message about the distinguishing characteristics of your business.

4. Uniqueness, which helps you stand out from the crowd. For example, if everyone in your industry uses a particular symbol (i.e., travel agencies often use globes in their logos), try to use something else – that way, your logo doesn't just look like everyone else's.

5. Professionalism, in the quality of the graphics, the printing and the paper on which your materials are printed.

6. Timelessness in your logo will ensure that you don't have to redesign your logo in just a few years and that your investment and equity in your design will be lasting.

7. Differentiation between the colors in your logo – and not just in terms of hue, but in terms of value as well, so that it translates well either to black and white or greyscale and colorblind people are able to see it.

8. Unity among the different elements in the logo. The logo must fit together as a single unit, and not just appear as a jumble of elements pasted together.

9. Scalability, so that your logo looks equally good on both a business card and on a sign for your business (or a billboard!), and at every size in between. Your business's name should be legible at different logo sizes – be sure that your designer chooses a font that is easily readable.

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Apple's Tiger OS vs. Windows Vista OS - The Battle Begins...

When Windows Vista ships in late 2006, Windows will mimic many features of Apple's Tiger and go beyond it. But while Microsoft introduces the world to Vista, Apple is keeping mum about its next version of Mac OS X, which Steve Jobs has said will ship at about the same time as Vista. It is the Intel-ready Leopard, not Tiger, that will be Apple's answer to Windows Vista.

User Interface

With the first Vista beta, Microsoft seems to have taken many cues from Mac OS X with the user interface and features, right down to some of the terminology. Even some of Vista's icons are amazingly similar to those in Tiger. For instance, there's the interface names, Apple's Aqua and Microsoft's Aero. In Vista, "My Documents" and "My Computer" are now "Computer" and "Documents," as they are in Mac OS X. The search icon in the Vista beta is almost identical to Tiger's Spotlight icon, except that the magnifying glass turns the other way. Vista buttons and other interface details have a shiny bulbous look similar to those in Mac OS X.

The more-advanced Aero Glass option uses translucent window title bars, a handy feature of Mac OS X that Apple dropped with Panther, but is still used in the Dock. Vista does, however, have some nice touches that Tiger doesn't. Vista places previews of documents right on file icons. These are more sophisticated than the thumbnails that Photoshop creates, as they update as the file is changed. Tiger can display previews of graphic files, but not text-based files. Vista's folders display a representation of the type of files inside. Dialog boxes for saving files and other tasks use these thumbnails. Tiger does not have the ability to automatically display thumbnails on folder icons. The Vista icons and previews are scalable to different sizes and can scale up to 128 by 128 pixels.

File Management and Searching

Many of Vista's file management features will be familiar to Tiger users, but Vista goes further in file management techniques. Vista folder windows have a search-as-you-type search field, a feature that Mac OS X has had since Jaguar in 2002, but which became dramatically faster in Tiger with the Spotlight search engine. Spotlight also added the searching of the contents of various types of files and e-mail messages, as well as searching on metadata. Vista's search engine can do all of this as well, and lets you add metadata in Windows Explorer.

You can add metadata in Tiger, using the Spotlight field in the Get Info window, but Vista offers multiple fields for keywords, rating, project and others. Vista also borrows Tiger's Smart folders, calling them Virtual Folders. This feature automatically creates shortcut files based on criteria set by the user and places them in a folder. (Tiger's Smart Folder does this with aliases.) Vista adds the idea of stacks, where files that use a certain keyword are listed. When you add a file to the stack, the keyword is automatically added to the stack.

Vista will also have file management features that neither Tiger nor Windows XP has. A new backup system will record incremental changes to a file and copy them to a protected area. One of the useful features that Mac OS X has always had is that PDF is built into its core. PDF is used for displaying and printing files, and Mac OS X has the ability to turn any document created by any application into a PDF file. With Windows Vista, Microsoft will attempt to do the same, but not with PDF.

Vista will use a new universal format called Metro, based on XML, for viewing and printing files. The aim is consistency of documents on screen and in print.
This is something that Mac OS has always been superior to Windows, even before Mac OS X. It remains to be seen how successful Metro will be.

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