Dell Axim Highlight is a demo?

[ECOslin]

Is it sad that a highlight feature of a Dell Axim X5 is a copy of demoware of McAfee VirusScan?

Edward



HIGHLIGHTS



Now includes 30 day trial of McAfee VirusScan

Brilliant 3.5" QVGA TFT color 16-bit, touch sensitive Transflective display

Integrated CompactFlash Type II and Secure Digital / MMC card slots provide flexible expansion for optional wireless enablement3, peripherals or memory.

Great performance with Intel® XScaleTM processor at 400MHz, 64MB SDRAM and 48MB Intel StrataFlash® ROM

Removable, rechargeable primary battery

USB Cradle including Battery Charging Slot

[Janak Parekh]

I wouldn't think about it too much either way. Dell seems to throw in a copy of McAfee VirusScan with everything nowadays. I never use it, as I infinitely prefer Norton, and besides it's just a trial.

--janak

[mr_Ray]

Is it sad that a highlight feature of a Dell Axim X5 is a copy of demoware of McAfee VirusScan?

Edward



Well considering the state of Axims at the moment, that's the closest thing you'll get to a highlight other than "if you fill it with concrete you get a very nice silvery paperweight". I know I'm tempted to do that with mine before it goes back.

[isilver]

How can they come out with a virus scanner for a platform that does not appear to have any viruses being made for it?

[Kati Compton]

How can they come out with a virus scanner for a platform that does not appear to have any viruses being made for it?
My guess is that it's a virus scanner for a desktop PC.

[GoldKey]

Why do computer vendors insists on shipping computers with bunches of preloaded crap on them? I want my PC with the base install, brought up to date with the current patches and that is it. Plus I want a copy of the OS, not some crappy recovery disk. My last two PCs came loaded with garbage that I had to uninstall, were woefully out of date on patches, and only came with a recovery disk rather than an OS disk.

[ECOslin]

I just do not see demo software for a PC, as a selling point for a PDA. If it were 35 demo packages for a PDA, sure.

I'm not sure, if they're implying, that your pc might need this antivirus software because the Axim is subseptable to viruses that may already be on your pc.

Edward

[PetiteFlower]

I'm not even sure if I got a full copy of the OS with mine. It says "reinstallation disc". I don't know if it would work on a formatted hard drive or not...I think it would but I don't know.

Anyway it may be a questionable marketing decision to consider that a "highlight" but advertising freebies that come with things is rarely a bad thing.

[Vincent M Ferrari]

Well considering the state of Axims at the moment, that's the closest thing you'll get to a highlight other than "if you fill it with concrete you get a very nice silvery paperweight". I know I'm tempted to do that with mine before it goes back.

Hmmm... $300 price tag, dual expandability, transflective screen, unsurpassed battery life.

Sure. You fill yours with concrete.

The Axim-bashing on this site is beginning to get unbearable.

[Janak Parekh]

I'm not sure, if they're implying, that your pc might need this antivirus software because the Axim is subseptable to viruses that may already be on your pc.
As vincenzosi suggests, let's not think badly on the Axim for this -- it's a great unit for what it does. It's an industrywide trend. Otherwise, why exactly did I get an AOL CD with a copy of the New York Times?

--janak

[mr_Ray]

Well considering the state of Axims at the moment, that's the closest thing you'll get to a highlight other than "if you fill it with concrete you get a very nice silvery paperweight". I know I'm tempted to do that with mine before it goes back.

Hmmm... $300 price tag, dual expandability, transflective screen, unsurpassed battery life.

Sure. You fill yours with concrete.

The Axim-bashing on this site is beginning to get unbearable.

Don't forget the cripplingly bad performance under WM2003.
I'll agree that if there were no seriously bad problems with the Axim as is, then it's one hell of a bit of kit for the price. However in it's current state, it is a long way away from even being tolerable.

Also there's the fact that Dell are refusing to refund me my money and I'm having to take legal action against them. I'm just a little upset with them.

So yeah, apart from the poor performance of the bug-ridden thing, and the total lack of ethics from Dell the Axim is good.

[GoldKey]

Mr Ray,

I think you need to give Dell a chance to fix the problem. Indicators are that they are aware there is an issue with PPC 2003 and are working on a fix. If that is the only problem you have with the Dell, then I think you are blowing it way out of proportion. You say Dell refuses to refund your money, yet don't they have a 30 guarantee for that? So if your only beef is PPC 2003 performance, there is no way you have had that for more than 30 days, so what is the problem? What possible grounds do you then have to take "legal action"?

[mr_Ray]

Mr Ray,

I think you need to give Dell a chance to fix the problem. Indicators are that they are aware there is an issue with PPC 2003 and are working on a fix. If that is the only problem you have with the Dell, then I think you are blowing it way out of proportion. You say Dell refuses to refund your money, yet don't they have a 30 guarantee for that? So if your only beef is PPC 2003 performance, there is no way you have had that for more than 30 days, so what is the problem? What possible grounds do you then have to take "legal action"?

Hi. I've contacted tech support three times now, and on every occasion asked when the problems with WM2003 were going to be resolved, and on every occasion was met with the answer "what problems?" I followed someone else's lead from the dell support forums and contacted the Inquirer who are looking into the WM2003 issues with Dell and they ignored them too. How can I have faith in their ability to fix problems that they won't acknowledge to their customers or the press?

Regarding the legal action, that is exactly my point - I *am* entitled to a refund since my Axim actually died on Friday, two days after I recieved it. This combined with the fact that I have no way of knowing when or even if Dell will fix the problems led me to the conclusion that I would be best served by using my right to a refund under UK law and taking my custom elsewhere.
The was all fine and dandy until I contacted Dell's customer services and was told that I was not allowed to have a refund since I was a business. Since I am not a business and never claimed to be a business, and have a printout from the time of order that I purchased as a home customer, this is wrong. Since business customers (which I am not anyway) are also entitled to a refund on faulty goods, this is wrong there too. I've twice contacted customer services and on both occasions was denied a refund for this, as you'll agree, bizarre reason.

I've contacted the local trading standards office this morning and have been told exactly as I suspected - that Dell *must* refund me. I have sent off a letter to their headquarters stating (as they suggested) that if I don't recieve a full unconditional refund within two weeks I shall see them in court. We shall see what happens.

I think I'll leave it there too, since this is probably getting a bit OT. :D

[GoldKey]

That is fine, I agree Dell is not treating you right. Please understand my perspective in my original message (which was probably the same as the others that brought up the Dell bashing). All we knew from your posts was that you were upset with the 2003 upgrade and with only that fact, it seemed like you were overreacting. I don't imagine Dell will formally say anything about the problem until they have a fix.

I assume you have seen this thread (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14634)

In there, someone mentions that they did get a confirmation of the problem from a tech person at Dell and that a fix was forthcoming. Granted, this should be diseminated to all employees to pass on to customers, but I am not suprised that they have not. When I called in at launch to by my Axim, I had to convice the salesperson that they had a Dell brand PPC.

[mr_Ray]

I assumed that's what you probably thought, yes. Sadly I'm not overly coherent when angry. :devilboy:

:lol:

I had seen that post, thanks, and a similar one over at aximsite suggesting that someone somewhere at Dell was aware of a problem. That just means that they do know about it but aren't admitting it. How much effort would it take to to send an email to all their support team saying "We have problems with the Axim which are currently in the process of correction, please inform all customer queries that there will be a fix by xx/xx/2003"?

[GoldKey]

While from a customer service perspecitive, that is exactly what most customers would expect. As silly as it sounds, admitting a defect without having a solution already in place could potentially open up a liability if the solution does not come in on time. Plus Microsoft probably would not be too happy with a story about a vendor stating that their new OS version is slower than the old one, when in reality, the problem is probably somewhere in the Dell implementation (but the mainstream media probably won't get that distinction).

Would protesting the charge (assuming you paid by CC) be easier then taking them to court if they do not allow you to return it?

[mr_Ray]

While from a customer service perspecitive, that is exactly what most customers would expect. As silly as it sounds, admitting a defect without having a solution already in place could potentially open up a liability if the solution does not come in on time. Plus Microsoft probably would not be too happy with a story about a vendor stating that their new OS version is slower than the old one, when in reality, the problem is probably somewhere in the Dell implementation (but the mainstream media probably won't get that distinction).

Would protesting the charge (assuming you paid by CC) be easier then taking them to court if they do not allow you to return it?

That's undoubtedly true and makes sense from some viewpoints. However there's a growing number of people whose opinion on Dell is going quite severely downhill, and I would guess the sales are starting to reflect that. They've lost my sale, 5 people I have steered away from Dell in person, and I can count over a dozen or two people on various forums that have either returned theirs and went elsewhere or were saved the agony of purchasing one to begin with. Sure in the scale of a company like Dell that's not a lot, but still.

In today's world of lying, cheating, morally deficient companies it would be quite refreshing to have a company own up to their mistakes, take the short term hit, but go up in people's long term view since they know they can trust them to put it to their customers straight.
Sure I and others weren't happy with the performance issues - who would be - but the real kicker for me personally is Dell's attitude, or rather lack thereof, to the matter. Had they come out and said that they had a problem and were putting their full effort into fixing it, I'd have been a happy chappy. Instead I'm wondering if I can ever trust Dell with anything.

What it comes down to is honesty and openess, really. I like those attributes in the companies I deal with just as much as I do the peole I associate with.

The real kicker though is Dell's corporate issues and the performance problems aside, I actually quite liked my Axim before it died :-D

[GoldKey]

Agreed. I have not recommended a Dell PC to anyone in a few years now. For the previous few, I recommended them all the time. In fact the only business I had been referring to them was for PDA's. As all the new models come out, it is a little harder to recommend them since they don't have a new model. Depending on how they resolve the 2003 issue will depend if I still recommend them or an Ipaq.

[PetiteFlower]

I ONLY reccommend Dell PCs. I reccommend Axims depending on what the persons needs are.

Mr. Ray, clearly you have had a bad experience. I can not imagine anything like that happening with Dell USA. They have been exceedingly easy to deal with whenever I have needed to return/exchange something. I hope that you are able to get your problem resolved.

However they HAVE admitted there is a problem with their implementation of PPC 2003 and are working on a fix for it. I would expect it to be available soon; there is no release date because I'm sure they don't know yet! Just because the people you spoke with were not informed does not mean that the company as a whole has not made a statement--they have.

[guinness]

My experience with Dell customer support has been good; I got a unit as a Christmas present and it worked fine until the Built-in storage disappeared. Granted the call the tech support had me on hold for 1.5 hours, but I got through and got a new unit in about 3 days. Sent the old one back, but they let me keep the extra AC adapter and pouch as at the time they were only shipped in complete kits. Yes, the PPC 2003 slowness compared to PPC 2002 is annoying from what I've heard, but unless Dell whats to lose a tone of customers, they'll provide a patch. (And I'm assuming that's why the upgrade CD is taking so long to ship out. Mine still says "In Production").

HP's support isn't much better BTW, they don't even have a toll-free number to call.

[mr_Ray]

Well just for the record I've today managed to get my order beginning the process of initiating the procedings to enter the refund proecedure. Yes, it really is going to be as slow as I made it sound - I was informed that it would be a minimum of a couple of weeks until I actually recieved my refund, and the impression that I got was that it would be a month or more in reality. Well, I'll give them two weeks and if I don't have the money by then I'll complete the forms I'm recieving from the credit card company tomorrow to get my payment revoked. :D


The secret to getting Dell to finally admit that it's their legal responsibilty to refund me? Quite simple, I pointed out that I was already in the process of getting my money back via my credit card company, and telling them that I was seeking legal advice to take them to court.

Comes down to money and threats really. Tragic that it came to that, really. :( :( :(

And I now have an HP 2210 on order too! :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

[GoldKey]

I saw your posts today over on the Dell sites forums. I must say, I am sorry for suggesting you were being impatient. Just from the response (really more like lack of) you got there after explaining the situation, I think you were being more than fair. What companies don't seem to realize (or maybe they do) is that my time is valuable and having to spend 3 or 4 hours to get support for a $300 product is a waste of my time.

[QYV]

The one thing that gives me hope in this situation is that Dell has been very good about releasing upgrades for the Axim. Two ROM updates in four or five months is pretty darn good compared to almost any other Pocket PC OEM (*cough*Toshiba*cough*), particularly since there weren't that many people complaining about things like the startup time or Dpad.

I am disappointed that Dell cannot at least indicate that a fix is coming, without listing a date. I've been in the position of being a publisher representative for a software product that users were demanding a patch for, and I understand the need to be vague to avoid liability for broken "promises". That said, the statement made by Dell to Cnet News today that "no one has registered a formal complaint" is quite simply a lie by any reasonable standard - it's clear from forum postings on their own site that a number of users have called tech support to complain about the issue, so apparently Dell has some sort of semantic game they're playing to be able to say that "truthfully". Very disappointing.

So, kudos to Dell for a fantastic product at a great price that - up until now - was supported very well. Shame on Dell for not addressing this issue in an honest manner and actually lying in a press release. And I do believe Dell will fix the issues, but I don't expect to be running 2003 on my currently-2002 Axim for quite a while. :roll:

[mr_Ray]

I saw your posts today over on the Dell sites forums. I must say, I am sorry for suggesting you were being impatient. Just from the response (really more like lack of) you got there after explaining the situation, I think you were being more than fair. What companies don't seem to realize (or maybe they do) is that my time is valuable and having to spend 3 or 4 hours to get support for a $300 product is a waste of my time.

Exactly. Paid at the standard rate I charge for my time, I've spent easily time equivalent to the price of the Axim in talking to Dell and checking out how I stand legally.
Today I stuck a Dell logo on my wall and talked to it, and I was amazed in the increase in responsiveness that I found. I'm considering starting a 3rd party support program with it, the benefits to Dell customers worldwide would be phenominal :twisted:



QYV - I too know the problems with giving a solid date for a fix, being a programmer by trade myself, but as you, I, and others have said, Dell's response is disgusting at best, and a more blatant lie I've never heard in my life.
Hmmmmm, thinking about it, has anyone seen the Iraqi Information Minister lately? I'm starting to wonder if he's working for Dell's press office:

"There is no problem with the Axim! In fact, there is no Axim!" 0X