Dude, My Dell Isn’t Shipping Today

September 12, 2007

I’ve been anxiously awaiting the shipment of my pink Dell Inspiron 1420. Today was supposed to be the day it was shipped out. My order status still says September 12. But I checked with an online chat representative to be sure.

My new ship date is delayed by a week - September 19.

I was concerned that using a Mac Powerbook for a month would turn me into an Apple fangirl, but alas the opposite has happened. Prepare yourself, but I don’t prefer the Mac OS platform. To make matters worse, my husband upgraded something and now the Powerbook automatically switches the screen to “Finder” every few minutes. I’ll be in the middle of typing something and bam - it gets switched to Finder. Grrrr.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let’s pontificate as to why the Inspiron is delayed.

On their corporate blog, Dell offered up two reasons as to why the Inspirons are delayed.

1. The paint job elongates the manufacturing process.
2. The availability of parts changes frequently

#2 I can understand somewhat, but #1 looks like poor manufacturing planning on Dell’s part.

So what do I do?

1. Keep waiting on the pink Inspiron.
2. Cancel the pink and order the black, which seems to ship in about a week.
2. Cancel Dell and try HP, Gateway, Sony, Lenovo, etc.
3. Try to become an Apple fangirl.

I don’t have a lot of faith that Dell will ship next week. People who ordered there Inspirons in July are just now getting them this week. That could either mean that the parts and paint are now in and ready for everyone. Or it could mean that there’s a 2-3 month delay for everyone.

Right now, I’m leaning towards giving them one more week. And then, if they still don’t ship - cancel Dell and go with a different brand altogether.

What would you do?

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