Nothing new here

Most Dell encounters I've had would include the sentiment 'bad news' as they do get bought as 'cost effective' (you know - CHEAP) and have a history of grief - high end workstations grenading themselves, top end model laptop running like a, well, very slow, stupid thing, servers turning up late and mis-spec'ed, raid controller deaths etc and WHAT THE F**K were those crappy plastic flaps covering the front USB sockets! The ones that got smashed off within weeks? We now have a sea of HP DLs, XWs and DCs and it all works nicely, but for some poorly judged desktop builds, but that is another story.