I hope they know that this sort of thing is all going on the list of reasons why people don't buy from them anymore no it's not really

required to have a pink laptop however if your marketing goes and hypes it to the public and suddenly you find you can't actually make a pink laptop then your pissing in the wind. Dell try doing a production

run before selling the product that should solve this problem.

I am sorry Dell is having some problems. It does illustrate however that making attractive computers is not as easy as it looks.

Seems odd, their Chinese manufacturers should have plenty of high quality lead based paint left over from Mattel.

Dell doesn't actually make the lids - no matter what the paint job. Of course, it's beyond the bounds of possibility (at least to most here) that the product did have a test production run, that the test run produced good results and that the problem arose with the manufacturer lowering standards after the contract was awarded.

Of course, if that were the case, then it wouldn't be such a wonderful opportunity for another round of jerking knees in Dell's direction.

So it probably didn't happen that way.

Oh you remember the 3 YEARS of G4 "TiBooks" in which the phony Titanium PAINT Flaked, Chipped and Cracked off the PowerBook within months of ownership!! What? You Apple Kool Aid Drinker with your heads up your arses have already buried those memories?? Yeah and Apple has too, never compensating owners of those TiBook (me being one of them).

Wo while you're ragging on Dell (POS anyway) remember Apple and also that BOTH of these dirt bag greedy companies moved ALL their manufacturing to the sweatshops of Commie China where they are poisoning you and your children with their "quality" products.

This commentary from the Dell site is 3 weeks old and the problems had been rumbling on long before that.

Dell's inability to deliver laptops has been a bone of contention for weeks now.

2 week delivery times for ballooning to 6-7weeks for standard no config laptops.

Any colour you like so long as its...........

After all, it is the best colour for dissipating excess heat 8-)

There may well have been a painting problem, but Dell are using this to cover deeper supply problems. Painting is not exactly a new process, and the percentage of plastic pieces that aren't up to the required standard can be quite cheaply scrapped anyway. They claim to be able to make black - but they haven't delivered black either, or suggested changing your order from pink etc. to black.

And BTW Phreaky, it wasn't titanium paint, it was the unattractive appearance of well-fingered titanium that Apple covered with a plausible looking titanium-coloured paint finish. Most people (including me) didn't have any trouble with the finish despite heavy use. But some people seem to sweat paint stripper.

Dell's problems are beyond not delivering product as promised. After being told (lied to) for over 4 weeks, I eventually canceled my order for a a RED M1330. Every Filipino rep I spoke too had a different story. What was worse is having to call half way around the world for someone to read in poor English what I could read on the web site. I felt sorry for these folks, since Dell was lying to them as well. You can order from a two bit company a $3 item and instantaneously be updated on your order/ship status. With Dell it took 2 days just to give me a ship date, and it took 45 minutes on the phone to cancel it! It sucks when a so called Technology company can't even use the same technology to run their own business correctly.

What a sin, it may be too late for Mike Dell to save what once was a well run company!

Before you rant on about "the sweatshops of Commie China", please note that Apples and Dells are mainly contracted to the "sweaty-palms shops" of the renegade province just off-shore and that many of "the sweatshops of Commie China" are owned and operated by good, kind-hearted US/Canadian citizens. Rather similar to the Cuba of the Bautista days !!

Say, rather, that the kindly Michael Dell has screwed the manufacturers to the lowest price possible and they responded in kind. Now, if only Mr. Dell will sign up with FairTrade.....

Why don't you just by exactly the laptop you want from any manufacture you want and have it painted what ever color you want.

I had mine done at laptopdesignusa.com

Smooth Creations apparently is no longer doing custom systems since they became a reseller.

I am sure there are some others out there too.

Dell also need to get their act together on severeal other issues too.

I bought an XPS M2010 on a visit to the UK as I could not find it on their Spanish site.

They only offered 100GB discs whereas in America they can have more than double that size on offer for the same machine.

When it went wrong in Spain Dell sent out an engineer to replace a hard drive - when he arrived he said he'd never seen one before let aone been trained on one and he was from Unisys, not Dell. He commenced to prize up lids until I showed him a manual I downloaded explaining how the lis are cllipped on neatly.

He commenced to "operate" on the machine with the battarey still plugged in and he took the hard drive out by going straight to it - without earthing himself out on the chassis first.

Well done Dell.....

Any colour, as long as its black...

...now I'm going to have to repaint my giant, lime-green Mech bot.

The one that must be obeyed (her-in-doors) Eventually, after weeks of faffing, decided on a Dell laptop in Tuxedo Black, and was told delivery would be by the 30th July (Three weeks!).

Having spent so long deciding she decided to wait... The 30th came... and went... then she called to find out what was going on, she got a revised delivery date of 14th August (another 2 weeks)... No apology...

When the 14th came and went, she called again to be told of a newly revised date of 7th September (three more weeks!), this time they explained that some "parts" were in short supply.... She eventually cancelled the order on the 20th August. Again, no apology for the delay, no trying to "keep" the sale...

Is it just me, or should a laptop take less than 8 weeks to build?

A call to say the XXXXX is out of stock be we could substitute YYYYYY and have it with you next week is obviously too difficult...

People are getting pushed back on black too. Most of these stories seem to suggest Dell just doesn't have the computers on hand, but don't talk about how Dell keeps selling these machines with ship dates they know they can't meet, and then repromising ship dates that they also must know they can't meet. As for the customers ordering black, first they are told the problem is the color, then when they say they want black, they're told it is the processor, or the monitor. People are having their estimated ship dates pushed back multiple times. I've read reports of 5 or more rescheduled ship dates. Customers are notified of the delay on the day the item was supposed to ship. There are even reports of towers and printers not shipping on time, with absolutely no explaination of the delays. Maybe Dell couldn't get a loan from a bank so instead advertised products they couldn't deliver, just so they could borrow customer's money for a while. My order was pushed back twice before I came to my senses and canceled. There are also many reports of Dell simply cancelling orders on their customers.

http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/08/03/23340.aspx

http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/08/24/25755.aspx