What happened to Dell?
Dell used to be a decent company. What happened? Grace got a Dell Photo 924 printer as a present a few years ago. It’s a rebranded Lexmark X615 (I have heard, but obviously nobody is confirming this!) It doesn’t have drivers for GNU/Linux (or Mac). It’s described as an expensive paperweight by some people, and accurately too. To get to the point, the power adapter went bad on it, so I thought I would get a new one and sell it so that we could have one that works on GNU/Linux. To my surprise, the new adapter from Dell is $50. They even recommended that I buy a new printer rather than get a new adapter! What a horrible waste! I asked them what I was supposed to do with the old printer. They said I could recycle it (send it back to Dell for free and they would re-manufacture it and sell it again). So Dell gets paid twice for the same printer. Nice.
It turns out that Lexmark sells the adapter for $20 and you can even find it online for about $8 used (plus shipping). That’s more along the lines of what I expected. I will never buy another Dell product (my first laptop was a Dell, and that is back when they had good customer support). I recommend that everyone avoid buying Dell products. It’s just not worth it.
