I’m a PC (no more)

by Jonathan Kay on Tuesday, 20th April, 2010

My not-so-trusty Dell D420 needed replacing at least a year ago, so after much procrastination I bought a new MacBook Pro last Friday.

I do lots of traveling so portability and performance is key, even though these two attributes are rarely in harmony.  So a screen no larger than 13.3” was required, a fast chip and ideally 8GB ram.  I was willing to spend a considerable sum, wanted to fit my own Solid Sate Drive (SSD) so I had a couple of questions which needed answering.

So, after 20 years using a PC why change?

Well, it was all down to plain old customer service and the need to speak to a real person.

All the PC vendors had shockingly bad web sites with significant issues ranging from usability disasters (Flash not rendering – Lenovo), through to providing inaccurate and / or out of date information (Lenovo, Dell, Sony), mystery deleting baskets (Dell) and excessive lead times (Sony at one stage quoted 5 weeks!).  So I needed to speak with a real person before I could order and all the PC vendors failed miserably – Lenovo wouldn’t even answer their phone!

In sharp contrast Apple offered excellent service in spades both by phone and in their Regent Street store.  So in the end I bought from them because I’m not giving lots of money to companies who offer lousy service.

Analytics should be showing key site issues

I probably visited the Dell site 40-50 times, Lenovo circa 30 times and Sony maybe 20 times in a period of 4-6 weeks.  I built a basket on many of these occasions and with Dell I was a logged in user most of the time.

So why did no vendor send a conversion email or make an outbound call to get my money?  It would really have been that simple and this isn’t overly complex analytics.

The simplest usability fix ever

The companies in question could identify most of their site issues very quickly.

Their sites are so poor in places that a usability study to say that the site is delivering garbage would be overkill right now.  Instead, if they are too overworked to check content themselves they should employ a school leaver whose sole job would be to read the content on a page, click on a link and verify that the subsequent content (1) rendered and (2) made sense.  Repeat (1) and (2) daily.  Forever.

Dell

• Don’t make a fast and compact laptop which can take a SSD.  Astonishing but true.
• Nearest thing to match my requirements was a Dell Vostro 3300.  A machine with a great spec but I couldn’t insert a SSD because Dell had deliberately locked the Bios.  In their words this was, “to make people buy the more expensive model”.  The next model up (Latitude) cost over £400 more, had slower ram and was a 14” machine and this would too big
• I used Dell’s LiveChat service which was pretty good until 2 different people gave 2 different and conflicting responses so I couldn’t trust either
• I called them several times but again got conflicting advice and dealing with the offshore call centre process was a chore so I gave up

Lenovo

• The X201 series would have got my money offering Intel i7 and a 12” machine for a fair price
• However they didn’t get my order because they wouldn’t answer their phone and you are not able to order the i7 online
• I called several times and each time I was forced to voicemail after being on hold for several minutes and annoyingly no one ever called back.  Astonishing – their telesales / sales director should be fired. Today
• To rub salt in to my wounds, this weekends’ Grand Prix (good result Jenson) was dominated by track-side marketing for Lenovo.  Common sense would be to fix the conversion leaks before spending tens of millions on new marketing

Sony

• The new Z series laptop is awesome – very expensive but oh so light and a massive spec.  Had a play with one in a Sony Centre 2 weeks ago and decided to buy one on Friday …
• … but the Sony website had other ideas and simply doesn’t work.  One visit showed everything as ‘out of stock’ and then another just hangs whilst meaningless Flash content fails to load so I had a spinning logo filling my screen
• Called them but their call centre expert was far from being a beginner let alone an expert.  Instead he couldn’t answer my questions so he offered to call me back with answers.  Great – except that he never did call back!

Apple

So I have a new MacBook Pro 13.  Last weeks’ product refresh was quite miserable and there is no i5 chip let alone i7.  However …

Pros

• Great design and feels very sturdy
• Lightning fast.  With the SSD in place it’s on within 15 sec and turns off in 2 sec.  This is simply light years ahead of my 20 min and 5 min Dell
• Reported 10 hour battery life (which I suspect will be nearer 5)
• Touchpad works a dream
  

Cons

• There is no easy way to move my Outlook .pst file to Mac Office ‘08 Entourage or Apple Mail.  Apple and Microsoft need a good kicking for this major oversight as it’s a huge barrier to a PC business user moving to Mac and getting up and running as easily as possible
• Only 2 USB sockets available and I often use 4 (mouse, keyboard, 3g, USB dongle) so I’ll have to carry a USB replicator

If this is as bad at it gets hopefully I’ll be a happy Mac customer.