Dell Charm

Nick Heer from Pixel Envy points out that Dell hasn’t lost its branding charm. When configuring a laptop on the website, he got an error message, “Composite Rule Error: Invalid selection in Processor Branding.” He was further informed about the error:

The Chassis Option requires the matching Memory size. The 16gb Memory is only available with the Ultra 5 236V/226V and Ultra 7 266V. The 32gb Memory is only available with the Ultra 5 238V and Ultra 7 268V.

I have often marveled at the challenging model names that PC manufacturers give their products, which starkly contrast to those from Apple. Everyday people can remember the names of their Apple devices. Not so for most of what PC manufacturers come up with.

When I worked at Best Buy, I realized there is a kind of security in obscurity involved with these naming conventions. For instance, if we carried a Compaq laptop model called something like CP1256V, and that laptop had a common issue with the motherboard overheating, virtually no one would know about it.¹ Those of us at the tech bench/Geek Squad would see the pattern, but you wouldn’t have a piece in Engadget on the Compaq CP1256V having motherboard issues. If the same thing was true of an Apple Powerbook, well, you would know about it. The tech press would be all over the story.

The PC makers benefitted from this strategy of flooding the market with different models under different inscrutable names. Typically, PCs are lower quality than Macs, and the proliferation of models ensures that no one particular model can attract too much attention for its faults.²

1. These types of issues were not uncommon among PC models. ↩
2. I’m fortunate to be able to use a Mac at work, but I had a Dell as a loaner at one point. A plastic piece just fell off onto my desk one day. ↩