Running on lemonade

Jeff Jarvis thinks Dell sucks.
InstaPundit thinks otherwise.
Me, I’m way too cheap to invest in a new computer, but I do have three used Dells — all running smoothly. (Two Precision WorkStation server machines — a 530, a 410 — and my laptop, a Latitude C600.) Considering that if I total up the prices I paid less than $750.00 for all three machines, I wouldn’t complain even if one of them died and went to computer lemon heaven. (Besides, old computers never die; I cannibalize them for parts. What’s a computer, anyway? The 410’s supposed to be an old clunker Pentium II, but I just pulled the clunker CPU, inserted one of these slotket adapters, then put in a 1200 mHz CPU and I’m damned near as fast as what would cost me five times the price.)
And as far as customer support goes, what the hell need do I have talking to someone in Pakistan if I can check for myself to see whether the damned thing is plugged in and turned on? There’s no way for me to rate Dell’s customer support, but it can’t be as bad as what I get if I call Verizon.
All that aside, I don’t blame Jeff for being pissed. Had I paid for “four-year, in-home service,” and then they refused to fix the damned thing, I’d probably start googling for variations on “Dell sucks” (although the latter only GoogleSucks half as much as Apple….)
I don’t see how my lemons can ever be made to suck, though, so I’m probably not being objective.
Truth is, I like broken computers! They’re a nice diversion from reality.