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The 'Dude, You're Getting a Dell' Guy Returns (digg.com) 66

Posted by BeauHD from the what-a-throwback dept.
Ben Curtis, the pitchman for Dell in the early 2000s who coined the phrase, "Dude, you're getting a Dell," has made a triumphant comeback. In the new ad, Curtis starts by saying, "Dude, a lot can happen in 20 years. Like, Dell got really into recycling..." He then proceeds to talk about their new recycling program that'll let you recycle "everything from desktops to batteries." All you have to do is print out a shipping label they provide you and send in your stuff. "Because... all great things can make a comeback."

As Digg (yes, that Digg) notes, "Curtis famously portrayed the surfer dude Steve character between 2000 and 2003." However, his stint came to an abrupt end in 2003 "when he was busted for suspicion of buying marijuana." You can watch a compilation of the old "Dell dude" commercials here.
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The 'Dude, You're Getting a Dell' Guy Returns More

The 'Dude, You're Getting a Dell' Guy Returns

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  • Words have meanings (Score:4, Informative)

    by niftydude ( 1745144 ) on Wednesday November 17, 2021 @02:06AM (#61995301)
    If by "coined the phrase" you mean "read out a line that was written for him by a writer who actually coined the phrase", then I guess you are correct.

  • Dell sucks. Build your own PC with standard parts.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • If you can find a GPU

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by fazig ( 2909523 )
        That's a very valid point in these times.
        But then again there's other pre-built systems that don't suck as much as Dell machines tend to do these days.

        A probably difficult part here for the consumer is still to get reliable reviews for these machines. I'd recommend Gamers Nexus for this, but of course they've only tested a very limited number of pre-built machines so far: https://www.youtube.com/playli... [youtube.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      If you know how. Many computer users don't.

      • In that case get someone who does know how to build it for you. There are small shops still out there who has someone who can handle it.

        • They won't do it for free. And you will probably end up paying more for them to do it.
          Dell you have an assembly line, where a handful of people can pump out thousands of PC an hour. Vs a small shop where it will take a skilled person 20-30 minutes to assemble a PC from all the parts.

    • Several shops here will do that for you, like my favourite supplier. They have standard builds ranging from simple work machines to all singing & dancing water cooled gaming rigs. And if you want a different case or cooler or whatever, just tell them. They charge the parts and a modest fee for building (I think it’s €150 or so for a complex build), and best of all their staff know what they are about, so they can advise on features like extreme performance builds or super quiet operation. Be

    • Build your Laptop, Notebook computer never really caught on. For the most part their Desktop PC's are mostly for wide deployments say a company needs 200 new desktops, the cost of your IT Staff assembling PC's will be more expensive than buying it pre-manufactured. Gaming PC I would agree you are better off building yourself than buying a prebuilt one.

      If people are not interested in gaming, they will tend to opt for a more portable Laptop. Or if they are in business then they will buy pre-assemebed PC's

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      You only have to go to the Dell web site to realize that they do suck - no possibility to get any overview of what they have and when you drill down you realize that they have way too many models - all useless.

      Personally I'd like to have a computer with a large screen and able to support at least 3 displays with high resolution but I don't need a graphics card with advanced 3D effects and raytracing when I work. I do have a laptop at work but the display is too small for me due to old eyes. And all Dell cor

  • Stop making eWaste. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by splutty ( 43475 ) on Wednesday November 17, 2021 @02:41AM (#61995327)

    If Dell would stop selling computers that can't be upgraded, so that they all end up on the eWaste pile, maybe that would help a lot more than recycling because you make garbage...

    • They genuflect to the green agenda then build PCs that can't be upgraded (Apple even worse than Dell) or phones and tablets you can't even open up without a heat gun and plenty of skill never mind upgrade! Poisoned soil, air and water table from e-waste, sick kids from attempting to recycle it in africa and india? Who cares! The REALLY important things are this quarters profits and the C-Suite bonuses, right?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Unfortunately that's what happens when market forces run wild. Their systems are heavily cost reduced, which results in odd shaped motherboards that have part of the case integrated into them (e.g. front panel ports) to avoid the cost associated with cable assemblies.

      The law needs to be updated to require computers to be at least somewhat standard so that they can be recycled effectively. That includes on the software side, i.e. being able to transfer the Windows licence even if the motherboard is replaced.

    • Stop the ads.
      How is this news ?
      Rest of the world has no idea about US targeted ads, today or past.

      Ads are not culture, ads are pollution.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jvkjvk ( 102057 )

        >Ads are not culture, ads are pollution.

        Then they are a shared bad experience held by most countries in the world, in their own country. (I assume your country had ads?) It is the *shared experience* part of it that binds us together, regardless of the fact that it was an ad.

    • Recycled has many meanings. Including dishonest middlemen passing things down the line. More than one TV documentary shows PC's being burnt by children. More fun was placing GPS trackers on the trash. There is a reason why nothing is recycled in the USA or even Mexico, because labor costs are too high. Everybody knows a smelter can do this. But like scrap steel - that China buys all, USA is again too inefficient to do it on home soil. The problem is exported. Out of sight, out of mind. And this bit of paper

    • We never had computers that can be practically upgraded.

      The mid-1990's to early 2000 was kinda the heyday with upgradible Computers. However they were not upgraded that often, That 486 CPU socket wouldn't take a Pentium CPU, the Pentium CPU socket wouldn't take a Pentium 2. While sure you can upgrade your 66mhz to 100mhz, but that isn't going to give you that much improvement for the price, The Video Card went from ISA to PCI to AGP Bus, Your RAM chips were limited... The most upgrading someone would be

      • Hint: Try buying AMD instead of Intel.

        • Still you have RAM issues, and newer types of Buses, and AMD. Also in terms of eWaste, a replacement card will create the same amount of waste as replacing a full motherboard of integrated components. The upgradible Computer was more of a marketing trick, to make you think you are getting a better deal than what you practically get.

      • This is a good point. Circa 1995, we got Socket 7 Motherboards which managed to remain viable until around 1999. Socket T managed to stay relevant from 2004-2009. After that, things have been pretty miserable on both the Intel and AMD sides. Socket H4 almost had a decent lifespan, but then they went and reassigned some pins for Coffee Lake, killing compatibility.

      • That's largely true, but the ewaste problem is largely a result of no interoperability. If your board fails in a modern dell, you need to get a used board that is of questionable quality, or replace the case, the power supply, and the cooler. Chances are that case and power supply is not only vendor-specific, but model specific, which means that nobody will use those parts unless someone just happens to have the opposite problem. In practice most mass-made devices like this have one or two common faults

  • Feel-good ads (Score:5, Interesting)

    by peppepz ( 1311345 ) on Wednesday November 17, 2021 @02:59AM (#61995347)
    I'm getting tired of inspirational advertisements that explain to you how nice the company is / how special you are / how shining our future will be, when the only thing that a company really cares about is making money. Those ads are the worst legacy of Covid. :-)

    • Self-congratulatory commercials are annoying, sure, but... exactly how is that related to Covid? Those sorts of ads are nothing new.

      • Ah, maybe it's not a global thing. Where I live, since the first covid wave, many, MANY commercials have become of this kind.

        A common template is a voice actor reading empowering sentences like "we'll be better than before... we'll go back to doing what we used to do before...", while the screen shows slow-motion stock footage of rich Americans playing in the countryside, with some movie soundtrack in the background.

      • I imagine these commercials serve to keep the brand in once-and-future customers' memory even while the business is closed due to stay-at-home orders.

    • Re:Feel-good ads (Score:5, Funny)

      by infolation ( 840436 ) on Wednesday November 17, 2021 @05:36AM (#61995503)
      You're right. Computer companies need get back to firing gerbils out of cannons [youtube.com] to advertise their products.

      "We want you to remember our name...
      Outpost.com
      ...that's what we've decided to fire gerbils out of this cannon, and through the 'O' in 'Outpost'."

      BOOM!

      "Cute little guy...."

  • Do you remember when (Score:3)

    by buss_error ( 142273 ) on Wednesday November 17, 2021 @03:29AM (#61995367) Homepage Journal

    We said D E double hockey stick? And it was "Dude! You're in for HELL!"
    Back "when" we got somewhere north of 4,000 desktops all shipped with the case bent. They wanted to send 4,000 cases and have us fix 'em. yeah... Not Happenin' dude.

  • Only in hypocritical America... (Score:3)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Wednesday November 17, 2021 @03:38AM (#61995375) Homepage

    ... could a guys career be torpedoed for 20 years because he bought some dope.

    Meanwhile, over in Afghanistan...

    • ESPECIALLY a guy portraying a "surfer dude". What could be more surfer dude than buying a little marijuana, I mean really.

    • I remember the joke that was going around after that about how it was surprising that, as a spokesman for Dell, he would be arrested for buying marijuana, because that was supposed to be a Gateway drug...

      ...which won't make any sense to people who don't remember Gateway being a competing PC vendor (famous for its iconic cow-patterned boxes) that was acquired by Acer in 2007 and has had a much-diminished advertising presence since then, now apparently only producing laptops and tablets.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      It's a pretty shitty career if you consider being dropped by Dell as a 'torpedoed' career. Look him up on iMDb. It's not particularly noteworthy, even when you consider that weed is a non issue (see: Charlie Sheen) with most production companies. You want to be a spokesperson for a product? The rules are somewhat stricter.

  • You mean the guy who convinced me (Score:3)

    by Revek ( 133289 ) on Wednesday November 17, 2021 @07:34AM (#61995679)
    To buy all HP workstations for the place I was working at because the commercial was so annoying.

  • I hate 'em. Little cheap plastic pale blue tabs everywhere. A black and white diagram printed on the inside with red arrows trying to explain to you how the damn thing unlocks or pivots, but with NO words so they can ship the same PC (and printed diagram) to 400 different countries. If anything is a tiny bit out of alignment the case won't close. And forget standard size components like power supplies and ATX mobos -- everything's got to be specific to that case.

    Using (and requiring) a standard Philips

    • I really dislike the old mid-tower clamshell cases. You could barely open them enough to see inside.
      • Not nearly as bad as the old Compaqs, with their weirdo T-shaped motherboards. Altering them felt like warfare.
  • He was just a kid then - not so much now.

  • Just spent 1.5 hours with "Premier" Dell support in India (calling from US) trying to figure out why their updates were causing my $3000 laptop with NvMe SSD to take 3 minutes to boot. The guy knew absolutely nothing and was trying to convince me that my boot problem was because I had too many cookies in my browser because their generic script app for "poor performance" includes that.

    Later, I fixed it myself. It was some software their stupid update had installed.

    • Oh my, don't even bother with Indian call centers. Once I realize the support line I called is located in India I hang up and find the fix myself on the net. I genuinely have a very difficult time understanding them and their flow charts are always way off base.
  • That they hired Ben Curtis because he was so good at acting like a Stoner...then promptly FIRED him when they found out he actually WAS as STONER. Go Figure. I guess Dell doesn't understand Method Actors.

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