A new report from Forrester Research demonstrates that Dell has a long way to go to regain the full approval of American computer users.
As part of a survey of nearly 4,600 consumers in the United States about their interactions with a variety of companies, Forrester Research examined the scores of the five largest computer manufacturers: Apple, Compaq, Dell, Gateway and Hewlett-Packard. When it comes to three key performance criteria — usefulness, enjoyability and ease of use — Apple led the pack, noted Bruce Temkin, a principal analyst and vice president at Forrester.
“Apple’s rating of 80 percent was 14 points higher than that of the next firm on the list, Gateway,” Temkin said. By contrast, Dell ended up with “the lowest score and was one of three firms with an overall ‘poor’ rating.”
Dell’s Problems
One obvious reason why Apple’s machines likely did better than their PC rivals is that many consumers appear to find the Mac operating system more user-friendly than Windows. So Microsoft’s launch of a more user-friendly Windows 7 in the months ahead could help boost the fortunes of PC makers over the long haul.
“The OS absolutely plays a role in how consumers rate their experience with the computer manufacturers,” Temkin said. “But the hardware companies control a lot of the experience as well — from how they configure the software to how they sell the systems to how they support them after the sale.”
Gateway, HP and Compaq were able to achieve similar scores across all three of Forrester’s key performance criteria, where Dell wound up with significantly lower ratings than its rivals in the areas of being easy to use and enjoyable — and that’s bad news for Dell.
“The analysis did not examine the underlying causes of the low scores,” Temkin said. “Clearly, Dell’s problems with…