Without a doubt Dell has much better customer focus for technical people. The 4 year support contact w/ accidentally costs the same as 4 years of apple care, but Dell's covers everything except lost and wore down batteries.
Apple requires that you book an appointment at one of their stores, go there, wait on line anyway because there are people who don't want to book online, have someone who can't fix hardware problems look at it, and then say they'll take it but you must give them your file vault password first.
Dell on the other hand after ten minutes of hardware troubleshooting on the phone comes on site with replacement parts. If they can't fix it they send it back for you, and you can request that they give you the hard drive in the machine before they send it. It's very excellent.
I'll second this. Dell sent a contractor to my home on Thanksgiving day to replace a laptop screen on my kitchen table.
It took under an hour to replace.
I've never seen that level of service from any other company, period.
Lenovo has been exactly the same for me, with their onsite + accidental damage protection. For the same price as applecare, I've more than once broken my laptop screen from a drop, and someone is at my house the next day with a new screen.
I can echo this. Even in India - Dell replaced my wife's motherboard which was slightly out of warranty by sending a tech. support to our home with replacement motherboard.
Dell also send out parts no-questions-asked if you don't mind fitting them yourself, which is pretty great when you know exactly which part you need and what to do with it.
I assume that's why there are so many new Latitude/Precision keyboards on eBay at any given time (people bullshitting their way to getting spares and then selling them on).
When I had the keyboard repeat issue with my XPS 13 the the Dell customer support told me, that I do not have a problem at all and that they would not help me. I asked if I can send them the device so they can check it, but they told me it is not possible to send a device to Dell for repair.
Only after I posted my experience on a public forum I was contacted by a Dell social media person in the US who then organized support from Dell Netherlands.
That has not been my experience with Dell. My new UP2516D kept going black several times a day, with no apparent cause. I couldn't replicate the problem using the laptop with same DP cable, same laptop port on my wife's U2311H.
Dell customer support was hostile from the get-go, claiming "compatibility" problems with my MacBook. Compatibility? What could cause my laptop to be incompatible with the UP25 and yet compatible with the U23? Hogwash.
They finally agreed to exchange the monitor. They sent a refurb.
Since then, I've read multiple stories of people having problems with Dell monitors, using Windows or OS X. A common thread is the DisplayPort connection.
He's not talking about enterprise support. Every Dell laptop I've had for the last decade has come with their on-site warranty and I've always purchased mine through Dell's consumer site or Newegg/Amazon.
Apples main audience is not technical people. There is your first mistake. So comparing apples support for non technical people to dells technical oriented people support is flawed.
Dell makes it easy to tell the phone/chat support person that you know what you're doing but it doesn't matter how technical you are. A Dell contracted tech will come to your house and replace the parts right in front of you within a few business days. A non technical person just has to spend more time going through the troubleshooting checklist.
Apple requires that you book an appointment at one of their stores, go there, wait on line anyway because there are people who don't want to book online, have someone who can't fix hardware problems look at it, and then say they'll take it but you must give them your file vault password first.
Dell on the other hand after ten minutes of hardware troubleshooting on the phone comes on site with replacement parts. If they can't fix it they send it back for you, and you can request that they give you the hard drive in the machine before they send it. It's very excellent.