News: 1605675671

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Dell online store charges 16 million dollars for new laptop with paint job

(2020/11/18)


Video If you have a spare £12m (US$16m) to hand, a kind Register reader let us know that Dell has just the laptop for you.

Said laptop is an Inspiron 15 3000, a machine that packs an 11th-gen Intel Core i5 at 4.2GHz, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, Chipzilla's Iris graphics chipset, and a 256GB SSD. There’s also a 15.6-inch FHD screen at 1920 x 1080.

And it’s black.

But Dell has in recent years woken up to the fact that black computers are a tad boring, so has added the option to choose “soft mint” as an alternative colour.

Which is where things get weird because in [1]this product listing , the black laptop costs £589.00 (US$780) but choosing soft mint kicks the price up to a reassuringly expensive £12,000,558.98 ($15,905,500).

[2]

Dell’s price mistake ... Click to enlarge

Which seems rather a lot to pay for some pigment, seeing as the laptop has the same CPU, screen, storage, and RAM.

Here at The Register , we recognise that we live in strange times. Photoshop, deepfakes, and pandemics created by Illuminati lizard people mean we all have reason to doubt reality.

So we pressed Windows 10’s built-in video screen-capture software into service with a swift Win-Alt-R to immortalise this mess for posterity, and hopefully offer incontestable evidence of the SNAFU:

[3]Youtube Video

Your humble hack tried to get the same result from other variants of the Inspiron 15 3000 with no success. I even tried Dell’s online stores for the USA and Australia. Only the URL above produced the price explosion.

Happy debugging, Dell UK web team! ®

Get our [4]Tech Resources



[1] https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops/inspiron-15-3000/spd/inspiron-15-3501-laptop/cn30112

[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/11/18/dell_uk_screenshot.jpg

[3] https://youtu.be/fZhVmF7Ws84

[4] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/

Probably because the pigment

cookieMonster

was supplied by HP Ink

But look on the bright side

Neil Barnes

It's reduced! Buy now and save twenty quid!

The one with the deep pockets: --->

Re: But look on the bright side

David 132

The more you buy, the more you save!!one!

Re: But look on the bright side

Chris G

And don't forget, they are offering Free Delivery.

Paying a little extra for a customised machine is normal isn't it?

Binraider

I said this the last time the Dell website got reported on. At this point, I regard this as a deliberate marketing tactic to get folks that read pages like this to take a look.

That sounds like...

Sgt_Oddball

An artist I follow on bandcamp, he's recently put up some demo songs for £999 with the explicit intention of people not buy it.

So I do wonder if H Dell just don't want to bother with the paint colour? Or they've only got a couple of cans so charging a silly amount so they don't use the last of it.

Mines the one with the company card to charge it on expenses....

For UK Gov

Efer Brick

So it's probably "Covid proof"

Pure Gold

TimMaher

Blackadder: “Percy, it’s green”.

Coat because of the colour.———————->

The Brexit Effect

Rich 2

And we were promised prices wouldn't increase!

Bloody politicians

Pedant Alert

aks

£12,000,558.98 includes VAT

That converts to £10,000,465.80 without VAT

£10,000,465.80 in USD is $13,288,618.96, which would attract local sales tax.

I assume the correct price would be £465.80 without VAT and £558.96 for those of you who need to pay it.

BoE identifies inflation spike shocker

Chris 216

UK inflation rate jumps by 0.2% - Dell laptop in "soft mint" to blame.

Windows screen capture

H in The Hague

"So we pressed Windows 10’s built-in video screen-capture software into service with a swift Win-Alt-R ..."

Thanks for the tip! Wasn't aware of that feature as it's related to the Gaming settings.

Here's one as a thank-you -->

Did you know that clones never use mirrors?