I used to do authorized field support for Dell (and several other brand name PC makers), although most of my support was targeted to enterprise level customers instead of residential/soho/smb customers. I stopped doing that however long before I retired because the calls were frequently to small branch offices or plants in the boonies, and the pay schedule for that kind of work seldom included adequate reimbursement for calls with 2-3 hour drive times (and my arthritis had started to make multi-hour drives on winding mountain roads a bit less than pleasurable, despite the nice scenic views).
The availability of local hardware support is one reason that I did in fact recommend Dell to soho/smb clients who did not have in-house support capabilities. I made my money from those clients with value added services, not from selling them hardware.
I wasn't necessarily knocking Dell with my previous post. If I didn't think their products were worth using, I would not have bothered to occasionally make one good one from several dead ones for my own in-house use.
Hmm, when did this thread morph from a Google thread to a Dell thread?