Prisoners go to work for Dell

Dell rose to the top by cutting more corners than its rivals. The PC giant is cutting another corner by employing prisoners to handle its new consumer recycling scheme in the US.

Dell is not dirtying its hands directly with either the PCs or the jail- birds; it is instead obtaining their services through a US government agency called Unicor, which for some reason is also called Federal Prison Industries. Or maybe that's just the commercial bit.

(We learned the above from a well-researched CNET article, which introduced the news point about prisoners in paragraph 11. This illustrates one of the many small differences between British and American journalism.)

Critics say that this has the potential to be little more than a hi-tech chain gang. Clearly, they haven’t visited a PC recycling facility lately, which are as low-tech as they come.

By employing very cheap labour, Dell can cut corners on costs, maybe even break even on recycling PCs. The residual value of second-user PCs have fallen through the floor, the break-up value has fallen significantly; and the cost of Microsoft software licenses is a serious impediment to creating a viable – and legal – secondhand market; finally regulators in Europe and Japan are imposing expensive green policies on PC manufacturers.

In the US, the big PC brands are taking charge, before legislators take charge of them: Dell joins IBM, HP and Sony in setting up consumer recycling schemes, CNET reports. Most impose a fairly nominal fee for taking back their old, tired boxes. We guess that companies will juggle with this fee, finding extra discount for new sales.

Dell will take back PCs from any manufacturers through its Dell Exchange scheme, which launches September, in line with HP and Best Buy practice. This may swing some green customers their way next time they choose their new PC. ®

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/25343.html

NOTE: sorry if i didnt do any research and annalysis on this post.. im just not in the mood. I promise in the next one, i will.

u really like posting articles dontca? lol : )


interesting still

I guess this is one way to cut down on costs. State prisoners are used lots of places for state work, and most of the time it is contract work. I don't know why this would be any different. Seems fairly easy, and it gives the prisoners something to do, and the states a way to defray expenses.

Deb :D

lol i wouldnt be surprised if u found a switch knife embedded on your motherboard when u open ur PC.. hahaha

or better yet.. some bags of coke.. ;)

Ya, hide the coke near the cpu fan so it blows all over the place when you turn it on.

nah i think its a great way for DELL to cut costs.... i dont kow if they are gonna pocket the money that they are cutting or make the PCs cheeper for us... if its cheeper for us then im ALL for it.... either way its smart thinkin.