What's a reasonable failure rate for new desktop computers? And if a computer does fail while it's less than a month old, what kind of turnaround time should the customer expect? While he doesn't know the answers to those questions, one reader is rather certain that what he's experienced with two recent batches of Dell desktops hasn't made the grade.

"Over the last two years, the high school where I am the technology coordinator purchased 15 Dell desktop computers," the reader wrote. "Within a month of receiving them -- in one case within twenty minutes -- four of the computers crashed. Dell refused to replace them, and instead insisted that our school district's tech support work with them as they shipped one part at a time. The shortest time for repair was seven work days. Two computers took a month to repair. These were lemons that Dell refused to replace. When you buy a new computer and it stops working properly within hours, you expect a new one to replace it. Also, isn't that an extremely high percentage of problems for new computers?"

While this experience was certainly enough to teach the reader his lesson, the public school district he works for has an exclusive contract with Dell. "At the end of this last school year, we replaced an old reading lab with new Dells that we are leasing," the reader wrote. "Of the twenty new computers, two stopped working within a day. Dell refuses to do anything until I run some system diagnosis in the BIOS settings. I don't have time to do their troubleshooting. So these two brand new lemons were just sitting in the classroom."

One out of six desktops failing within the first month certainly seems like a failure rate few schools would be happy with. What really upsets the reader though is the long periods of time it takes to get each system fixed, particularly when he feels Dell should just replace them with new systems that work. "The time between when they are removed and repaired has never been less than ten days," the reader wrote. "I have an issue with paying for new computers that don't work from the start. I don't work for Dell -- I work for the school district. I want new computers, not lemons that need me to help Dell figure out the problem."