Dolphin Dynamic - How few $$$ ????

[ecbdirector]

what about swimming while the dolphine is pluged in whoos to say accedents happen? lol=)

[CarlD]

Dolphin (and all robotics) insists that you must NOT swim while the Dolphin is working.

I personally think it's nuts to be in the water when ANY automatic cleaner is operating. If you want to get in to use your manual vacuum, or your PoolBuster, that's OK, but otherwise you are courting catastrophe.

My NEW Dolphin is working nicely. I'm glad Smart Pool gave me a new one but they never could find anything wrong with the old one--yet it wouldn't work.

[webfeet]

Cleancloth,
Did the Dynamic live up to your expectations? The Costco return policy sure looks inviting. I don't see how a person could go wrong.

[cleancloths]

The Dolphin is a total piece of crap. After running a short while it would go back and forth over a 10 foot section and that was all it would do. I took it back to Costco and they gave me a full refund with no questions asked.

I bought a Blue Pearl instead. It is cheaper and works much better. It has no remote, but none is needed as it makes random turns and cleans my entire 20 by 40 pool in about 2 hours.

[CarlD]

Despite the fact that I've been given a new Dolphin Dynamic, and it works perfectly, I am leery of them.

I think if it doesn't work out of the box you take it back. That's true of most anything, and anything can be bad, out of the box, but I tend to think that other than shipping damage, a product that doesn't work wasn't tested, and shouldn't have been allowed to be sold. That's bad QA.

Things can fail quickly though, despite having been tested. Here's where a company shows its true character: How do they handle this? Do they move quickly and pro-actively to fix it, or do they drag their feet and try to palm it off on "user error"?

Classic example: Over 20 years ago, IBM was the leader in the PC industry, having blown Apple pretty much out of the water. They introduced their next generation machines, the AT (the 80286 based machine). They equipped it with the newest, biggest hard disk--20 megs (laughable when you can buy a pack of gum sized flash disk that holds 4 gigs today). It was expensive--5 grand or more. But there were problems with the hard disk failing. IBM made the fatal mistake of pretending the problem didn't exist and trying to blame the customers.

To make a long story short, the PC users caught on and IBM's reputation was tarnished. They never again held that place in the PC world despite making many fine machines (they made other mistakes, too). I STILL have an IBM ThinkPad from 1997 that still runs--though Windows 95 is mostly useless.

[cleancloths]

Despite the fact that I've been given a new Dolphin Dynamic, and it works perfectly, I am leery of them.

I think if it doesn't work out of the box you take it back. That's true of most anything, and anything can be bad, out of the box, but I tend to think that other than shipping damage, a product that doesn't work wasn't tested, and shouldn't have been allowed to be sold. That's bad QA.

Things can fail quickly though, despite having been tested. Here's where a company shows its true character: How do they handle this? Do they move quickly and pro-actively to fix it, or do they drag their feet and try to palm it off on "user error"?

Classic example: Over 20 years ago, IBM was the leader in the PC industry, having blown Apple pretty much out of the water. They introduced their next generation machines, the AT (the 80286 based machine). They equipped it with the newest, biggest hard disk--20 megs (laughable when you can buy a pack of gum sized flash disk that holds 4 gigs today). It was expensive--5 grand or more. But there were problems with the hard disk failing. IBM made the fatal mistake of pretending the problem didn't exist and trying to blame the customers.

To make a long story short, the PC users caught on and IBM's reputation was tarnished. They never again held that place in the PC world despite making many fine machines (they made other mistakes, too). I STILL have an IBM ThinkPad from 1997 that still runs--though Windows 95 is mostly useless.

Carl - I agree with what you say about products and service, and even agree with what happened to IBM's market share - I just don't agree that the quality of the hard drive was the reason. IBM was a big company and as such was slow moving. Also they were very expensive. These two things left openings for other companies - like Dell, Gateway, CompuAdd and a host of others to exploit. These companies started making machines that significantly undercut IBM's price points. Then you had Compaq which compete at the same or even higher price points but offered better and faster machines. These are the things that killed IBM's PC business.

[CarlD]

Carl - I agree with what you say about products and service, and even agree with what happened to IBM's market share - I just don't agree that the quality of the hard drive was the reason. IBM was a big company and as such was slow moving. Also they were very expensive. These two things left openings for other companies - like Dell, Gateway, CompuAdd and a host of others to exploit. These companies started making machines that significantly undercut IBM's price points. Then you had Compaq which compete at the same or even higher price points but offered better and faster machines. These are the things that killed IBM's PC business.

Well, I remember this vividly: The IBMs were the class. I had a 1985 Dell (called a PC's Limited back then) and it was a piece of pure junk. It was "cheap" -- $800 got you an 8088 processor, 640k RAM, 1 360k floppy and a keyboard. You had to buy the second floppy or hard drive, video card, monitor, cards for parallel and serial ports, modem (1200 baud was standard) and DOS.

But they were junk next to the IBMs. Onlly the Compaq compared then. With massive hard disk failures, and the disk being something like $1200 to replace, IBMs lethargy DID allow the clones breathing room. But where it went from "Nobody was ever fired for recommending IBM" to IBM costs too much and isn't as reliable as Compaq, the slide started. Back in 1986, 86, 87, you bought IBM or Compaq for businesses. The clones were just too unreliable and unpredictable. We had TERRIBLE problems with a series of clone modems (forgot the brand), and with Hayes modems and their software and switched over to Everex.

But it all came back to IBM not taking responsibity for the AT drive. They, of course, made other mistakes. Their PS/2 series were fine computers, but they closed the architecture and everyone else kept theirs open, so nobody wanted a machine that required special, super-expensive cards and, if you made ONE goof, would blow the card (they were delicate). IBM then messed up with its first set of portables.--clamshells. They were large, heavy, slow, expensive and unreliable. Their final mess-up was the operating system known as OS/2.

This was ironic because when OS/2 Warp came out it was a FANTASTIC operating system--more advanced than Windows 2000 and available years ahead of it, ahead of Windows 95, too. More efficient too--things ran MUCH faster under Warp. The version 4 of Warp would blow XP out of the water. But IBM didn't market it correctly, didn't sell it correctly, didn't support it correctly, didn't support hardware correctly, etc. IBM had Microsoft build it, but IBM set out the user reqs and the specs. If there's one thing Big Blue knows it's how to build op systems. It was simply better than Windows and IBM messed up on, and gave up on OS/2.

But still, I remember watching as IBM messed up on the AT, and slowly, slowly, slowly sank their PC business, which they had virtually invented. (I mean what was know for years as the IBM/IBM Clone PCs--now the Windows world).

[webfeet]

Cleancloths,

Where did you purchase your Blue Pearl? What is a good price? After you vacumn again, give us and update. Hopefully, my pool will be completed about Labor Day. I am not having an automatic cleaner installed, and I will need to make a decision about a robotic as soon as possible. Thanks for your input.
Webfeet

[cruzmisl]

The Costco return policy sure looks inviting. I don't see how a person could go wrong.

You can't. That's why I bought mine from there and am not worried at all. Fwiw, my 3 year old Diagnostic is still working in my Dad's pool.

[cleancloths]

Cleancloths,

Where did you purchase your Blue Pearl? What is a good price? After you vacumn again, give us and update. Hopefully, my pool will be completed about Labor Day. I am not having an automatic cleaner installed, and I will need to make a decision about a robotic as soon as possible. Thanks for your input.
Webfeet

Bought it online from drpool.com, speak to Rich (number is on the site) if you have any questions. I think it was about $700 including shipping. He threw in an extra bag and there was no shipping charge. The unit comes with the power supply and a cart is available at an extra cost. I had no need for the cart as I keep the unit about 20' from the pool in a rubbermaid storage bin and the cart would just get in the way.

The thing works so much better and faster than the Dolphin it is amazing.