Truth Behind Dark Smiley Systems......

is dss unbanned yet? i want to see his reaction to this revelation

 

I think that you guys probably just ruined any chance of business or popularity that Dark Smiley Systems had. The only people that considered buying from there were on these forums. If people do a Google search and find them, they won't find anything out about them, other than this thread...

Vedya and RunningGunner single-handily destroyed Dark Smiley Systems .

If things still go well, good luck DarkSmiley.

 

Very nice, I turned 17 not long ago. In all honesty, I think the best contributors to NBR are young kids, like 16 year-olds.

I think this thread should certainly exist, because it is informative, until some people think it's funny to throw in a bunch of bogus and spread rumors.

In my opinion, I think Shane is a pioneer in business. There is always that eager young kid who wants to start up a business because it is his dream. I know I'd love to be a Sager reseller, but it isn't realistic, especially with all the competition. If there is one worry I have, I hope warranty is through Sager. . . We don't need another Flawless. . .

 

He emailed me about it, so he's still reading the forums. I gave him my email so we could discuss the software for the Criterion keyboard backlight(which we're not working on anymore, though I might consider selling it to other resellers if they're interested). He saw my comment about thinking differently about DarkSmiley and wanted to "apologize" in an email. Here's a quote from it:

I might consider buying from DarkSmiley in the future, but I don't think I will now. I would consider him for a laptop if he was college student, which I assumed, but he seems a little too immature to get a laptop from imo. It's great to start your business now, but I honestly don't think that you'll get too far. I hope I'm wrong. Good luck Shane (DarkSmiley).

 

Here's my two cents: Computer Enthusiasts such as a good majority of the active users on these forums are able to fix you're average computer problems, and if they aren't able to, know a friend who does.

So what it comes down to is do you trust yourself to take good care of your $3000 toy?

Then perhaps you're the unlucky one who was shipped a defective notebook, which is understandable as it happens and is part of life, but guess what? You don't have to worry because the notebook will be repaired by OCZ.

On a side note, does anyone else realize that they may have hurt the heart of a fellow human being?

Sometimes it's not as important to be right as it is important to respect and honor your fellow brother.

 

Athlon64M, look at #6:

http://www.cracked.com/article_16605_8-most-obnoxious-internet-commenters.html

Sorry, had to .

On a more serious note, I honestly think that people should know that they're buying a $2k-$4k notebook from a 15 year-old kid. It's not that I have anything against it, it's just something people should know before buying something like that.

 

I'm saving that link!

 

#8 looks like the ideal Mac user

 

Although #6 comes very close to describing my above post, it is of a different type of post, there is no "knee jerk" in my post.

As for the age, that point could have been expressed without emotionally hurting someone.

P.S. The author is quite off the mark with "isn't that what life is all about?(Stop judging people and let everyone be who they want to be)"

Life is about love.

 

I say good for Shane, I wish I started a business when I was 15.

But, let this be an important reminder to all of us just how incriminating our myspace profiles can be, if you can sit and look at your myspace with your grandma, than you need to make it so you can.

 

I just love it

That's what I though also, dress like Jobs http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/pcs/wear-the-exact-outfit-of-steve-jobs-for-458-157402.php

That's why I use facebook

 

BTW, if you search for "Dark Smiley Systems", this is the second thing that comes up, after the actual DSS site. Then, there's two videos of his "I like circles" videos. Not good for DSS. When people find his site, they're going to Google search the company...

 

LOL...Dude, chill...you've got a good lawyer in Shyster1 on here

 

I would be careful if I were you guys, DS seems pretty mad. I won't go much further than that, but that's all I'm going to say. He could probably create good systems if you give him the chance. I still agree that people should know he's 15, but do you want to pay $1k for someone else to build the same machine? I'm not going to offend or praise DSS yet, we'll see what happens with the Criterion...

 

wow, well i was planning to preorder from darksmiley as of 2 days ago, i then come on here and everyones saying he cant handle himself in a business.

i myself am 16, having worked very hard for my 2500$ @9$ an hour (yea thatll take alot of hours) , i dont want to gamble with it. i want at least one person to have ordered from him and have had a good experience with the criterion. i know 1 person has chosen to be the guinea pig, and i just hope you get what i plan to get next week.

so far, he seems very professional, except for the video. he has done alot of work to get a site up and running, go through with ocz and sager to get these laptops and try and be very professional in his business life.

the only thing holding me back now is that seeing the video, i really cant trust him. so im either going to order the 570tu from eurocom, which is very reliable, or wait for the whitebook from dark smiley.

i really want the whitebook, since i can get it for a decent price from ds, (1800$ with 8800M GTX)

i hope he can stay professional through all of this, and make some amazing systems

 

Do you really think the average person seeking either a notebook or desktop computer is going to use "Dark Smiley Systems" as search parameters?

Picture it:

A 34 year mother of 3 looking to replace the 5 year old family DELL computer.

It is 1:15pm, the 2 oldest are in school and the 9 month old finally drifted to sleep leaving Nicole to look for the new Holms Family Computer.

She opens her web browser of choice, Flock, and thinks about Best Buy or Circuit City but recalls the negative experience with those young sales people only out for a commission and decides to try online. She begins to think of query words to describe the new desktop she is envisioning...hmmm, tower, Intel, computer, desktop and Vista. Then she tries brand names she can recall like Sony, HP, DELL, Toshiba or Acer but so far, nothing appeals to her.

Just then, it hits her....Dark Smiley Systems! Yes! Try those in the search field! Of course, why didn't she think of it sooner!



Now as you well know, search engines use m e t a tags (among other things) to locate pages relative to your search. Try finding DSS w/o using any of the words from the URL.

 

tornbacchus, there are few other retailers selling whitebook as well.

 

yea i know, but killer is pretty expensive, and another one, i think cyber something wont ship to canada. i still can try rk computers, but they look pretty expensive too.

sorry if i got the names wrong, im tired.

 

Imagine if you guys were in his position. I'm not telling you guys to change your opinions about DSS, but you've pretty much ruined the company for him, which is obvious after a quick conversation with him. Think about how you would feel if you started a site selling computers and then somebody starts posting all kinds of **** about it. Talking with him for a few minutes changed my opinion about him a little, you guys should treat him with a little more respect, I know I've respected as a reputable notebook seller before, why stop now? I'm not trying to sound sympathetic, but he's 15 like most of the people here. Just think about DSS a little more, that's all I'm saying...

 

The worst thing Mr. Collins could do for himself would be to get spitting mad at people, or this thread, to the point where he starts saying or doing stupid things - that's the best way to make sure that any mud flung his way stays stuck, good and hard. Certainly, this thread will not be an asset in the short run, but what eventually separates the worthwhile from the worthless is how they face adversity and criticism, and whether they let their product do the talking or their emotions do the talking. The latter will guarantee that your business has a limited lifespan, the former will eventually carry you through.

I'm quite sure that Mr. Collins is capable of building good systems (at least, I see no reason to doubt the veracity of that claim at this point) and, as I've said repeatedly, so far he has plenty gold stars in my book for having set his business up in a very businesslike manner - that, if nothing else, puts him above a lot of his erstwhile competition.

As an example of what happens when you give in and answer mud with venom, I will briefly describe a dead business I know of in an entirely different industry. X Signs used to be a small, decent sign-shop that an acquaintance of mine started working at during, and after, college. X Signs produced many of the signs we see around us and take for granted, like graphics on the sides of commercial vehicles, the carved wooden signs in housing developments, storefront window graphics, and the like. The owner, Mr. X, was nearing 60 and wanted to retire and get out of the business. Unfortunately, Mr. X was (a) a little too greedy for his own good, and (b) vindictive. Mr. X finally managed to work out a deal with Ms. Y to sell X Signs to Ms. Y for terms that, in reality, the business could not afford - Ms. Y promised to pay over more than the cash flow could really bear (based, partly, on inflated asset values that were supposed to yield better tax deductions than they really should have). Inevitably, Ms. Y was not able to meet her agreed payment schedule and fell a bit behind. Rather than try to work it out, however, Mr. X started dunning Ms. Y for the overdue payments, and in short order, took Ms. Y into court. Partly because he was too cheap to have hired a decent lawyer to work out the sale, Mr. X became bogged down in litigation trying to foreclose on the business he had sold to Ms. Y who, naturally enough, resisted Mr. X's attempts to take the business away from her - she had, after all, paid him a goodly sum of money already and didn't want to see it all go to waste. To make a long story short, Mr. X eventually got the business back, but not after having blown most of the money he had received in legal bills, including filing claims for RICO and conspiracy against Ms. Y that had no real basis in fact (for which he was sanctioned by the court).

In addition, because Mr. X had been so cheap, even though he got the business back, he had failed to include a non-compete that would have applied in the event of foreclosure, and he also failed to include any provisions that would have protected his customer lists in the event of foreclosure. As a result, Ms. Y, now out for blood, set up a new shop, with financing from someone else, and proceeded to compete with Mr. X, who couldn't do anything about it. That, of course, set off another round of wasted litigation that achieved nothing more than fattening the pockets of already overfed lawyers.

Determined never to be taken like that again, Mr. X's vindictive streak took over. First, he forced my acquaintance, who had stayed with the business all along as an employee, into signing an employment contract with a very onerous noncompete clause in it (my acquaintance had been at-will up until then). Second, he proceeded to harangue every vendor and potential client in town, and would throw temper tantrums in the offices of any of his clients who had the temerity to send a bit of business over to Ms. Y's new shop.

In very short order, my acquaintance, who was the primary producer at X Signs, quit and moved to a related business that was sufficiently distinct not to be covered by the noncompete. Vendors stopped extending credit, and clients stopped bringing work in. After two years, the noncompete my acquaintance had signed terminated, and he promptly set out on his own and opened his own sign shop. About a year after that, and a few threatening visits from Mr. X, my acquaintance happened to hear of a sheriff's sale at which a lot of equipment from a sign shop was going to be auctioned off under the execution of a judgment against the sign shop - you guessed it, X Signs. To close, my acquaintance managed to acquire a number of very expensive pieces of equipment that he was already very familiar with because he'd used those exact pieces for the five years that he worked at X Signs, for a cost of about 10 cents on the dollar. In other words, because he let his vindictive side get the better of him, Mr. X ended up getting about 10% of what his business had been worth - had he not been so vindictive, it's almost a certainty that none of this would have happened.

Moral of the story - s**t happens, but turds sink, so if you rise to the occasion, you'll be golden; but if you don't, you'll just end up being flushed down the toilet.

 

↑

It is so refreshing to read a post where the author took the time
required to compose a grammatically correct article. I never tire reading
his threads.

 

with or with out tp?

no but really, I've got nothing against him, I've only said kinda words.

 

wus means grammatically?

 

Where are my cones?

 

@Carvel...

 

Considering the fact that 9 year olds have gone to college, I have no trouble believing that a 15 year old can build a computer.

 

I can make coffee !

 

The proverbial horse is dead Jim.

I'm a Doctor, not a software engineer!

ok, I need sleep.

 

You guys are just going to get the thread locked...

 

Does that trouble you?

 

okay his 16 yrs old....you decide...

 

lol Six posts in a row of spam isn't exactly that good...

Maybe if it was funny spam, but no . I wouldn't mind discussing DSS a little more before the thread is closed.

 

OK, you got me. Was it really 6?

Well, discuss away....I'm all ears.

I already said that after my chat with him, I think he is bright and ahead of the curve but behind the industry standard. He really shot himself with the **** pictures on myspace. Time for damage control. Maybe a group buy
at smokin prices for say, 10 of us???




I'm reaching but so what!

 

Five spam posts from you and ten from a few other guys. I think if DarkSmiley knows as much as he thinks, he should known one thing: Nothing's private on the internet. I'm not going to lie, this was my respect for him before: --------
This is it now: --

I've had some interesting conversations about the computer industry with him, but he's running a business and trying to convince people to buy from him, not chatting to make friends (mostly). Not to say that I don't like him, he's a decent kid. This is business, I'm not going to buy from him just because he's been friendly and helpful on the forums, though that it is a plus and a good business practice.

 

lets face it guys, it's not the machines DSS selling concern us, but the customer services. can he provide 24/7 tech support? or at least guarantee to stay on business until our warranties ended?

 

Speak for yourself, Nirvana ...

We'll see what happens when some reviews come out.

 

I feel pretty bad for this kid...when I was 15 I wasn't doing crap with my life, but here he is selling custom built notebooks through a very professional looking website (looks a lot nicer than powernotebooks to be completely honest). There is absolutely no basis for any judgment unless it's coming from somebody that has actually purchased a notebook from Dark Smiley.

 

His site is the most professional site out of all the computer selling sites I have ever seen. His age would not be a factor in my decision. However, I put more value in a long-established better business with good ratings from buyers and the better business bureau, and powernotebooks/xoticpc reputation is pristine. But if they didn't have the machine I wanted, I would give him a look.

 

this thread is still going? lol

 

okay lets THINK about it.

before the OT of the other forum posted that thread, some people here were actually gonna purchase from DSS.

the guy on that forum posted that particular thread, which to me, seems as if it was a personal attack against the 16 year old kid running DSS.

one of OUR nbr forum users here posted THIS thread, linking us to THAT thread, apparently with the intention of informing us that our purchases would be to a 16-year-old. no harm in more information, right?

thing is, all it took to bring down DSS was that post in that other forum, which very strongly affected how we saw DSS to be. if only you pretend you haven't seen all these threads and posts, you'd think that DSS was run by a normal man, trying to make a normal business.

how does a 16-year-old kid behind a business so drastically change the viewpoints of so many people here?!

reality check. he's still doing a business.

what if a century-old grandmother was building your laptop? would that make you think twice about buying from her? what if she worked for sager and your computer was actually made by her? are you going for the 30-day moneyback now?

common.. it doesn't make any sense WHO builds the computer, or WHO processes your computer.. as long as its up and running, its still a computer.

if Shane decided to sign on your notebook before he sends it to you, or skin your laptop with his face, then that's a totally different issue, which is worth arguing about.

 

Sometimes these threads remind me of a bunch of 13 year old girls, so much drama. You guys should just leave this kid alone, He hasn't done anything wrong, and until he does, you should mind your own business.

Besides, sagers are made in China, you should be so lucky if the kids making your laptops are even 16 years old.

Personally, I think this thread should be closed, it's not beneficial to anyone.

 

just a head's up. i found this :

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=291050

of a time when someone noticed DSS and even wanted to buy from him. see how he responded. he responded just like how ANY other reseller would, confident, and willing to check out additional info personally that he might have not have known about at that time.

so i still don't get all the ranting about him being a 16-year-old.

 

not in China,Taiwan personally i think that we must give this kid a chance-well,i do a business myself,but it is in totally different industry(social website app building) but i wouldnt take this risk of building custom notebooks,and i might order from him.

 

errrmmm well I just watched that myspace video...not really sure what to think now

 

Eh, closing the thread now would just draw more of a crowd, hence more viewers, and would feed the persecution fantasies of certain members, so there's no point in closing it.

On the other hand, it has to be said that those whinging about Mr. Collins age have failed to state a good case, because they've failed to present any evidence that would justify the claimed inference from Mr. Collins' age that he is untrustworthy, other than pointing to some youtube video, which is a little bit like pointing to the cellphone camera pics of the office christmas party and deciding that, because your boss was shameless enough to pull out his Saturday Night Fever schtik at the party, that he is simply does not have enough good judgment to be in a management position.

On top of which, they've failed to refute the inferences to be drawn from the manner in which the business was formed, both legal and financial, and how the business has been held out to the public, and, quite frankly, the fact that, until the post that got him banned for advertising - which, while a nuisance, is certainly not a malum in se like flaming or name-calling - Dark Smiley aka Mr. Collins had behaved himself quite admirably on the forum from what I've seen of his posts.

If Mr. Collins really is 15 or 16 years old, then he is quite precocious, and certainly apprears to be more capable of running a business properly than many of his erstwhile competitors.

 

I am not lumped in with "they", my contention is not limited to his age. I am not saying that because he is 15 years old he cannot be trusted. I at no time have said his age was the inhibiting factor when deciding to purchase from him. For me, it is strictly a matter of expertise and experience.

Can anyone, Shyster1 included, honestly say they would have a Dentist
still in school perform a root canal for them? Or a a mechanic still attending trade school bleed the brake system on the family car?

And in both examples, the Dentist and Mechanic are in school for their profession of choice. This child is in high school, not trade school.

I could care less about his age. I do care about his ability to comprehend the intricate inner workings of computers and│or computer parts, the finer points of customer service and how that relates to (customer) perception as well as the finality of commitment and what it means having a customer (much less a customer for life).

I agree, we (NBR) and others should give him a chance to prove himself but as I have said before, just not with my money. What I would like to see is the adults in his life stepping in to offer some assurance that they are aware of his activities and are monitoring his progress to ensure his client obligations are satisfied. Not that they are running thigs for him but only there as a support structure.

IF I had an apprentice rebuilding my garage, I would very much like to see his mentor supervising. Not unlike the Amish.

 

Agreed Zenica!
Most people do not question his knowledge or his commitment, it's just his very limited experience.
I wish him the best of luck.

 

The only thing that comes to mind reading the first 10 pages or so is NIMBY .

Everyone that has stated "oh giv ehim a break" "I would buy from him" etc. Either doesnt plan on buying one, doesnt have the $4000+, or isnt going to be one of the first base clientel.

Just like prisons- BUILD MORE PRISONS-

just Not In My Back Yard.
- George Carlin ~RIP~

 

ha, that would be me

so i was planning to purchase from dark smiley. i thought it was a new, small business trying to get up and running. from the good posts that i got from others saying he had good rep, i was planning on buying from him.

the only thing now that i am worried about is if 1 can he actually build a computer to meet all the standards, as he hasnt gone to school for any computer building knowledge.

and two is, if he can actually honour our warrenty after 1 or 2 years. wont he be going to college or uni?? if he is actually interested in computers and building them, i have no doubt in my mind that he would go farther in education to get really good at building them. so what will happen, will he just leave in 2 years and leave us all hanging?

i still dont know about all of this, so im probably going to order a 570Tu from eurcom, as i know about build quality, warrenty and just knowing that they are professional. i may have to pay a few hundred more, but i know how the computer will perform and will have reassurance that if something does go wrong, that i can always send it back to them.

 

How about this, consider closing the thread AFTER I receive and write a review of the notebook I ordered from him. I will be doing some inspections myself as well (i.e checking the placement of the thermal pads, thermal paste, screwing etc.). The only thing I won't be able to assess if he can install an operating system, because I didn't order it with one (but anyone can install an OS on a blank slate anyways). So be patient.