....delaying order times from their old 5 odd days to over 3 weeks.. for a simple server.

Think we'll have to stop using Dell... like many other people we know.

Bracknell will all but close over the next 9-12 months. The best employees will be offered jobs in Austin, TX or Montpellier, France. Sad but true... actually, the sad part is Dell won't come clean and this is all being drip fed.

We all need to get our coats - big corporations are abandoning the UK. Only the finance sector will be left.

Bracknell was Dell's first office outside of North America. Whilst the current site is about half a mile from the original (and the company has moved a few times since), Dell Bracknell was (during my time at the company) the home of Paul Bell (head of Dell EMEA) and the hub around which Dell's European business revolved.

As the company expanded, other offices gained prominence. The factory in Limerick heralded the growth of the office in Bray (south of Dublin) and a subsequent move to Cherrywood. Many of the jobs in the marketing and home & small business divisions went to Ireland in the mid-2000s. It was a bitch of an office to get to (few international flights from the US HQ left many company execs having to change at Heathrow and then get a taxi across congested Dublin from the airport in the North to the Dell office in the South) but it was a lot cheaper than the UK office and the staff were educated to the same level as the UK staff and all spoke English. For a company run by economics and not an emotional tie to Bracknell a shift across the Irish Sea was inevitable.

Later on, offices in Germany, France and the rest of Europe, combined with a forward-thinking attitude to geographically-dispersed teams saw jobs shift to cheaper locations when possible.

The rise of Dell's Bangalore office saw much of the company's European growth fuelled by staff gains in India where multiple staff could be hired for the cost of one UK staff member.

In recent years, Dell has also seen jobs move back to the company's HQ in Austin, Texas.

The sums just don't add up for Dell to continue in Bracknell and the people I know who've been laid off in the past eighteen months have all received decent redundancy packages and have all gone on to find work elsewhere.

Times change and sad as it is, Dell has found other places in the world more suited to its business model.

They also got rid of 124 people in tech support and some more in sales in Glasgow earlier this year.Also recently more sales staff in the sales site are going to be let go which is a shame for anyone being made redundant near Xmas.The company ismaking money hand over fist so its a shame people will be affected this way.All the best to guys who are affected.