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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

If you find this branding more confusing, then you are probably not familiar with laptop shopping in this segment.

Here are all of the 2024 models available: Latitude 9450, Latitude 7350, Latitude 7350 Ultralight, Latitude 7350 Detachable, Latitude 7455, Latitude 7450, Latitude 7450 Ultralight, Latitude 7650, Latitude 5550, Latitude 5455, Latitude 5450, Latitude 5350, Latitude 3450, Latitude 3550.

You have to memorize what you are looking at - the first digit is the model line, the second digit is a reference to the screen size, and the last set of digits a reference to the model year.

So "Dell Latitude 5450" conveys all the same information as "2024 Dell Pro 14" Plus". I'm not sure what's controversial about that change.

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I'm not a Dell customer, so I'm not familiar with their product lines, but from what you say "Dell Latitude 5450" is indeed clearer to me than "2024 Dell Pro 14" Plus". I can get familiar with the number scheme and infer that higher numbers indicate better performance, larger screen, etc. "Pro" and "Plus" will always be meaningless and arbitrary.

> infer that higher numbers indicate better performance

But bigger numbers don't always indicate better performance. A Dell Latitude 6420 (a Sandy Bridge) is much slower than a 5420. Same with a 7320 versus a 5440.

Then that's a confusion the manufacturer should address. Consistency and clarity is key. But it's not solved by scrapping all of it in favor of "Plus", "Pro" and "Max".

Here's four potential model numbers/names.

Latitude 6420

Latitude 5540

Inspiron 5555

2011 Dell Pro 14"

2024 Dell Pro 15"

2024 Dell Pro Max 15"

Which ones are the recent bigger laptops? Which is the older smaller laptop? Which is better, Inspiron or Latitude? Which is better, the Dell Pro or the Dell Pro Max? Which naming scheme makes these things way more obvious?

I personally don't care about the year of release. The display size is good to know, but it doesn't tell me whether it's an IPS or OLED, which I care more about. Besides, I'm much more interested about the CPU, RAM, disk size, etc.

So should all of these be part of the product name as well, just to please me? Probably not.

Yet if the manufacturer segmented their product by arbitrary brand names (which could also be "Base", "Pro", "Max", etc. mind you; I just think these are overloaded terms, and custom terms like XPS, Latitude, etc. would be clearer), and then subdivided these with sensible model names that encoded this information, this would make more sense. Given that I as a consumer get familiar with it, which one might want to do before deciding to spend thousands on a product.

Again, I'm not saying that Dell has done a good job at this, but potentially it _can_ be done well. For example, I think MikroTik does a decent job at this[1]. It does lead to product names that are difficult to parse/pronounce like "CSS326-24G-2S+RM", but once you're familiar with the scheme, it's easy to know which product has which specs, and to compare them.

Anyway, it's fine if we disagree. I think we both made our case.

[1]: https://wiki.mikrotik.com/Manual:Product_Naming

I totally get the naming scheme of practically every technical feature being exposed in the model number, but outside of selling to techie people you'll quickly lose people in trying to remember what was recommended. I don't have a problem remembering what model Supermicro board is on my router build, but I totally understand someone not having a clue what an X11SBA-LN4F is or have any clue on how to begin to compare that to some other Supermicro board.

When it comes to selling to the mass market for a single big consumer electronic good like a laptop or phone or game console or whatever, it seems to me to be way simpler to just have a few decent SKUs. Having someone try and remember "Bill said I should get the CSS326-24G-2S+RM, or was that the 3326, wait is this the one with +RM or not, hmm this is complicated I guess I'll just get something else" is a lot more challenging than having someone remember "Bill said I should get at least the Pro version; oh, that's the listing for the 2023 model I want the newer one, there we go."

You'll really burn a customer when they get confused by the naming scheme and think they're getting one thing but then when they get it home it doesn't work like their friend's because their friend is rocking the 7730-G3-M-QQ-7i gizmowidget as opposed to the 7730-G3-N-QQ-7i gizmowidget.

Sure, I agree with that, but surely there's a middle ground between cryptic model names and simple ones to the point of being meaningless. If you have to add the year and display size to your product name, then it's probably not unique enough.

Like I said, this middle ground to me are standard product line names with some meaningful product identifier, so this change by Dell seems like a regression.

> Which is better, the Dell Pro or the Dell Pro Max?

Neither. The precision lines are workstations addressed at a very different audience. So for the average customer the "better" ranking is non-pro, then pro and only in exceptional cases pro max. The actual differentiator is the blank, plus, premium afterwards.

Bonus questions: which models have ECC ram and quadro cards available? Which ones have the best displays? My guess would be pro max premium and non-pro premium, but that is far from obvious.

Bold of you to assume it's not going to be Dell Pro 5540.

> Consistency and clarity is key

For manufacturing, yes, absolutely not for marketing.

"Dell 2024 Super Max Pro Ultra Plus New Premium" is objectively better for confusing customers and tricking them into purchasing products sold at higher price and worse value proposition.

I think those kinds of model numbers are fine, as long as it's prominently explained somewhere and I don't have to chase down some forum post from a few years ago because the company can't be bothered to explain its own products to its customers.

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