Posted on 10/31/2009 5:03:19 PM PDT by sushiman
For a variety of reasons I've given up on the switch to Apple and am now considering buying a Dell here in Japan . Never owned any Dell products . If one Google searches one can find a _______( fill in co. name of choice ) SUCKS blogs for every computer company in existence inc. Apple . : ) Need some good advice re: next purchase . I am not a techie nor am I a gamer . Use the computer for basic stuff . The XPS I'm thinking of getting would come with the Intel i5 2.66mhz 8MB ; 6 GB of RAM ; 500 HDD ; 21.5 monitor and NVIDIA GeForce GTS 240 1024MB . Would you advise getting Dell Care for 3 years ? Any advice appreciated .
So what do you recommend ?
Great sound, huh? My best purchase ever...
All My Dells Are Belong To Me & Still Up And Working.
I am computer challenged — only know how to do such things ads type boring and annoying posts to FR. But for what it’s worth, I have a Dell, bought last Christmas, and so far, so good. Certainly better than the HP I had. That one stunk.
Dell used to custom build systems not listed, but you had to ask for the service. Maybe that is only for business customers.
Also you might be able to get a free upgrade to Win 7 Ultimate if you can only get one with Vista Ultimate installed. But I would check to make sure if Dell is doing that now. I know Sony has that deal now that you get an upgrade by mail.
I had a HD problem after one year, and they quickly replaced it. It just took me a while to figure out that the problem was a bad HD.
On a side note, the Gen 2 machine did have a slight design flaw in that the front MIC jack was low-powered and didn't work. The sound card in the back had a MIC jack and I had to run a patch cord from the back to plug in a microphone. Other than that, the machine worked well and was easy to open and add more cards.
I still run that PC as my desktop. My other PC is now an HP dv7t notebook.
-PJ
Whatever you do, don’t buy Toshiba! I bought a L-305 laptop when my desktop crashed and trust me....it’s not even been six months and I am now having to use a borrowed desktop. It seems that Toshiba has changed their policy on warranties just this last Monday to the effect that, instead of being able to take it into an authorized repair location close by, where I could have the pc back in a day or two, I NOW have to UPS it back to the Toshiba repair depot (which is apparently just a third party repair company in Tennessee, and wait probably several weeks or longer. Basically, their warranty isn’t worth the crappy paper it’s printed on. I’ll never buy another Toshiba product of ANY kind.
Thanks for the feedback, gives me much to ponder and research. Considering that Gateway no longer gives many options on their website, I think I will give Dell a shot.
My old Dell laptop was warranty repaired in Tennessee. Dell sent DHS with the packing box, driver packed the laptop in it and took it with him. I had it back in several days. I think the only thing that wasn’t new on it was my hard drive.
It is still chugging along for my son and I bought it in 2002. I did buy the 3 year special care warranty, which came in very handy (keyboard and speakers stopped working).
My only complaint is that I cannot get the volume loud enough.
So far, it's been a total disaster.
The hard drive has been replaced THREE times (and it's still noisy), the mother board was replaced three weeks ago, the APC adapter died out of the blue two weeks ago, the audio is horrible (even with an external sound card), and now the system is blue screening....
I worked at Dell for six years in marketing and I have great respect for the company. Micheal Dell is also a republican which is really great.
However, I will NEVER buy another Dell again.
I bought an HP last week with windows 7, 6MB of memory, a 7200 RPM hard drive, and a Intel Duo Core 2.4 processor. It puts the Dell XPS to absolute shame.
Some advice if you do go with the Dell ---
Best time to buy is Black Friday (by far the best deals of the year)
Dell outlet pricing is NOT very good. You might save $20-$100 bucks over a similar config, but it is NOT worth it to buy a returned system.
Be sure to get windows 7 -- it rocks! Be SURE to get the 64 bit OS -- the 32 bit OS can only handle up to 3mb of memory!!!
The AUDIO on XPS sytems are NOT very good. Be sure to get an external sound card to compensate. (Sound on my HP without an external card is fantastic BTW.
For your uses, you probably do not need 6mb of memory. For basic word processing and Internet you can easily get by with 2.1 ghz processor and 4gb of memory. Take the savings and apply to the extended warranty!
good luck!
ASUS Laptop
If I were to buy a desktop.. I would try to also get an Asus or for a little more money Alienware...
But for cheap and easy.... I can't recommend Dell or the others... thought the GPX Dell seems pretty good for colleges.
My current employer and my previous employer are both “all Dell” shops. In both places, the Dells just run and run and run.
“6MB of memory, a 7200 RPM hard drive, and a Intel Duo Core 2.4 processor”
There’s you problem - no memory!
I wasn’t aware Alienware was high-end Dell?
Not sure if this is what you want but if you pick Home and then Laptop / Notebooks there is a “Narrow your laptop selection” on left-hand side and at bottom it has a box to compare all laptops. I’d try that
Thanks, I will.
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