Why does Dell have a bad rep?

Fabio

It seems to me that Dell computers seem to have a pretty bad reputation but I have never been able to say why.

Can anyone tell me why?

Filan

As an employee in Limerick they had one time a reputation not dissimilar to Nazi concentration camps.....savagely long forced overtime, regardless of circumstance...and dismissal if one refused. It's reputation has improved a little since....but it was infamous. Not sure if that's permeated to it's product...but maybe

Hobbes

From a consumer point of view it is their support. Machines are grand, buying them is generally painless online but it is like hell trying to get anything resolved with the machine if something goes wrong.

lodgepole

People will dislike any market leader... Particularly those in the custom build/linux camp...

Dell are excellent, I had five pleasant years with my last Dell during which time they replaced several parts free of charge despite my opting out of any after purchase care. I built my last computer but i'd recomend a Dell to anybody who was looking for a cheap machine and for whom high end performance wasn't an issue.

mikemac

I dealt with them recently and ended up cancelling the order(courier took 2 weeks to get package from Limerick to Dublin)
Unacceptable as far as I was concerned as I was paying €50 for delivery.

I was very suprised when I rang the Dell support line and got through to an Indian call centre. I was assuming I'd be dealing with the Cherrywood office as it was 01 Dublin number.

I'll admit I was full of prejudice (spelling?) and was expecting that the Indian staff wouldn't understand me or wouldn't care
They were extremly helpful and made several follow phonecalls and I got my refund in the end. Possibly more so than an Irish person on minimum wage doing the same job.
Maybe "Dell Hell' is a myth.

Note: I've no connection to Dell. I own a Mac and I'm never buying a Windows PC ever again

duridian

I've gained considerably more respect for Dell in recent times, since they now offer processors from both Intel and AMD.
I still think the pile of crapware they bundle with their new pcs is appalling, and I really don't know why they do this, as there is so much rubbish running in the background that it makes their machines seem slow. When you uninstall all of this 30-day-demo junk, their machines fly along like any other would.

kippy

I think you'll find a lot of people who are into building PC's exclusively for high end gaming and labour intensive tasks tend to have the most negative attitude to Dell.
Dell machines have the name of not being easy to upgrade once you have them. Some are/were however this is in the minority of cases. If you buy a basic rig all the hardware parts are upgradeable.

Their high end machines arent always the best value and you'll often be told that building one is cheaper. That may be the case but not everyone is confortable with this option. I feel their XPS systems are extremely expensive for what you get but outside of this their other machines are among the cheapest and best you can buy. I always remove all the crapware once I get the machine and install AVG and a few freeware reliable pieces of software that I have always used.

There are a few horror stories about customer support but personally (having dealt with them through work and also outside of work) I have never had a problem and found them to be fantastic.
The fact it most machines in this country are Dell machines. Therefore they are statisticilly the most brand you will hear talked of and in general you'll rarely hear the good, just the bad.

As with Irish Broadband on these fora, you'll find that you only really ever hear the negative stories which will inadvertantly stick in your head and give you a bad impression of the company in question.
Bottom line in my opinion is that you can pick up extremely good bargains on Dell if you have half an idea what you are looking for.

EDIT: I'd like to add I worked in Limerick for about a year in 2000 and at the time I found it a great place to work. Decent pay for basic enough work. Granted if I had a family and needed to spend some time at home it would have been difficult but the OT money was extremely useful at the time.
Kippy

ats

I've dealt with their support on a number of occasions. I remember at one point i had gold level support on a server and they refused to send an engineer out for a critical failure on a raid array on a mission critical machine. it took over 30 minutes on the phone phone kicking and screaming, three escalations before they realised that i had the support level required then another 20 minutes of try this try that. when what was required was an engineer out with the parts to rebuild the raid array.

in other circumstances they where on par with NTL for wait times on the phone.


then theres the fact your basic warranty id for 90 days a 12 month one cost € 200+

then then the upgradability or lack there of. a lot of the machines are small form factors so it makes upgrading difficult and i recall one model of pc that cam out with RIMM type RAM when it cam to upgrading the ram it had to be installed in pairs and to bring the machine to 512 (it was 2 years ago) it would cost over €400. now i could buy a new PC for that price with 512 ram.

the choice of processor will help open the market

Steffano2002

Have been trying to format a brand new Dell laptop for the past 2 days and it was hell... Why format a new laptop? Simply because 24GB of cr@pware is unacceptable.

First time I formatted I didn't know Media Centre needed it's own partition and I also installed the drivers in the incorrect order (impossible to get sound card to work as a result). Rang India and the Agents were helpful enough although it took 1 hour to get through to somebody who could help...

Formatted again last night doing everything properly and the laptop is now working perfectly. Only problem is the Media Center button (House icon next to On/Off button) no longer launches Media Centre... Go figure...

I'd recommend Dell only for laptops through the Dell Outlet on eBay because there are some nice deals to be had. Otherwise, avoid AFAIC.

joe_chicken

I built my last PC, and was going to do the same again...

Went onto Komplett, started building it from scratch, the total cost of everything came to 1050...

That was without a monitor or an OS...

Grand, I thought, don't really need either of them, and the price seems reasonable...

So, for some shìts and giggles, I went onto the Dell site to see how much the same machine would cost...

Turns out a machine with exactly the same specs (well as close as they can get) was selling for 1100, with a 20" Flat Panel and Windows Vista Premium...

Now considering the same Flat Panel is 400 new and Windows Vista is around 100-150... that was at least a saving of 500 euro


... and the shipping was free
So I bought it!

... and I rang customer care to see when it would arrive, I wasn't waiting on the phone, got through straight away, and the girl seemed more than willing to do as much as she could for me

The PC should hopefully be arriving today... so far, my experience has been good, but if it takes 2 weeks to arrive like suggested above, I will not be
happy!

PC is:
Dual Core E6400 (2.13 GHz, 2MB cache)
DDR2 RAM PC5400
Nvidia 7900GTS
2x160GB Raid 0 SATA drives

Bradidup

Fabio wrote:

It seems to me that Dell computers seem to have a pretty bad reputation but I have never been able to say why.

Can anyone tell me why?

I depends on the issue, if it is a warrenty related such as a failed component like a hard drive, monitor, power supply, disk drive etc they are very helpful, but if its an issue caused by a virus, third party software, modification etc etc they tend to not want to know about it and will try to pass the book!!!

The computer industry is so competative these days and the profit margin is so narrow I can see why. most large pc manufactures are the same.

kippy

but if its an issue caused by a virus, third party software, modification etc etc they tend to not want to know about it and will try to pass the book!!!

Generally this has nothing to do with the hardware. Microsoft would be the culprits and/or the software vendor/yourself that is at fault.
I think people expect a bit too much from PC manufacturers in this respect-no other PC Manufacturer would spend too much time helping on these issues either.
Kippy

Hobbes

kippy wrote:

Generally this has nothing to do with the hardware.

regardless your still supporting the machine. One of my calls to Dell support concerning a logitech mouse issue they told me they don't support logitech mice and that I had to ring Logitech.

Sounds fair? The machine was only a few days old and I had bought the logitech mouse from them.

That sort of crap does nothing to help the customer. Just because its not your problem doesn't make the customers problem go away. They can say "Well that isn't supported by us, however let me see if I can find some information for you", then 10 min google, mail to the customer. Customer feels like your looking after them and you can document it for your technote website in case someone else asks.

TBH if I had never had dealt with Technical Support* I would of said Dell was great. I have fully documented 3 month old case of a bad machine that involved numerous returns, same broken machine back, being fobbed off over and over and told the same crap like reformat the machine when it was aready factory reset. Btw that went on longer then 3 months but started documenting names and times for the last three months as at that time I was planning to proceed to legal action.

* When I say support I mean technical support. The customer support people I have met in Dell treat you professionally, Tech Support generally its 1 in 10 might give you a good service.

Hobbes

kippy wrote:

As with Irish Broadband on these fora, you'll find that you only really ever hear the negative stories which will inadvertantly stick in your head and give you a bad impression of the company in question.

There is mantra in support. You give good service and the person will tell 3-4 other people. You give bad service they will tell 100 people.

The internet makes that easy but it certainly isn't the reason you hear only negative stuff.

kippy

Fair enough Hobbes.
From my point of view in work, having dealt with their support on Numerous occasions (we supported about 1500 dell desktops) I've never had an issue.
Outside of work I have assisted 15-20 people get all manner of desktops/laptops from them and about 5 other people with technical issues on their Dell machines. No issues whatsoever.

Similiar can be said of my experience of IBB but the overwhelming mood on these fora is that Dell and IBB are bad-yet for the vast majority of people who deal with them (people who do not post on boards) the experiences are good.

HelterSkelter

I've bought a laptop and PC with Dell and am a happy camper. The monitor that came with the PC was making a funny noise in standby mode and they replaced it no bother. I found their support people to be very polite and helpful and always called back at the exact time they said they would.

cold_filter

I had an inspiron 2200, bought it about 1.5 years ago, problem with motherboard/hard drive, anyway didnt bother ringing dell cos thought it was out of warranty, got a friend who works there to get the guys from derry to call me rather than me having to call india, anyway 2 calls and they couldnt sort it out, so they sent an engineer out to me, laptop working fine now.

kmick

I always found them to be good if you had a small budget. You can go online over a few weeks and tricking around with custom building them and hitting good offers (which chnge every few days) you can get a very decent machine for half nothing. I have specced up and bought dells for a dozen people and have never heard back from any of them with issues. If they ever come back my response will be - buy a new one mate. They are not upgradable, customizable or otherwise pliable but they are cheap and if you look after them will last for years. If you are into custom builds why bother even slagging off dell. Its like slagging off ryanair for their customer service.

layke

joe_chicken wrote:

The PC should hopefully be arriving today... so far, my experience has been good, but if it takes 2 weeks to arrive like suggested above, I will not be
happy!

PC is:
Dual Core E6400 (2.13 GHz, 2MB cache)
DDR2 RAM PC5400
Nvidia 7900GTS
2x160GB Raid 0 SATA drives

No offense there son but comparing Dell parts to those on you buy from komplett is like comparing a Fiat to an Enzo.

If your not a gamer a Dell will do you just fine. You have no need for super fast hardware. You pay for what you get and trust me Komplett are quite cheap.

BlackWizard

XPS support is amazing!! 24/7 literally!

They've replaced my PSU twice already. Each time they ring up on the day they
"think" it might arrive to make sure everything is okay and I'm happy.

Bradidup

Hobbes wrote:

regardless your still supporting the machine. One of my calls to Dell support concerning a logitech mouse issue they told me they don't support logitech mice and that I had to ring Logitech.

Sounds fair? The machine was only a few days old and I had bought the logitech mouse from them.

QUOTE]

In that case it is Dells problem, if you have the reciept that the logitec mouse was purchased from them. It would be the same as if you bought a new VW Golf and the starting motor failed, you bring it back to VW and tell you its not their fault and tell you to contact Bosch who made the starter.

SickBoy

layke wrote:

No offense there son but comparing Dell parts to those on you buy from komplett is like comparing a Fiat to an Enzo.

If your not a gamer a Dell will do you just fine. You have no need for super fast hardware. You pay for what you get and trust me Komplett are quite cheap.

So the Core2Duo E6400 cpu from dell is inferior to the one you can purchase from Komplett? The Samsung DDR2 RAM PC5400 is somehow better on Komplett? The 160GB Western Digital hard drives are also inferior from that on Komplett? The Nvidia 7900GTS is somehow also inferior as well?
Please explain.
@joe_chicken
Enjoy your new machine when it arrives!

TerrorFirmer

layke wrote:

No offense there son but comparing Dell parts to those on you buy from komplett is like comparing a Fiat to an Enzo.

If your not a gamer a Dell will do you just fine. You have no need for super fast hardware. You pay for what you get and trust me Komplett are quite cheap.

Right....good mentality there. Just because it's in a Dell machine that somehow magically degrades the components.

I'd agree Dell have atrocious Bloatware but then again most companies do. On my Sony Vaio there was more crap then a network of Dell PCs yet you don't really hear about people complaining about this.

Also their support can be poor, I've had good and bad experiences but overall nothing terrible.

A big problem with Dell particularly on boards is that people apply their own high gaming standards and knowledge onto a Dell machine and any potential customers.

then then the upgradability or lack there of. a lot of the machines are small form factors so it makes upgrading difficult and i recall one model of pc that cam out with RIMM type RAM when it cam to upgrading the ram it had to be installed in pairs and to bring the machine to 512 (it was 2 years ago) it would cost over €400. now i could buy a new PC for that price with 512 ram.

This is an example of unjust bad mouthing. It's not Dells fault the technology didn't take off, and hence the price. It'd be the same thing if you tried to upgrade a HP, Compaq, or even self built computer with the same Ram - not too hard to take that into consideration now is it!

And as for hardware upgrades - in nearly all dell computers, you can change the optical drivers, processor, graphics card, ram, hard drive, etc. So lets get real - most regular gamers wouldn't buy a dell anyway, save for maybe the odd good bargin like the excellent one Joe_chicken got. So why would the average user need to change anything that isn't covered in the above? Answer - they wouldn't, hence why the mythical 'lack of upgradability' in Dells has never been an actual issue for most likely, 99.9% of the market.

joe_chicken

layke wrote:

No offense there son but comparing Dell parts to those on you buy from komplett is like comparing a Fiat to an Enzo.

Thanks for the patronising tone... it always adds to an argument.

Ignoring that, I agree with you in a way...
maybe not as extreme as you point out, but I'm a little worried about the quality of the parts not listed (i.e. motherboard, CPU fan and the likes).

I know they won't be up to scratch compared to what I *might* have got off komplett, but for the price... it made up my mind.

layke wrote:

You pay for what you get and trust me Komplett are quite cheap.

errmm... emmm... no comment

Cuddlesworth

Where to start,

Dell compete in the cheap price range. You buy a cheap system and you use it. They do that great.

Whats not great.

-Ripping customers off on upgrades. On their sites and over the phone, for systems bought and systems about to be bought its always the same. The base price is very competitive but any upgrades are horrendous.

Eg; Dell gives consumer Joe blogs a printer with his machine. Joe blogs gets said printer and machine but finds out he is missing a cable. He rings Dell. Dell charges 30 Euros for a USB cable. Please note, Dell do not ship Usb cables with their printers for this reason.

Eg; Dell offers a great system for home use. They tell the customer he needs Vista to stay ahead of the curb he wasn't aware of. The system ships to him with 512megs of ram. He asks for a upgrade finding out why his pc is so slow after 30 minutes on the phone to India. He gets charged twice the going rate for ram then in commercial stores because he buys from Dell.

To the person who said that his Xps support is great and that he has got 2 psu's replaced. Why in Gods name do you think 2 psu's dying is a good thing? It's very very bad. It's the reason why Dells have a bad name. And for the price you paid for that Xps a much better pc could have been built and left money to spare for the replacement in case mabye once your psu blows(never seen it outside of cheap makes and Dells).

To the people saying that Dell parts are as good as Komplett. Go to the Value part of Komplett for your Psu, cpu fan, cables, dvd drive and ram. Because thats what you get when you get the worst or best pc's from them. If they dont have to list it, then they don't spend money on it.

As for my experience with Dell, I have had a friend who has had 5 gfx cards die on Him. He games and simply put his cards could not operate in the case because the airflow was not sufficient.

I have dealt with Dell knowing that parts in laptops and Desktops are faulty and they do not tell customers. Boards with bad capacitors, laptops with faulty screens, keyboards that break in a week and cd drives that cant play cds.

Lets not forget when they decided to change the color of the LEDs at the network port to save money and not telling any support staff.

Dell are bad because they screw the little guys, not because they are a huge corporation. They are bad because they are always looking to save that last cent from their systems, for a company that big to save 1cent on a cheaper piece of plastic they would even if it ends up causing a small number of people hours of their life trying to get it fixed.

Raiser

I have worked in Dell as a contractor on occasion. I have had the opportunity so see things in great detail from an outsiders perspective.

I saw -

Employees working their shift being told at 5 min. s to finishing up time that there was compulsory overtime for another 2 hours to meet targets. If you have plans, kids, reservations, need to meet a bus to go home for the weekend etc. you're fcuked - work the overtime or don't come in tomorrow - job gone.

This was possible I suppose because there didn't seem to be a permanent employee in the place - everyone seemed to be a temp. - 5 years towing the Dell corporate line & still they were a temp. - Its easy to ditch staff who won't work 60 hour weeks if they are a 5-year-temp :rolleyes:

For every 20 people building PCs there seems to be 7 or 8 manager type jobsworths walking around trying to look important - these are the nit-pickers and micro-managers, they will find faults somewhere/somehow or die trying. Just another small-time little middle-manager git fawning to another stuffed shirt year after year trying to get his fat arse into a 3 series BMW - no matter what it takes.

Some scary employees - Dell has some of the toughest lads patroling its premises that I've ever seen - many waving stanley knives around as they collect cardboard etc. - although one of them managed to smarten up considerably when the cnut robbed my leather jacket from the cloakroom a few years back :mad:



As a customer -

I've been horrified at their customer service - after billing a credit card €150 to replace a motherboard that had been damaged by lightening it took months of calls to every non-english-speaking teenager in India before it became clear that Dell seemed to have pocketed the cash and were not going to fix the PC - Dell would only communicate when encouraged to do so by the Small Claims Court & my God when the pesky customer got the courts involved they found an Irish person in Ireland to do just that :eek:

Dell PR Bimbo wrote:

Why take this to court ? We hope its not to late to just repair this PC ?

Former Dell customer who will never make same mistake again wrote:

Its too late, far too late, months and months and dozens of conversations with Ranjit, Sanjay and Tikka Masala too fcuking late - Why did you bill the credit card if ye weren't arsed to fix the Goddamned PC ?

Did you ever hear of the scam where you are offered a Laptop sale in a Supermarket carpark by 3 dodgy looking lads?

- I think I might go that route next time instead of risking a transaction with Dell, much less chance of ending up frustrated, disappointed and feeling as though you have been ripped of I reckon.



Disclaimer: All of the above is merely my opinion and is stated as such for the purposes of this dicussion. I reserve the right to have formed a personal opinion of Dell thorough my own experiences and to voice this personal opinion should I see fit to do so via my privileges re. freedom of speech

CiaranC

The problem people have with Dell and other hardware vendors is that they have totally unrealistic expectations of the level of support they should recieve.

They want to be hand held through problems with third party apps & devices, which has nothing at all to do with the PC vendor.

There have been numerous examples of this on boards.

BlackWizard

One of the plug sockets I use shoots out sparks when a plug is inserted into it. Thats why my power charger died twice and my TV went boom boom.

Who said I bought a PC

Who said I thought two PSUs dieing was a good thing?

I was commenting on the after sales server for XPS users. I also have a dell d510(?). I think thats the name. But nothing has ever happened to that.

Since sooo many people buy from dell, we will always find there being bad cases of dealing with them popping up more regularly than say the bad cases of Lenovo.

Sleepy

Have to admit, I've bought from Dell more often than Komplett and had more problems with Komplett.

For a low to mid-end system it's hard to beat Dell imho. I've never bothered with their customer service because, let's face it, we live in Ireland. Good customer service and support are so rare as to be almost extinct. Scrap the warranty when ordering the system, get it about €300 cheaper and if anything goes wrong and you can't fix it yourself, just buy another one.

scojones

Honestly, in my experience Dell are alot better than their competitors with regards to support and products. Every company has it's flaws and someone somewhere will have a bad experience with a company no matter who they are, it's just a fact of life. Things sometimes go wrong and that's it. I've never had a bad experience with Dell. Their support is good, as are their computers. They listen to customers ideas / issues on the dell forums and if you have an issue with them it would be worth raising it either on these forums or contacting Dell directly.

petes

I find Dell fine to deal with. Most of the computers/laptops I have bought from them had little or no trouble. When I did have a problem, it was sorted out fairly quickly.

Richard Dower

I ordered a DELL 22" LCD....heaven help me!!!!!

Richard Dower

I've had to order one desktop and three laptops for my moms so as DELL would not screw her, cause the sales folks just throw upgrades at these people who know no better.

DELL are good for what they are, low end machines at a fair price...they are reliable for the most part.

But forget about upgrades or any "high end" DELL machine, you'll build a better PC yourself for the same money.

Their high end desktop, i saw they were charging €1500 for the 6700 Quad Core when you can buy it online for €1000-1100. Hard drives are crazy prices...any upgrades are just not worth it.

Their PSU's are total SH*T, absolute rubbish...i've never order anything from DELL but decided to take a look at their new 22" widescreen LCD.

I have 7 days to return it if i don't like it, so i'll do that...i just ordered to check it out, if i like it she'll stay. If not it's Asta La Vista baby!

TerrorFirmer

Richard Dower wrote:

Their PSU's are total SH*T, absolute rubbish...i've never order anything from DELL but decided to take a look at their new 22" widescreen LCD.

Whatever else, I think Dell Psus are actually very reliable - I've run alot of stuff off them in the past, and never had any problem with demanding graphics cards, extra optical drives etc, even when failing to meet the required output.

rogue-entity

Lodgepole wrote:

People will dislike any market leader... Particularly those in the custom build/linux camp...

That is not quite true. Dell ship business machines and servers with a choice of Operating systems, or none at all. This sector of the market is more likly to choose their own OS because businesses who buy OS-Free desktops will have their own Windows licence anyway. Consumers buying low-end hardware from them are most likly going to want Windows because that is what most people use. Dell as a Business just give their customers what they want. I believe if you ring them, you can choose the OS you want, or lack of, though Dell will not support you if you have an OS-related problem.

As for the custom build crowd, they tend to just steer clear of all PC makers like Dell, and just buy their parts from suppliers like Komplett. I bought some parts to build a server recently, Dell could not have done me a similar deal, but I am not going to criticise them over it.

Where I criticise Dell is in the crap they ship on the PCs, and the fact that they use proprietary componants like PSU's and Mobo's making upgrades impossible to these core parts. So you cant just change your processor for a faster one later if the board doesnt support it, and you cannot replace your motherboard, so Dell do limit some of the upgrade potential of their machines which would be something to consider when buying one from them. And they have a lot of useless trial software that just makes windows even slower then it already is. Would it kill them to ship some good products like Firefox (as default) and AVG Antivirus?

All that asside, they do make good machines, but I prefer their business gear to their consumer gear, it just seems to be better.

mathias

For the average person getting their first PC , Dell can be pretty good. No doubt about that , by average person here Im describing someone who knows nothing about PC's and has no intention of opening the box , someone who would call a tech too have a new hard drive or DVD rom installed etc.

For anyone else , I would not recommend a Dell and heres why ....

I fix a lot of PC's , mostly for friends and Friends of friends etc.

Some of the issues Ive come across with Dells ,

While trying to replace a power supply , the original Dell supply had the mounting screws offset from standard ( yes , there is a standard ) . Making it very difficult to mount , got it done , but had to drill the case.

While putting in a second IDE drive , the motherboard only had one IDE connector ( unusual at the time ) and the original hard drive and DVD were on this !

While trying to upgrade from integrated graphics to AGP graphics , lo and behold , no AGP slot , only PCI available !

Replacing a motherboard , the screwmounts were not in the standard ATX position. Again , had to drill the case.

Now Dell are no different to the other big PC manufacturers , such as HP etc. in that they use their large purchasing volumes ( economies of scale ) to have parts made cheaply.

Dell motherboards are Dell motherboards , not the same as say , MSI , Epox , Asus etc. They use their huge volumes to have them made , and save money by having " Unnecessary " components left off.
Good business practice but crappy for the end user who wants to add something or have something fixed.

So the upshot is , if you buy a PC from Dell , and it works , great !! But dont expect to be able to upgrade it or have it easily repaired once out of warranty.
In most cases , if you want to improve on your Dell PC , your going to be buying a new PC , and by that time you will have outgrown a Dell ( or for that matter a HP etc. ) in your requirements.

TerrorFirmer

One thing I have to say is that the 'Dell don't have AGP slots' thing annoys me. Only the cheapest Dell computers were like this - and the people buying them, for the most part, would never know the difference. For the absolutely microscopic minority that do, it's their own fault for not doing more research in the first place.

Almost every Dell machine had either an agp slot or now has a pci-e slot - it's not like every single Dell machine is an un-upgradable bastard like many people make it out to be.

Again, you can upgrade virtually everything in a Dell machine - processor, graphics card, ram, hard drive, optical - and their psus are quite good and capable of supporting relatively modern hardware like 7900GS, X1950, etc.

Okay the non-standard mountings are a right pain but to practically 100% of people who buy Dells, they won't really need to change either the mobo or psu, unless it's a fault, in which case yes would be very unfortunate.

Richard Dower

My mother recently order a Inspiron 6400 and on the day i ordered they had one of their special offers, free upgrade to 2GB of RAM. But when i checked the laptop it only had 1GB installed!

I even checked the DIMM and they were two 512MB, i'm still batlling DELL about that.

leninbenjamin

my whole computing life has basically been dell, going back about 15 years now. They've always done grand, we got a lot of longevity out of them. But upgrading through them was always expensive etc...

i'm now beginng the process of choosing my next PC, and because i game a lot I will be looking elsewhere though, simply because they just seem to be a rip off for the top end stuff, unless you're lucky enough that manage to stumble across a nice deal with them...

but if someone was looking for a low end PC i'd have no problem recommending them.

Richard Dower

For a mom and pop computer DELL are great, us geeks would turn our collective noses up at them.

I like to build my own rigs, choose the parts, map the build out in my head.

CiaranC

A lot of us got tired of self-builds long ago. The sheer amount of work you have to put into them is off-putting. Just give me a machine which lets me goof off at work and watch porn out of the box.

mathias

Originally posted by Havok

One thing I have to say is that the 'Dell don't have AGP slots' thing annoys me. Only the cheapest Dell computers were like this - and the people buying them, for the most part, would never know the difference. For the absolutely microscopic minority that do, it's their own fault for not doing more research in the first place.

Now if the information was there on the purchase page there would be no problem.
If you order a PC from Dell with integrated graphics , chances are it wont have a slot for a standalone card , and where on the Dell site , can you find out what slots are on the motherboard ?
In a way they are quite honest about this , remember the ad , " When you order a Dell , you wont get a lot of stuff you dont need " , well thats very true , but you also dont get a lot of stuff you expect.

In the case of the PC's I had to upgrade graphics on , the people in question assumed that they could save money by buying integrated and then getting a cheap graphics card , they were wrong , but nowhere on the site did it say there was no AGP/PCI ex slot on the motherboard !!
The upshot is , that you cant assume Dells have a graphics slot as standard!

PeakOutput

worst thing about dell is that they bought alienware. hopefully they wont **** them up.

dell are fine for their target consumer people who need extras(they would call them standards but watever) generally know that dell is not the place to go

Cuddlesworth

HavoK wrote:

Almost every Dell machine had either an agp slot or now has a pci-e slot - it's not like every single Dell machine is an un-upgradable bastard like many people make it out to be.

Again, you can upgrade virtually everything in a Dell machine - processor, graphics card, ram, hard drive, optical - and their psus are quite good and capable of supporting relatively modern hardware like 7900GS, X1950, etc.

I glad you said "Almost every". Optiplex gx520 anybody?

First thing I say to people when they buy Dell is great, if you spending under a thousand and do not ever upgrade. Which rules out any of the above cards or worrys about the psus.

I will concede that the stated wattage for the Dell psu is higher then claimed, but its really being pushed at the moment with crossfire setups and sli, and you never want to run a psu at 100%.

TerrorFirmer

If you were actually that bothered about whether they was or wasn't an AGP slot, then you could easily have googled it, it's not hard to find out in fairness.

As it is now, I think all Dells have a pci-e slot, but I'm not 100% - but from what I've seen, even the 499-ish budget models have them, so I don't see what other class it would be possible to have them in.

Anyway point being, if the people had planned buying a cheap computer and then upgrading the graphics, they should have checked first that it had the necessary slot. I've actually never come across a Dell that didn't have an AGP slot, and I've come across an awful lot of them, but obviously I know they did exist - but only in the cheap 'family', first time or casual user models, the very market in which most people would probably never need to upgrade beyond the integrated intel extreme or whatever.

petes

/me hugs XPS.

duridian

Steffano2002 wrote:

Formatted again last night doing everything properly and the laptop is now working perfectly. Only problem is the Media Center button (House icon next to On/Off button) no longer launches Media Centre... Go figure...

I think that's probably Dell Media Direct you are talking about. You can use that button to turn on the computer as well, but if you do it boots into a Media Centre type of interface instead of booting into Windows. There should be a reinstall disc for this among the discs that came with the laptop, at least there was with the last Dell laptop I worked on (an Inspiron 9400).
You might also need this:
http://support.euro.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=ie&cs=iedhs1&l=en&s=dhs&releaseid=R121517&SystemID=INS_PNT_P4_9400&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=10216&devlib=0&typecnt=1&vercnt=2&formatcnt=1&libid=25&fileid=161804
It repairs the MBR of the hard disc so that the booting up into Media Direct works again.

petes

duridian wrote:

I think that's probably Dell Media Direct you are talking about. You can use that button to turn on the computer as well, but if you do it boots into a Media Centre type of interface instead of booting into Windows. There should be a reinstall disc for this among the discs that came with the laptop, at least there was with the last Dell laptop I worked on (an Inspiron 9400).
You might also need this:
http://support.euro.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=ie&cs=iedhs1&l=en&s=dhs&releaseid=R121517&SystemID=INS_PNT_P4_9400&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=10216&devlib=0&typecnt=1&vercnt=2&formatcnt=1&libid=25&fileid=161804
It repairs the MBR of the hard disc so that the booting up into Media Direct works again.

Yep, there is a reinstall cd for media direct with an accompanying booklet on how to prep the hard drive for installation etc.

kippy

I glad you said "Almost every". Optiplex gx520 anybody?

Right- The Optiplex was not designed for the consumer market it is aimed ay businesses. Its not fair to say that plexes or SFF machines are not easily upgradable. They were designed not to be. Why would a business need to upgrade anything? If they did they should have gone for one of the dimensions or something that would fulfill their needs.
This is why Dells get a bad name. People who think that Optiplexes are aimed at the standard user. They are aimed at business. Their various lines offer different things to different people.

As already mentioned most of their consumer machines are easily upgradeable and the people who buy from dell dont give a toss as they are getting a good deal anyway.
The motherboard specs that they use are available on their website if you look hard enough.
Like it or like it not Dell has helped bring the PC into almost every home in the country and at an affordable cost. Many people get on fine with Dell machines.
Kippy

Capt'n Midnight

duridian wrote:

I still think the pile of crapware they bundle with their new pcs is appalling,

Link for Dell Crapifier www.yorkspace.com/pc-de-crapifier

Capt'n Midnight

petes wrote:

/me hugs XPS.

I'm guessing it's not an XPS T-500