Buying a laptop from Dell or somewhere

c4sea

Hi Guys,

Today i was trying to buy a laptop from dell and i asked for win 7 home premium disk. they told me that they do not provide disk. i could provide back up disc later on but that would be extra charge. I am wondering is it normal practice from dell.

What about buying from others shop, do the provide operating system disc or not?

Any help greatly appreciated.

thanks

dudara

Moved to Windows OS

dudara

Fysh

It depends on the vendor, and whether you're buying a consumer or a business laptop as well sometimes.

Some will offer (at a charge) to give you an installation disc, like Dell do (at least for business machines). Some will give you the ability to create your own recovery discs, like Toshiba or (I think) HP. Some will only ever let you have a built-in recovery partition.

RoyalMarine

its complete and total bollocks to be honest.

The majority of customers who buy from dell are people who do not know what to do when something goes wrong.

However, its easy for them to learn to put the windows cd in, start it up and either repair or re-install. especially with windows 7.

Dell should stop trying to save every penny and offer a decent customer service, and some god damn installation cd's for both drivers and the OS.

People who do know what to do dont waste their money on dell.

Fysh

RoyalMarine wrote: »

its complete and total bollocks to be honest.

The majority of customers who buy from dell are people who do not know what to do when something goes wrong.

However, its easy for them to learn to put the windows cd in, start it up and either repair or re-install. especially with windows 7.

Dell should stop trying to save every penny and offer a decent customer service, and some god damn installation cd's for both drivers and the OS.

People who do know what to do dont waste their money on dell.

But it's not just Dell - look at how much a MacBook will cost you compared to an equivalent-spec Dell and then look at the support options you've got with Apple (take it into the shop and wait 1-2 weeks for it to be fixed). It doesn't make Dell any less daft for explicitly charging for reinstall media (instead of just absorbing that cost into the non-optional costs on the machine), but they're hardly unique for that kind of silliness.

As for the part in bold, I've told people to go for specific Dells (usually Latitudes) before on the basis that they were available with 3- or 5-year NBD onsite support agreements. They're not the only vendor who offer that kind of support contract, but I've rarely seen a cheaper (decent) business laptop with a decent support agreement.

bhickey

RoyalMarine wrote: »

People who do know what to do dont waste their money on dell.

:rolleyes:

Will_H

My advice is to be very careful when buying a dell. Father-in-law had one and had problems with it. The customer support for the public is run from India and he got fobbed off time & time again. They were extremely rude also. Took months to get it back in working order.

I'd suggest buying a laptop from somewhere you can physically return it should you have any problems. You may pay an extra couple of quid but IMO it's worth it.

listermint

Will_H wrote: »

My advice is to be very careful when buying a dell. Father-in-law had one and had problems with it. The customer support for the public is run from India and he got fobbed off time & time again. They were extremely rude also. Took months to get it back in working order.

I'd suggest buying a laptop from somewhere you can physically return it should you have any problems. You may pay an extra couple of quid but IMO it's worth it.

I bought a bmw once, problem is when i called they're support department they were all speaking german so infuriated :rolleyes:


and another for equal measure :rolleyes:

Capt'n Midnight

Will_H wrote: »

I'd suggest buying a laptop from somewhere you can physically return it should you have any problems. You may pay an extra couple of quid but IMO it's worth it.

If there was only a couple of quid in the difference then the likes of Dell would not exist. And while they are a disaster at software support they will replace faulty hardware.

Very few of the box shifters supply disks, there should be a program on the laptop to create backup disks for the recovery, one of the first things to do when you buy a new computer IMHO.

Fysh

Will_H wrote: »

My advice is to be very careful when buying a dell. Father-in-law had one and had problems with it. The customer support for the public is run from India and he got fobbed off time & time again. They were extremely rude also. Took months to get it back in working order.

I'd suggest buying a laptop from somewhere you can physically return it should you have any problems. You may pay an extra couple of quid but IMO it's worth it.

You get what you pay for, though.

Buy a cheapy Inspiron box of the kind where "specifications" means "It has lots of memory and an Intel processor!", and you'll get cheap support through a call-centre in India.

Buy a more expensive Optiplex or Latitude and pay on top of that for one of the better support agreements, and you get thoroughly decent support from a UK callcentre (generally in Scotland, in my experience) staffed by people who're competent and efficient and very helpful.

The real issue here is the notion that a good computer and accompanying support contract can be had on the cheap (and that the support contract should cover all support issues, including things like "so it turns out I have no idea how to use a computer and am refusing to learn").

Will_H

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

And while they are a disaster at software support they will replace faulty hardware.

CM - yes, they will replace hw - 4 HDD's over a 6 month period! And each time having to reinstall everything!!! Gimme a break......:rolleyes:

Look, at the end of the day, like everything else, it's all about personal choice!


Agree with you Fysh - You get what you pay for.

Fysh

Will_H wrote: »

CM - yes, they will replace hw - 4 HDD's over a 6 month period! And each time having to reinstall everything!!! Gimme a break......:rolleyes:

Given that they're a reseller, not a manufacturer, this is down to either re-using failed drives (which should be pretty easily picked provable using their own diagnostics CD with SMART tests and so on) or them getting a batch of defecting drives.

Neither of which explains how it's specifically Dell's fault that having an HDD or SSD fail means you have to reinstall everything. I wish Microsoft would build something like Time Machine into Windows, but until they do, we're right back to the problems stemming from people expecting computers to be a cheap, powerful magic box with an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink support contract.

Will_H

Fysh wrote: »

Given that they're a reseller, not a manufacturer, this is down to either re-using failed drives or them getting a batch of defecting drives.

Not necessarily Fysh - I believe that it wasn't the hard drive causing the problem! It was something else....even with refurbished drives, they would test them to death before sending them back out.

Fysh wrote: »

people expecting computers to be a cheap, powerful magic box

What..???? They are aren't they...??!!

Fysh wrote: »

with an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink support contract.

We can only live in hope....!

Anyway, just wait till we're all using Chrome OS devices, we won't need hard drives!

conor.hogan.2

You get what you pay for.


It may be technically illegal but you can download a windows iso burn to disk and install from that and use your legal product key that you own.

Windows has a backup utility? Its not exactly like time machine but its a backup.

Fysh

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

It may be technically illegal but you can download a windows iso burn to disk and install from that and use your legal product key that you own.

Recommending that someone source their proprietary software installation media from The Dread God Interweb is a shifty proposition at best - between the potential horrors that may have been slipstreamed into the installation media in question and the comparative difficulty in finding the right OEM version that would actually work with the OP's product key, I would say it's best avoided.

Capt'n Midnight

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

You get what you pay for.


It may be technically illegal but you can download a windows iso burn to disk and install from that and use your legal product key that you own.

Windows has a backup utility? Its not exactly like time machine but its a backup.

windows Professional / business have backup utilites that will allow you to backup more than files and folders. If you windows Home then you can't backup the system state / can't recover form a corrrupt registry using the supplied tools.


Please read the charter about warez :mad:

or post a link on Microsoft's site (not the forums) where the OP can download a trial version of 7 they can then register

There are a lot of dodgy windows installs out there complete with malware / backdoors. Even assuming you get a clean one it may not work with your OEM key.

There are plenty of disk cloning utils out there so you can revert back to where you are now, clonezilla is one