are dell really that crap?

Yullie's old Acer is starting to play up and it's getting a bit long in
the tooth (a charging problem ATM despite the PSU kicking out the right
volts)

I had a flier the other day from Dell with a laptop for just over £200 +
+

Are they totally POS or reasonably good for basic use ?

 

The Dell kit is OK it's just normally priced that competitively.

Dell Outlet is a good source for bargains
http://outlet.dell.com/Emea_Dfo/EuDispatcher?country=GBR&target=InventoryPage&lob_constraint=INSP

 

Note that the price will be excluding delivery and they achieve their low
prices by assembling the kit in cheap places, so delivery is expensive.
Still a bargain, but not quite as cheap as they make it look.

Regards, Ian

 

I'm typing this on an old Dell Inspiron 1100, from Dell outlet about 5
years ago. It has been absolutely trouble free apart from needing one
replacement battery about a year ago. At the time it was cheap for a
laptop. It's had a bit more RAM over the years, but is perfectly useable.

 

As a Dell reseller - and Im a bit biased - Dells are great bang for the
buck. Even the cheapest end they are great.

As someone esle has mentioned though - things like VAT and P&P push the
price up, but you'll still get a very good deal.

All our corpy customers are Dell Workstations and Laptops, but we dont
tend to sell Dell servers, as HP are better for the money.


--
Gavin.
http://www.stoof.co.uk
For the road: GSXR600 K1
For the track: GSXR400 GK76A
For the rest: Citroen Belingo

 

We use their laptops almost exclusively at work and the biggest problem
we've had with them is their tendency to disappear when the owner has
left it in a corner at the pub. I've had this one almost three years and
other than the speakers going kaput (which I've never bothered having
fixed) it's been fine.

I've had Dells at home for the last five years or so and they've been
rock solid. The only problem I've had at all was when I needed to
reinstall the OS and didn't have an install CD (having bought it el-
cheapo from the outlet). I dropped them an email asking how much it'd
cost to get one and they sent the whole lot out the next day, gratis.

They're fine.

 

Yes, a pity that, they used to be very good then they outsourced it to
India.

Once I used to be able to get free support by email on Dells I'd bought
second hand so I didn't have any contract with them, as long as I still
had the sticker with the identification number. I doubt this would happen
now.

Regards, Ian

 

Defence Information Infrastructure, or have I made a wrong assumption
about which part of the CS you're in?

 

"Do you indulge in any unusual sexual practices?"

"Define unusual."

 

In communiqué <>, TMack

My experience with their call centre when the lad's basic Dell desktop
played up within 24 hours of arriving was fine. Just a badly seated
memory card which they talked me through correcting very competently.

--
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Pete Fisher at Home: |
| Voxan Roadster Gilera Nordwest * 2 Yamaha WR250Z |
| Gilera GFR * 2 Moto Morini 2C/375 Morini 350 "Forgotten Error" |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+

 

Yeah, 20 something quid IIRC

 

As an ex Dell engineer, (now HP), as far as lapdog's go, I'd rather have a
Dell.
Fairly priced and pretty good kit. Shit after sales service if you need to
call Bangabeijing, or where ever they decide to route your 0870 call.

Good kit though.

--
Greybeard

FLHR -03 UK (95 cu-in Stg 2. Big Boy 2!)

Garmin Zumo 550, To get me home!

ukrm@foxtails[dot]co[dot]uk

 

50 quid on a mini tower unit I bought recently, but a laptop should indeed
be cheaper.

Regards, Ian

 

I remember having to explain one of my (at the time, very few) monthly
expenses during a DV interview, circa 1995 - "Its a monthly payment
for the Internet".

"Whats the Internet?", says the interviewer (a retired Brigadier,
IIRC).

 

I don't know about current ones, but I have a years-old Latitude which
came my way for free after a couple of years of road warrior use. It's
still chugging away when I need it to do stuff outside with and there's
nothing wrong with it all. Just a damn pity they're not upgradeable
piecemeal, like desktops.

 

They need to be cheap - it won't matter so much when they get left on
the train!

 

We have all Dell machines at work.

The only desktops we've had problems with is mine. I added some more
generic (good quality) memory to it which died 3 months later.

Someone here said that Dell use the cheapest of components that will
work well together, and cheap mobos means not very regulated power
supplys, which means some memory brands can quickly be killed by the out
of spec voltages.

We've also got 4 top end XPS laptops and three have needed most of their
guts replaced.

The first had 2 x mobo, 1 x graphics card, 1 x HDD, 1 x wifi, all in an
attempt to cure random crashes / lockups. The first time they changed
the mobo, didn't cure it, next time they simply replaced everything.

Second had new mobo + gfx card.

Third new mobo.

So desktops seem good, from others comments here the cheap laptops seem
good, from out experience the high end laptops seem bloody unreliable.

 

Their after sales service to us has been excellent, Next day on site
support and initial phone support.

Whether they'd be the same to a private individual though?

 

Very good, IME. Never had a complaint here with, ooo, probably 10 now
including those bought for others.

 

I spent £2000ish on a very fat big server for the living room I love it
greatly but it has had its fair share of disaster in its 3 years.After
waiting nearly 2 months for delivery, upon first look inside it could well
have been wired up by a half blind chimpanzee. There were all kinds of
cables quite obviously not in the right place. The Hard drive went bang
big style and you don't get to keep the old one for refrigeration and data
recovery once they send you the new one The memory is now giving me gyp
and needs replacing with something with the ease of availability of
rocking horse turd.

On the plus side its quite good at sucking all of the dust out of my
living room and providing heat

Oh and after sales service...... Hmmn. Possibly an oxymoron.