Experience of Buying a Dell (or a new Computer)

[T2k]

Stay FAR, FAR away from Compaq, HP (compaq and hp are one and the same now), Gateways, or eMachines, they have the highest repair counts, they are gar-bage, (just try to replace a harddrive of a HP pavillion or compaq, and you'll see what I mean, or upgrading the RAM, the case logistics are a joke try it, and you'll see what I mean) stick with Dell (great case logistics), the only more reliable system is Apple.

Sorry to say this but I cannot stand this: this is probably the most laughable comment I have read for quite long time.
Case logistics as a measurement? ROFLAMO That's just downright hilarious.
BTW have you actually opened up these machines recently? HPs are toolless for years now and aren't made completely out of plastic, unlike Dells.
I remember when back in time Dell tried to sell me about a 100 or so workstation, so we got one to look at it - man, it was completely plastic, from top to bottom. When he called me again, I asked them: are you serious when you're trying to sell me a machine you call workstation but completely made out of plastic, for the same price ($$$$/ea) I can buy a [*back then*] new xw8000? What are these plastic drive doors/covers are for? It's not a desktop for a kid but a wrokstation for rendering, who needs these craptastic things, especially from plastic? He couldn't give me any meaningful answer...
Since then Dell made better WS (they lead the WS market after all, though mostly with cheap stuff), of course but their Intel desktops' performance are just pathetic compared to an AMD, let alone their wattage needs...


Claiming Apple as the most reliable machine shows nothing but lack of knowledge, my friend - recent few years perfectly showed how Apple is just the same like everybody else. Cracked hinges, overheated mobile units, burned out Firewire ports, pink corners on those 'uh-oh-so-great' Cinema Displays, pathetic performance for twice as much as the cheap Dell would cost... Apple's workstations are OK but probably those are the only units with reasonable pricetags - Powerbooks are really ridiculously overpriced, with pathetically crappy performance (no wonder, it's built on a several years old, totally outdated, dead architecture).

As for building your own, yes it CAN save you some cash OR get you a better system (but almost never both), but consider, when a part fails you have to track down that one manufacturer to replace it, for each and every part, you have to deal with a different manufacturer, each will have a different warrantee policy, different return methods, also you are more likely to get a part that is DOA than you would from a pre-built system, as the manf. will be more careful with the quality so as to not loose a big companies business, while they could care less about DIY Bobs homemade system, then you have to call the manf. get a RA number, wait 4-6 weeks, etc, blah...

Parts don't fail more often in a custom-built system than in a Dell one. In fact since you'll more likely buy a branded, quality mainboard or video card, not some el-cheapo OEM like Dell uses, you'll less likely get anything broken.
On the other hand you have to know what to buy and what not and I doubt custom builders run the same tests like HP or Dell do.
However getting a part replaced doesn't take longer than dealing with Dell for days, over the phone with somebody clueless 'living checklist machine' from Bangalore, India, via crappy VoIP line.

There are times that building one is a must, I had to build a custom machine for a guy who wanted to do near-realtime music editing, but did not save us any money, just that the configuration was specific to the application.
I buy systems on a regular basis, I've seen it all from each of those companies, and Dell has been the best thus far.

Dell is NOWHERE THE BEST, this is totally false. Selling more != selling the best, it only shows it's selling the most (in this case the cheapest.)
I don't know ANY hardcore (means heavy workload, workstation-oriented) company prefering Dell over HP, nor any video or audio or 3D equipment mfr, of which turnkey system would be built on Dell instead of HP's great latest xw9300-like family.

And before I get flames (no doubt from someone typing that flame on a HP or Compaq),

I'm typing it on a custom-built machine...

yes, consumers do occasionally get a good deal and/or reliable machine from those 'stay away from' companies, but it is NOT the norm.

This is simply false, absolutely rubbish. Nowadays the stay away company is clearly Dell, not HP, due to Dell's inferior architecture and sh!tty support.
In fact Dell's market lead always came and still comes from the cheap segments.
BTW you do know that Dell doesn't have any development resource,, right? Of course, unless you consider those lame cust'ed MS Windows preinstall kit scripts as "development"...

All what keeps Dell on the top spot is Intel's clearly illegal, deep special discounts as long as Dell doesn't sell AMD machines - that's one of the reasons why Dell can stay cheaper than others, not to mention its suxxx support and usually el-cheapo parts.

If you were to buy a whole office of Compaqs (which I have done by clients request, as far as he was concerned, they just _had_ to be Compaq, fell for the price hype) the repair rates become more obvious (as opposed to just buying one and knowing 2 people with the same machine), anyways 2 years later, the process began, I had to replace each compaq, sometimes 2 at a time, with new dells, within the 3rd year, all Compaqs were gone (now garbage, no sense in spending for repairs anything over 40% of the cost of a new machine that is at least 2 times as fast), it has now been almost 6 years with the Dells, they stay on 24/7, the only failure was the python backup tape drive on the server (a normal thing really since they get used alot) and even thought it was out of warrantee, Dell replaced it free. (subsequent tape drive replacments were not free however).

Hahaha, nice BS. Yes, I call it BS.
If anyone knows a little bit about PCs and any company with income, it should be obvious that 6 ys old machines would be completely and utterly obsolete. Reality check: 6 years ago folks were buying Pentium 3, usually around 800Mhz, up to 1GHz. Pentium 4 just debuted in 2000 fall and turned out to be way slower than P3 for more than a year... (just like Prescott last time or. Itanic before.. hmmm Intel... )
Show me a company who wouldn't rather invest for 6 years but pay more for man hours, to get things done much slower.
Never mind, you gave me a good laugh.

Besides the laugh this fairy tale about Dell's 'nice support' is absolutely false. It's all over the net for more than a year now that not only Dell's quality - which was always the cheaptastic level - but the support as well became utter crap, a PoS. Do a search on Google.

I also run openmosix, a clustering linux setup, I use machines my clients would throw away and I throw them into my cluster, as time goes by each node on the cluster fails eventually, to which I just throw in another replacment, guess which ones died first (A: the hp, compaqs and emachines) and which ones are still running (A: the dells and one IBM). The emachine actually outlasted the compaqs.

Well, now I started to see where you're wtching this from: the el-cheapo world, the "Dell is great, it's cheap, so it's great and it's also working" type of customers - you should perhaps ask yourself why IBM and HP lead the server market, where the quality and reliability is just as important as price?
No offense but you really spiced up my evening with these funny stories about Dell's longevity, longer lasting value... thanks!

I also suggest if you DO go with a Dell, go through Small Office/Business, do NOT go through Home, they know a company will probably come back and buy more, while a Home customer will run the machine into the ground before buying a new one from them, so you get better support. (for example, called Dell for a client who bought it through Home, always got India on tech supp, when I call for my business clients, I always get a english speaking person.

Sure, it's true - you just have to pay taxes, no matter where you are and also you won't get those juicy coupons, let alone different config prices.

 

[damaged]

To be honest I could give a flying fart where the OP, or anyone else on this planet buys, he asked an opinion, and I gave mine, in my experience I have found what I found, and that's all I can base my opinion on, in the same way, so is everyone elses opinion, including yours, it is an exercise for the poster to decide ultimatly.

Certainly you could not possibly be so incredibly concerned, (almost to the point of obsession) with the OPs purchasing deciscion that you would come off like a mental patient on a public forum...there must be some other underlying problem, perhaps some personal issue, hmmm...sorry, I digress.

By you riddling your arguments with hostility just nullifies your position like so many of you 'type' often do, and will serve to lessen the value of your past and future posts.
i.e. You only come off looking like a maniac.

You are yet another example of the type who bring a harmless topic with seperate opinions into a flame-type war (i.e. O/S wars, Intel/AMD wares, etc) these types of 'my d**k is bigger than yours' is getting old and tired.

Everyone is not going to agree with you(or me), you must learn to let it go, I offered what I thought, and others posted after me contridicting me, yet I hold their posts and yours even, with as much value as my own, they are entitled to it, and so is the OP, why do you want to ruin that with hostility?

Do you think I will change my mind because of your reply to me? HINT: I won't.

* Hostility in this context is you calling other posters' opinions and expereices BS, fairy tails etc..

 

[T2k]

To be honest I could give a flying fart where the OP, or anyone else on this planet buys, he asked an opinion, and I gave mine, in my experience I have found what I found, and that's all I can base my opinion on, in the same way, so is everyone elses opinion, including yours, it is an exercise for the poster to decide ultimatly.

Your opinion was full of false information, much like some crappy Dell advertisement. That's what provoked my reply.

Certainly you could not possibly be so incredibly concerned, (almost to the point of obsession) with the OPs purchasing deciscion that you would come off like a mental patient on a public forum...there must be some other underlying problem, perhaps some personal issue, hmmm...sorry, I digress.
By you riddling your arguments with hostility just nullifies your position like so many of you 'type' often do, and will serve to lessen the value of your past and future posts.
i.e. You only come off looking like a maniac.
You are yet another example of the type who bring a harmless topic with seperate opinions into a flame-type war (i.e. O/S wars, Intel/AMD wares, etc) these types of 'my d**k is bigger than yours' is getting old and tired.
Everyone is not going to agree with you(or me), you must learn to let it go, I offered what I thought, and others posted after me contridicting me, yet I hold their posts and yours even, with as much value as my own, they are entitled to it, and so is the OP, why do you want to ruin that with hostility?
Do you think I will change my mind because of your reply to me? HINT: I won't.
* Hostility in this context is you calling other posters' opinions and expereices BS, fairy tails etc..

There wasn't any hostility. Sarcasm, yes, hostility - not at all.
Now you're playing the 'victim... mmmmm... you've been caught and now you're trying to change the subject, don't you think it's quite obvious?
Let me remind you what happened: you did post - deliberate or not, I don't care - plenty of disinformation, not me. Sure, it's your opinion - just like mine is pointing out how false are your claims about 'suppper' Dell support etc.
It's that simple.

That's all what matters, especially for those less-experienced folks like the OP, when they go out and spend their money. I couldn't care less do you like it or not - I only wanted warn the readers, before somebody would spend a single cent based on these false information.
That's what matters, nothing else.

PS; Here's no hostility. I'm serious.

 

[Roger]

TK2 I agree with what you wrote but you didn't appear to be very nice and your tone looked like an attack rather than just a debate.

"why IBM and HP lead the server market, where the quality and reliability is just as important as price?"

I read something about that in Business Week about a month ago so along with Dell quality and bad customer support which I guess is now improving. I forget what they said about the servers but it has to do with a more expensive processor or something to read different operating systems if I recall correctly.

I don't like Dell's product let alone they're a NWO company.

 

[damaged]

t2k,

There was no false information, you call it false because it goes against what you _think_ is truth.

You merely picked a few things out of several posts and did your best to disprove them, not by providing hard numbers, but instead just spewing your opinions (which is fine) mixed with venom (sarcasm, whatever you want to call it), I see nothing from your post that provides information that is any more reliable than anyone elses.

Some will go your way, some will go others, must you power play others to get your opinions noticed?

I didn't bother going through your 3 page post and challenging each of your points for 2 reasons, for one, you don't seem like you would care, and really, I know it would just cause you to go one step farther and start calling my mom names or something, you seem like that type.

I will instead leave it to the OP to do the research on the matter and find what is best for them.

Consumer Reports agree with me, they are most likely much more reliable and knowlegable than you or I in these matters.
They carry much more weight then a person who actualy purports to 'know it all and be 100% right'.

I have bought many systems, built them too, been into computers since 1983 back in the AppleII days, you point out that dells are made of plastic, ummm, what good is a metal case? do you plan on riding your case down a rocky hill?

If you have any more 'shots' about this thread, please PM them to me, I will be happy to have this discussion there, no need to ruin Scotts site with these troll-bait posts.

 

[T2k]

t2k,
There was no false information, you call it false because it goes against what you _think_ is truth.
You merely picked a few things out of several posts and did your best to disprove them, not by providing hard numbers, but instead just spewing your opinions (which is fine) mixed with venom (sarcasm, whatever you want to call it), I see nothing from your post that provides information that is any more reliable than anyone elses.
Some will go your way, some will go others, must you power play others to get your opinions noticed?
I didn't bother going through your 3 page post and challenging each of your points for 2 reasons, for one, you don't seem like you would care, and really, I know it would just cause you to go one step farther and start calling my mom names or something, you seem like that type.
I will instead leave it to the OP to do the research on the matter and find what is best for them.
Consumer Reports agree with me, they are most likely much more reliable and knowlegable than you or I in these matters.
They carry much more weight then a person who actualy purports to 'know it all and be 100% right'.
I have bought many systems, built them too, been into computers since 1983 back in the AppleII days, you point out that dells are made of plastic, ummm, what good is a metal case? do you plan on riding your case down a rocky hill?
If you have any more 'shots' about this thread, please PM them to me, I will be happy to have this discussion there, no need to ruin Scotts site with these troll-bait posts.

I have posted facts, all can be found on the net. You mostly posted claims.
If you want, I can prove my points one-by-one but that would require that you will follow - which would be a pretty hard act to swallow (paraphrasing old Voom spot )

 

[Foxbat]

One more argument for SMB vs. Home: PCs from the Small Business store aren't loaded with "free" crud that you have to remove before the PC boots up in less than five minutes. My wife's Dimension that I got refurbished from the Dell Outlet store came with Windows XP Pro, Office XP Pro, and had Roxio software for the CD-RW drive, and that's about it.

The Dimension I got my son from the Home site had Windows XP Home (kept), MusicMatch Jukebox (gone), some paint program (gone), a half-dozen ISP sign-up programs, including the AOL juggernaut (gone), Symantec Internet Security (actually kept this), Dell's phone-home Alerts package (gone), etc. If the PC had come with a real Windows XP Home disc, I would have wiped everything out and started over from clean install.

 

[Digital Dude]

We tried to order from Dell SB once, and never again. We ordered a PJ. Got a comfirmation e-mail they were sending a desktop PC. Called India, thought it was straight. Got comfirmation e-mail that Dell was using our credit card to send a desktop PC to someone in Houston!!! Called India, escalated to Pakistan, escalated to Phillipines, Dell refused to credit back. 5 days, 14 1/2 hours on phone, filed dispute with Discover and filed complaint with our State Attorney General office.

And you want to order a Dell????

 

[damaged]

projectorsrule,

That really blows :\, I hope it works/worked out ok in your favor.

Anyhow, I never said Dell was perfect, but, nor is any other listed manufacturer perfect, like you, I just shared my experiences.

It is important the OP sees the good as well as the bad, I just took umbrage with being insulted by the likes of such.

No one manufacturer is perfect (in fact, far from), especially with all the outsourcing and hiring the inept for billing/shipping positions going on these days.

I have heard good things and bad thing about all companies, PC related or not.

 

[Digital Dude]

Thanks damaged. It did finally work out. I'm sure the majority have no problem but if a problem arises and whatever company you purchase (anything) from has virtually no presence in the US you could be in for a long haul.

So if we buy projectors they are most likely Epson, NEC, or Infocus. All three have great service, and if there are problems NEC is 6 hours and Infocus 4 hours from a face to face confrontation! It'll be a cold day in satan land when we order from Dell or buy any Sanyo projectors.

 

[SimpleSimon]

My 2 cents. I used to run th computer shop for an HP dealer. Bottom line: HP and Compaq are TOTAL JUNK. Period.

Dell [n]business[/u] systems are pretty good, and have good service. Two of my biggest clients use them exclusively, and we never have a problem. I'm NOT fond of Dell home systems, but they're OK.

Building your own is fine if you think it's fun to do (I do), but do NOT expect to save any money.

Finally, there's a relatively new outfit called "PC Club". They seem to be like CompUSA used to be when they were good. I needed a supplier for my SOHO customers (can't make any money building them myself), and checked them out. The Colorado Springs store has knowledgeable guys that have been around a while. Their systems have solid cases, and use brand-name, off-the-shelf parts such as ASUS and MSI motherboards. Prices start at $299 (including WinXP Home) for a decent non-gaming PC.

 

[T2k]

My 2 cents. I used to run th computer shop for an HP dealer. Bottom line: HP and Compaq are TOTAL JUNK. Period.
Dell [n]business[/u] systems are pretty good, and have good service. Two of my biggest clients use them exclusively, and we never have a problem. I'm NOT fond of Dell home systems, but they're OK.

Nice spin but old trick. Saying you ran a shop for HP/Compaq (which means home stuff only) and they are junk but Dell business stuff are good (not home and you have never ran a shop)? Interesting comparison, LOL...

Look around the net: Dell customer problems are tenfolded over the last two years whereas when you call hpshopping.com (I just did today), you don't get somebody with a heavy South-Central-Pakistani accent , claiming her name is Sarah... The guy at HP today was funny and very quickly resolved my otherwise not that obvious problem (it was my personal SMB purchase and I and my helpers faxed over at least twice my tax exempt papers during last week but always without order#, totally confusing them ).
Even though I do buy from Dell regularly, it's only because of those super-duper cheap products and I don't expect real techsupport - but I'm a happy camper with HP, when I buy something longer lasting stuff.

 

[SimpleSimon]

Nice spin but old trick. Saying you ran a shop for HP/Compaq (which means home stuff only) and they are junk but Dell business stuff are good (not home and you have never ran a shop)? Interesting comparison, LOL...

Hey - just relaying my extensive* computer experience. I didn't mention that I saw a lot of Dell home systems in my shop, too - along with any other brand you'd care to mention.

* Extensive: 35 years. Beta-tester of the 8086. Scratch-built my first PC in 1979 (yeah - before IBM).