Dell Pcs

[mikebh50]

Hi

Thinking of getting a new PC and Dell seem to have some cracking deals on at present just wanted to know what people thought of them .Or any other sites that i should try.

Thanks
mike

[Toothy1911]

They seem to do good deals on their low cost systems, but the high end ones don't seem very good value. Also careful not to over do it on the extras (like accident coverge and upgrades), as that's where they make their money.

[captain slow]

Hi Mike i own a computer shop and we mainly specialize in repairs, in recent months a lot of lower end dell machines have been coming in to the shop for power problems and upgrades, this is where we run into problems?
Dell power supplies are not easily attainable and if you can get one they cost a lot more than standard ones, this is due to the non-standard connections that dell put into place to make you use their equipment.
Upgrades an graphics cards are quite tricky because a lot of the nice low priced machines don't have the capability to upgrade the graphics as they don't have pci express slots or even agp slots.
Dell use small form factor cases and optical drives that limit the future expandability of the machine.

my advice is look for a standard form factor case with generic parts inside that can be replaced or upgraded when the time comes.

Think about building a computer yourself, its not hard and ill help you all i can.

This is only what i have found, other members may disagree, but as i say we repair pc's for a living and i have mentioned just a handful of problems that we run into.

[captain slow]

ps don't even think about vista quite yet.

[mikebh50]

That a **** as i have ordered one but what do you call low end as i have gone what i think is middle of the road. The spec is below but i did upgrade to a AMD 64 x2 5000 and vista home premium .

AMD® Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core processor 4400+

English Genuine Windows Vista Home Basic

Dell 20" Black Wide Flat Panel (E207WFP) - UK/Irish

2048MB Dual Channel DDR2 533MHz [2x1024] Memory

320GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst cache

256MB ATI® Radeon® X1300 Pro PCI Express graphics card

16 X DVD +/- RW Drive

Dell Entry Quietkey USB Keyboard - UK/Irish (QWERTY)

Dell 2 Button USB Scroll Optical Mouse - Black

Integrated 7.1 Channel High Definition Audio

13-in-1 Media Card Reader

Microsoft® Works 8.0 - English

Mike.

[James]

That will last you fo a fair while ;) As long as the PSU doesn't go...

[d3rang3d]

Thats a pretty nice spec mikebh50, I have something very similar that I got from Dell not long ago and I'm very pleased. Also I'm running Vista premium and no problems at all with it, I really like it.

James, dont say they have a bad PSU :/ I've had 2 go in the last year, one literally exploded.

[captain slow]

Thats a nice spec machine that will do you for a while.
I was meaning the £299 pc,s have the problem your pc is much higher spec than those.
The problems with vista seem to be mostly with the home basic not the premium so i hope you don't have any of these especially when it comes to wireless networking.

[ianonline]

I am a bit of a hobbiest, mending repairing and building pc's for friends and family.
Personally I dont think you can beat building them, its not that hard, you know what goes in them, price is reasonable and the satisfaction level great!

[riley]

Yeh, and lets not forget what happened to Dell Laptops...
...Heres a reconstruction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pizFsY0yjss

You would not want that on your knees!

[Plonker]

We use cheapo dell pc's for epos soutlion where I work , there must be over 500 of them that we support never had to place a call for a PSU that has failed in 4 years. IMO you really can't fault dell for price :)