Bought me a Dell!

hillslider · Jun 11, 2005

Well after using an HP Pavillion 433 Celeron for the past 6 years I finally upgraded. Purchased a Dell Dimension 4700 2.8 Pentium 4....120 gig drive 512mb memory, CDRW, DVD, 17" digital flat panel, 4 year in at home service, 3 year accident replacement, 4 years worth of express tech hot line, Windows xp pro, widows office suit, photo shop pro and a few other programs. All sent out with free frt for 1250.00 after a 150.00 mail in rebate.

So far I am just amazed with this thing. I love the flat panel screen. No more big old monitor on my desk. Customer service was great....but I did have to give up with the first rep I spoke to. He could barely speak english....so I gave up and told him I would call back. The second time I got this lady and she was great. Very courteous and she knew the product. I recomend Dell. It sure is better than going to Cicuit Ctiy or Best Buy and taking with a teenage salesperson who knows nothing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

gmsssi · Jun 12, 2005

I've purchase 4 8400's in the last 3 months and yes they are great machine's. I use to build my computers but today you can't do it cheaper than a Dell, Gateway etc. purchase! I use Dell at work and I get company discount, the only reason I purchased a Dell. I don't regret it........

All have been
8400 3 gig Mghtz
1 gig ram
160 HD
19" flat panels
DVD/CD read/write
Dual monitor display

Boondox · Jun 13, 2005

A few years back I had a Dell 486. About a month before the warranty expired it started smoking. Tech support told me to unplug it immediately and not to use it again; a replacement was on the way.

The replacement arrived in two days. The original PC had been a 486 with 10G hard drive, 128M RAM, etc. The brand new replacement was a Pentium 2.4G with 40G hard drive, 512M RAM and all sorts of bells and whistles. Along with the new PC came a letter apologizing for the fact that Dell had no 486s left, therefore was not able to offer an exact replacement.

On our next Visa statement there was a $700 credit from Dell. We called and were told that since we had paid $2100 for the 486 three years ago, and the cost of the new Pentium was only $1400, they had refunded the difference! /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Needless to say, we always go with Dell. Pete

Jagmandave · Jun 13, 2005

The only issue I have with them is that sometimes they use proprietary software and hardware. I had to format my hardrive cause I got hacked, and I have yet to get my soundcard working. I've been to Dell's web site and even they don't seem to have the right driver - this is factory installed too, nothing I added on. This desktop is barely a year old, too. Other than that, they seem like good value for the $$$$.

I'm constantly amazed at how the cost of computers keeps dropping while the quality and performance keeps improving. Why can' they do that with cars?

gsxr1100 · Jun 13, 2005

I bought my wife a laptop for Christmas. Nice and fast laptop but the software is a joke. It has expiring (time wise) software on it. Photo stuff, virus software, & some others.

I know first hand there customer service is a total waste of time.

For the price they are hard to beat, but I am not inpressed with the software.

But on the flip side I have a Dell here at work and it is the biggest piece of (you know what)I have ever used. For the 2Ghz, over 2MB of RAM, best graphics cards we could get, 22" screens, DVD drive, all for over $7,000 each. And the PC has gone down 3 times in 2 years.

TheKid · Jun 13, 2005

If Dell loaded a full version of "Photo stuff, virus software, & some others" you wouldn't like the price you would end up paying for a system.

Dargo · Jun 13, 2005

I started up and operated a computer hardware business back in the early 90's. I operated that business for several years before I sold it off in 1999. The computer hardware business is a very tough business. If you stock anything, your inventory drops an average of 30% per month. Needless to say, you just couldn't afford to have inventory sitting around getting old. You could hear the money going down the drain! /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

With the advent of the internet and, therefore, the expectation that the computer builder would provide free lifetime training and support on how to use the internet, I had to get out. I'm glad I did! Anyway, there were several brands of computers that I repaired that were just total junk. You know how you can buy "x'd" out golf balls? Packard Bell (we called them Packard ****) computers as well as Acer usually had X'd out chips on the motherboards. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

Most of the really criminal companies have now gone out of business. Gateway helped keep me in business. They sold fairly crappy computers and told the customers that they would have their replacement in a month or so. People would rather pay me to fix them so they could have it the next day. Thanks Gateway. Compaq went from a good company to one that peddled junk as well. I can go on and on on how companies changed with the times.

Anyway, Dell has seemed to be one of the more consistant computer builders over the years. They have always seemed to have a decent product at a reasonable price. I still build my own and the ones for my kids. However, now that I have less time, they just might get a Dell Dude.

I always wanted to try a Mac, but I still can't justify the premium price for what you get. The software selection has gotten more reasonable for them, but their prices are still out of the realm of possibility for me. I can't believe they still don't have the ability to upgrade their machines much at all. I suppose they still want you to throw them away rather than upgrade your aging Apple. Good luck with your Dell!

penokee · Jun 13, 2005

On my second Dell Desktop - new one is a Dimension 4600. My grandson (call him my personal virus) crashed my first one and spent many hours with Dell reps on the phone - they were polite and helpful. Plan to look at Dell Notebook.
penokee /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Ps: Only regret I have is that I didn't mortgage the farm a few years back and buy all the Dell Stock I could.

rswyan · Jun 14, 2005

Not wanting to start a Mac/PC flame war here but I just can't let this go by .....

( I always wanted to try a Mac, but I still can't justify the premium price for what you get. )
Research it - and you might find out that if you equip a Dell comparably as whatever mac you are looking at, the Dell would be more expensive ... yes, I'm sure that's how it is.

( I can't believe they still don't have the ability to upgrade their machines much at all. )
Ummm - not sure where you are getting this data but it's not really very accurate - in fact it's highly inaccurate. Who told you this ? They were wrong. And what exactly is it that you would be wanting to upgrade ? Maybe the upgradability is a bit of a red herring - Apple was shipping built-in gigabit ethernet on the logic board, Firewire, and 802.11 way before it was mainstream in the PC world. Maybe more features from the factory means less need to upgrade ..... dunno ....

( I suppose they still want you to throw them away rather than upgrade your aging Apple. )
Most folks just keep on using them (since they are far more secure than a PC - viruses are almost non-exsistant on the Mac), resell them, or give them to a friend /family member - generally the useful life of a Mac is at least twice as long as a PC. For what it's worth I've never thrown any of my Macs away - I've sold several, traded a few others - and always been able to repair any of them.

Right now I have a Powermac 8100/100 (1995, upgraded to a G3) PowerMac 7500 (1995, upgraded to a G4 processor, 10/100 Ethernet & ATA hard drive), PowerMac 7600 (1996, upgraded to a G4 processor, 10/100 Ethernet & ATA hard drive), PowerMac 9600/350 (1997, 10/100 Ethernet), PowerBook G3 (2000, the wifes, slated for a G4 processor upgrade - six yearold computer and she uses it every day), PowerMac Dual G4/450 (2000, mostly stock at this point), and my current unit - a PowerMac Dual G4/800 (2001) - with an internal 375 gigabyte RAID 0 array, Dual Ethernet (10/100 card and builtin Gigabit), builtin 802.11b base station, running a pair of Sony G520 20" monitors @ 1600 x 1200 in millions of colors in a continous desktop ... off the stock video card that came with the machine ..... I have another 300 or 400 gigs of external removable Firewire hard drive storage.

Every one of the above machines is every bit as capable and functional as it was the day I bought it - and they were pretty capable at that point. All of them were used (professionally) to edit video and/or to produce 2D/3D computer generated animation - something that is far more computationally intensive than surfing the net or running Quicken or Word. I've even installed and ran Mac OS X on the older machines (7500/7600/9600 - all circa 1995 -1997) and it was quite usable, if a tad slow - try installing XP on a an a 9 or 10 year PC and lemme know how well that flys .... upgrade, shmupgade .....

My laser printer is a 1992 Apple Laserwriter Pro 600 - and is used every day - and it's still running just fine thank you very much - the only thing I've ever done to it is replace the toner carts, blow out the dust, and throw a 32 meg memory upgrade in it (last year .... just cause I had it laying around /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif)

In the interests of full disclosure, I do have a dual PIII 900 box running 98 SE and Win2K - for those times (very few, very far between, thankfully) when I absolutely can't avoid going to over to the darkside to get something done. /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

And besides, if ya just gotta have that "Intel Inside" sticker on the box, starting in 2006, that box can have an Apple label on it as well. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

gsxr1100 · Jun 14, 2005

I did not like the price I paid at the time; but she wanted one. I could have built a kick (you know what) desk top for that price.

I just wish Dell would not advertise all the wonderful stuff you get when it is all FREEWARE and I could get the same stuff online for free.