DELL SUCKS

[fishywishy]

not everyone has teh time or patience to spend time researching parts, building the comp, figuring out quirks and so on. ive owned 2 dells now and they have both been great, tho i am hoping to build my next one because i can save a bit of money and it looks like fun. but let me tell u, my current xps has been great and runs everything fine, and its 2 years old

u really only save like $800 by building ur own comp, and to some, including myslef, is worth the tech support (which ive found helpful), the warranty (they replaced a hard drive and video card on site in 3 days (separate times))

and if u look at the xps 700 clocks it keeps up with a home built duo in most aspects. obviously a homebuild (if done correcty) will be faster, but as i said before, not everyone wants to do it

now go and count how many people in the homebuilt section are having problems and cant use their custom built super computer. they are relying on 14 yo's to give them tech support (often biased and wrong) meanwhile dell customers call up tech support and have them help 1-on-1 or have a tech sent to their house next day

 

[monkey_knife_fight]

In regards to home-built, you need to remember that the hardware you purchase does come a warranty as well. My 7900 GT video card had a bad GPU, and I called eVGA, who 2nd day aired my replacement (and also included a free copy of Half Life 2: Episode 1 with it). Most people who build their own systems have enough know-how to troubleshoot issues, so I can't say that I agree with you there.

Also, Dell and other OEM systems come locked, so you can't overclock the system at all. While you can build a system with the exact same specs as a Dell, you initially save a respectable amount of money as you said, but you also have the freedom to do WHATEVER you want with a system you build. I think the money you save, the fun in building a system, the freedom you have with it (and the freedom you have in the hardware you choose) far outweighs having tech support. If you have an issue you can't resolve, use the web. The answers are out there, and you can learn a great deal from your research as well.

 

[fpdoc]

What he said.
This is my first custom build and it's fun. But to the vast majority of people without the time or technical know how to build a rig, Dell is a reasonable product. Just because some offer dissenting opinions from the original poster doesnt mean they are on Dell's payroll.
I have a Dell 8200 from 2002 that runs just fine even with its Maxtor. I hope my custom lasts that long. Back then, I was very happy with it and it has been trouble free since I got it. The stock PSU is under rated so I was able to use this on a more powerful GPU.
All these companies obviously have a place for MOST people. Believe me, the people on these boards are a minority.

 

[grog23]

I've had a Dell 8400 for 18 months now and it has been working great. It has either a 630 chipset or a 631 (depending on whether I listen to PC wizard or Belarc advisor, who am I to quibble over 25 nanometers). I'm not a gamer so this does everything I want. I did have a problem with spyaxe but a program by Nick I got from spyware warrior fixed that.

But the experience from gateway I had was a 4 year nightmare, so when I wanted a notebook I got one from KillerNotebooks. I got better quality parts than Dell and for less money(gateway isn't a real company anymore). The big thing though was customer service. Mark (KN) guaranteed me any problems would be handled by someone who speaks English I can understand. Can Dell do that? I've learned a lot about computers the last 18 months and 1 thing I know is any U.S. computer company that outsourses their customer service to India totally sucks!

I guess I'm in the middle-sick of huge companys' arrogance ( isn't mikey and stevies feud so exciting feh ) but not savvy enough to build my own, but this is a computer world and I will keep studying. Anyone for Linux?

grog

 

[ryokinshin]

i buy pre built for a cheap comp only, if u want anything higher go for custom builders or build it urself

 

[Artmic]

I hate purchasing computers from DELL/Gateway/HP etc...for my own use.

Does not matter how much it costs, it can be a 500 dollar door stopper, or a sever for 9K, they all suck for the money paid.

If it is a cheap computer in the 400-600 range, it might be hard to buil one yourself for cheaper, since the parts and labor probably comes from china, or India. If you get brandname parts in that low cost computer it is because the brandname manuf does not want the parts or is not selling to the public,(except maybe best buy, or any other crap retail store)

If you are interested in purchasing a Dell for 4K you might as well build it yourself, take a look at this spec for a current XPS700computer and the price:
x6800 (2.93GHz)
XP Professional
MEMORY 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz - 2 DIMMs
Two 160GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s Hard Drive (10,000RPM) w/DataBurst 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 16x
24 inch UltraSharp™ 2407FPW
GeForce 7950 GX2
Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeMusic (D), w/Dolby® Digital 5.1
KEYBOARD + MOUSE
1Yr HW Warranty Support

Someone tell me is the above worth: 5,459
You can build the same computer for about 4,200 with better memory even.

 

[fishywishy]

something tells me u didnt read a single reply to this thread :roll:

 

[Artmic]

something tells me u didnt read a single reply to this thread :roll:

I guess not, what did i miss?

 

[Robovski]

I've built my own, and do own a Dell and a HP system at home, and will be building a new one this year.

Why? I like building and researching. Researching/planning gives me something else to do at work during a slow time (like now) while I do like learning and building. So why do I own 2 pre-built systems? Because I got them through work. They do a good enough job. Yes, your upgrades are limited. No, you can't overclock. They do work, and both have run reliably since purchase (the HP for 4 years with only a vid card upgrade and an extra HDD) and are great for The Wife(TM)'s gaming, internet usage and on-line poker. My machine (currently a 9 month old Dell with a temporarily upgraded PSU and vidcard which are for the new machine) runs fine, and I get a good run out of Oblivion, X3, what have you. The X600 card it came with would not be so good for the likes of Oblivion, but it did fine with Civ 4, Pirates!, and other games, and it will do The Wife(TM) well as too once I build my new machine this fall.

Look, I can save money building the machine myself, but I don't do this professionally so my time should be a factor. If I spend 30 hours (round figure) researching and 2 hours (wishful thinking) building and cost that (conservatively) at £12/hr that £384 I need to add onto the total cost of the build. The built machines also came with service packages and software packages that should be built into cost for a proper comparison.

So I'm building not to save money, but because I want to and I want a performance machine inside my budget (outside of labor - my cost of my time to myself is £0.00). If I was doing this for pay I'd need to factor in these costs. If I didn't have the time at work for research I wouldn't be building either - my home time is for family life and gaming, not spending loads of time here and elsewhere. Dell can give value to the casual or even performance user who either isn't tech savy and/or values his time.

 

[Guest]

You cant upgrade Dells and easy as you can with a home-built.

 

[PC_God]

The only way to get a ok Dell is through the business side.

Home versions are crap, full of junk software and old outdated cheapo parts. Can I please have a featureless BIOS, thanks Dell.

That being said I can always come $500 under with same exact parts.
And my PC has an overclockable mobo, and the newest tech.

No stupid restore disk a real OS CD!

Most business buy Dell for the dumb warrenty. All you gotta do is buy 1 or 2 xtra mobo and etc parts, swap in 30 minutes to fix anything and cost way less.


The only good thing Dell has is the $300 POS they sell that people seem to eat up and buy. This creates lots of repair business for me.

Its hillarious, take a real XP cd, format and install XP bare (not from the crap restore disk)and magically cut RAM usage in half.

 

[boogityboo04]

I have to agree with the people that say Dells are a medium performance system. People say that they crap out quicker than others, but that's because the people who tend to own Dells DO NO UPKEEP ON THEM, on the other hand, people who custom build usually know how to do maintenance. I own several Dells and they are the quietest computers I have, because I open them up once a month and blow them out with a can of air.

Regarding the quality of the parts, the newer Dell PSU's are actually quite high quality in recent years, and my 305w one is happily running under a 315w load. And my Dell in fact does have a Intel mobo. The only Dells that are real POS are the B110s that you aren't supposed to buy anyways.

Also, there is a reason businesses that run 500+ computers go with Dell. At the University of Wisconsin Plasma Physics we used to build all our own systems, but in recent years have switched to Dell because, "they're easier to set up, cheaper, and last just as long if you know what you are doing."

 

[Slurd]

The only way to get a ok Dell is through the business side.

Home versions are crap, full of junk software and old outdated cheapo parts. Can I please have a featureless BIOS, thanks Dell.

That being said I can always come $500 under with same exact parts.
And my PC has an overclockable mobo, and the newest tech.

No stupid restore disk a real OS CD!

Most business buy Dell for the dumb warrenty. All you gotta do is buy 1 or 2 xtra mobo and etc parts, swap in 30 minutes to fix anything and cost way less.


The only good thing Dell has is the $300 POS they sell that people seem to eat up and buy. This creates lots of repair business for me.

Its hillarious, take a real XP cd, format and install XP bare (not from the crap restore disk)and magically cut RAM usage in half.

PC God is right on.

Bought the wife a Dell cause it was cheap. Found out it was so cheap cause they sold out their hard drive to every Mofo on the planet that wants to advertise.


I will NEVER buy another Dell or pre-made ever again.

 

[mabaty]

dell does have there mobo's made for them, look at the XPs mobo its labeled as a dell and has NO options on the I/O panel. also if you look at the benchmarks comparing the latest dell xps (high end) the voodoo's, falcons even cyberpower, the xps and the gateway fx fall WAY behind even with equal components. Besides alot of the 14yo's on here are better tech support than dells support, hell even when i owned dell's i used google for tech support more than dell.

 

[mbrown]

I have to agree that Dell computers suck. My main gripe is that they are SLOW. I've been completely underwhelmed by the performance of the many Dell machines I've used. I just returned from my in-laws house and they have a Dell Dimension 4600 with a 2.8Ghz Pentium 4 and it is dang slow. My hand-built Athlon XP 1800+ computer is noticeably snappier! Pathetic!

I think the slow performance mostly comes from all the bloatware, spyware, and crapware that Dell pre-installs and thereby victimizes unsuspecting average consumers. But I think their hardware isn't always stellar either. The hard drive on my in-laws computer makes strange noises and is REALLY SLOW! I didn't know there were drive makers that made drives that crappy.

Personally, I would never buy a Dell or an HP or any other name-brand computer. When people ask me for advice on how to buy a new computer and whether Dell's are good, I'm never sure what to say. For me they are a terrible computer, but for the average person they may be acceptable, I guess.

 

[shata]

Yeah u guys are crazy dell uses proprietary boards, all there stuff is modified boards etc...

And the claim that u can buy a dell cheaper then building is not true. If you go from the stand point of owning a monitor,keyboard,mouse. Then its cheaper to build your own. If you don't own all that stuff get a dell for your first pc.

 

[dsharp9000]

Have bought quite a few dells in past and built my own as well. There have been times that I have been upset with dell as they skimp on somethings like the power supply - this often leads to no upgrade option. Also, sometimes they dont always give you proper information or enough options with regard to video card selection which can lead to disapointment. With that being said, you cant build a system cheaper than dell.

One interesting option to dell is:

ibuypower.com --- you can select what motherboard you want --- numerous video card options --- etc, and they are priced compititively although more than dell.

 

[boogityboo04]

I have to agree that Dell computers suck. My main gripe is that they are SLOW. I've been completely underwhelmed by the performance of the many Dell machines I've used. I just returned from my in-laws house and they have a Dell Dimension 4600 with a 2.8Ghz Pentium 4 and it is dang slow. My hand-built Athlon XP 1800+ computer is noticeably snappier! Pathetic!

The slow performance is usually caused by the USERS in a lot of cases. Dells obviously have crapware installed and I agree it doesn't help performance. But most of the time people end up blaming Dells for being slow, just because the average person who buys one is also likely to be computer illiterate, and therefore not realize that all their free pr0n is loaded with viruses, and those cute screensavers they downloaded last night came bundled with a trojan. It is pretty much impossible that the hardware is causing their computer to run so slow, I mean, just think about it. A Dell Mobo may not be as efficient as a ASUS Striker Extreme, but it isn't going to noticeably slow down the computer. More likely is that they have some virus or Kazaa slowing them down.

My Dell came with a XP Pro disk free of charge, and I just used it to run a clean install with no crapware, and my system is running just as fast as any other 3 Ghz P4 with a gig of RAM and a 7600GT. It also only cost $600 after rebates, and that was a year and a half ago. A similar system custom built on Newegg cost something like $900.

 

[rachel77788]

Interesting, this is cool, nearly made my day.

http://www.download.com/Bingo-iPod-Converter-Suite/3000-2194_4-10679677.html

 

[geepondy]

I can say that our company (1000 plus employees) has bought hundreds of Dells and I've interfaced with at least a dozen of them (many Optiplex's) over the past year alone and they have been extremely reliable including my three year old office machine. Also of course, we're not in the habit of swapping out motherboards or CPU's but I find the ability to open the case and add PCI cards in which we frequently do for our engineering lab machines to be an extremely quick and easy process, much more so then my expensive at the time home built machine.

I think this is a good review of a Dell machine that covers the pros and cons of a Dell.

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2834

 

[necroshine67]

While Dell computers are not up to speed with home made rigs, when it came to getting a LCD I chose the Dell 22 inch wide screen with 5 ms.
So Dell don't suck all the way..

 

[stazzi]

I have a Dell 5150 dimension. Monitor is really good. Cd-Dvd drives are crap. Will not read Dvd-R. Factory installed programs expire after a short time and can't get rid of them. Any problems I have, I call toll free number and get a guy in India who keeps me on the phone 2 hours without solving the problem. They also tell a bunch of lies, but I must say they are over polite. This is only 1 year old, and I have had a new 3.9 gz cpu installed, 2 dvd burners, which are crap, 2 cooling fans which are so noisy. Buy local and have it built to your specs. My son had a HP built and it is fantastic. Fast, quiet, 2 years old and no problems. I should have listened to him. Try to talk to someone in Texas at Dell. Good luck.

 

[qwazzy]

Here's what I say: I have built my own computer, kind of recently, only a year ago. I really enjoy building my own computer, and I think that IF I had to buy a laptop, I would go with Dell. I've had my Dell Dimension 3000 for 3 years now WITHOUT a hiccup. Sure, I can bitch about how its case isn't cool looking with lights, but in the end it's almost the same computer as you would build yourself. The only difference would be the case and mobo. One thing I don't like about Dell, though, is that they use proprietary mobos, and if something breaks down, you can't change it with something from the store. I just ordered a laptop from them, and I'm happy about the price. For 1,500, I got a T7500, 8600m GT, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB HD, 2.0 MP camera, Bluetooth and Vista Home Premium for the price. Hell, the card is better than my 7600GT I have in this computer, but that really doesn't matter to me, because I don't game that much anymore.

If somebody asks me on whether to buy a Dell, I tell them different things. If the person is a gamer, I tell them it's better to build their own, or I would even build one for them.

If it's for web surfing and word processing then why would you build your own and go through the hassle? It makes no sense.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[verlaist]

I just have to comment. Dell, gateway, and even Alienware are companies aftert one thing, YOUR MONEY. To achive this goal they outsource ther customer service to India, use the cheapest, crapiest, propritary parts on their "cheepie boxes'. Leave the customer to fend for themselves. The ONLY time this is not the case is when when you spen over three grand on a PC and even then its propritary. Theese PC's are good for buisness use ONLY IMHO. Who have on sight tech to correct any problems that may arise.
Though it is true that for the sub $1000.oo market a pre-built may seem like a sweet deal it realy is not. By the time you get your new $600.00 PC home and running you begin to dicover why the PC was so cheap. And may stoore now have a limited return policy or costly re-stocking fees. Also most peple now have owned at least 1 compter and own a monitor, keyboard and mouse anyway. So I could build them a E-mail, M$ word, Solitare PC for the same price.
Everyone I have built a PC for has said the wished they never bought a Pre-made PC. The invasive nature of trial ware, adware is enough to make anyone crazy upset.
One final thought. My brother in law bought a Dell XPS and the Video card blew out in a week (7300 GT), so he had a Dell tech come and install a new upgrade for a replacement: a 7900 GTX. Upon inspection of his PC. Still he had a 7300 GT, he was charged the price for the upgrade he never got and still he has th 7300 GT. Flat out robbery. Someone somewhere has a nice video card anyway.
Think on this you Dell losers. One of theese Peple are going to wisen up. They will take the time to have a PC built or learn to build one. Customers are tired of being swindled out the money they work hard for. It is a matter of time before Building a PC is so much more cost effective that a Pre-Built PC will be the thing of Past. Don't believe me? Ill quote a PC at any Price Range. Just the Box since most PC buyers have the Monitor ect already. I mean come on there is an NVIDIA board out now that is like $150 Bucks with Geforce 7 seris onboard, with audio. Just need a CPU, PSU, HDD, and DVD DRIVE. Most people have those in their old comp anyway. So move it to new PC and BAM!

 

[lostandwandering]

Think on this you Dell losers.

My aren't we hateful? The entire time I was reading your post I was waiting for a "Go Mac" rant. Thank god it never came.

There will always be a market for Dell and gateway because there are just too many people out there that just don't have the time, patience or knowledge to put together their own system.

Personally, I have 2 Dell desktops and 2 Dell laptops in my family and have never had an issue with them. Dell support has always been there for us and has always resolved our issues. This was also before my parents trusted me to build my own system without screwing something up.

Would I ever buy another system from Dell or any other OEM? Unless it's a laptop the answer is most likely no. I know the benefits of building my own and will probably do so for myself or my family should they need a system.