Why I own and why you should buy a dell computer.

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Why would you want to buy a computer? Whats so good about and are they value for money? Well heres my experience of owning numerous Computers.

Some of the information is a little out of date but most is still relevant to the website and the way they do business, even today.

As a PC user from way back when CGI 4 colour graphics were state of the art, I pride myself on knowing a bit about PC´s.

I have had many a PC in the past 18 years and most of these I´ve built with bits I´ve acquired along the way. These machines however have one major flaw. They don´t always work when you turn them on.

The problem with PC´s is that there are so many different configurations that you can use, that sometimes one of these won´t work.

The last machine I built was a real dog to put together, first-off the hard drive wasn´t recognised in the BIOS (had to go to Motherboard manufacturers web site and download a BIOS update, then install it, scary), then when installing Windows my onboard sound card isn´t recognised (So much for plug and play). And so, on....

Really frustrating.

So when I bought my last PC I decided to buy a ready built system.

Of all the machines I looked at the best value for money and best service option was with . So I purchased a Dimension XPS800T, which is a Pentium 3, 800Mhz Tower System.

I wanted the machine for everyday use but I also wanted lots of Disk Space, I do lots of graphic design and disk space is pretty important, but I also wanted the best graphics card (Nvidia Gforce 256plus) and the best Soundcard (SoundBlaster Live).

So I ordered my machine over the web site.

Here you can specify what machine you want and which bits you want to put inside it. As each item is changed the price is automatically updated so you can see exactly how much your machine will cost at each stage.

I also wanted good customer support so I added the 3-year warranty package to my PC price. (call out customer service)

In total I paid £1200 for my machine (inc Vat) and I know I could have got a better spec machine for less if I had built it myself (not much better 800mhz was the fastest processor at the time, maybe more memory) but I cannot be bothered with all the messing around to get the machine to work, plus the time to build it, and the time traveling to and from the shop to exchange bits that don´t work or are incompatible....

I am however very satisfied with my machine, it arrived, I took it out of the box, set it up, switched it on and started using it almost immediately.

I have only had cause to use the warranty once during the past 18 months, and this was for a faulty hard drive. Fortunately this wasn´t an absolute catastrophe as I always keep backups. I rung at around 3pm in the afternoon and they informed me that a service rep would call within the next two days to replace the hard drive. He arrived the next day at 10am, with a new hard drive in hand. It was fitted, formatted and had Windows installed in around 30 minutes and I was back working within the hour. Superb.

The customer support department is also very good, I have phoned them on several occasions to ask very technical questions and the information given has been spot on every time. The last time I emailed them it took just 6 minutes to get a reply….!

When I need a new machine then I will probably buy another , as the quality of the machine I have at present is more than satisfactory, as is the customer service they provide.

To sum up, I bought a machine that worked from the box, has only let me down once and has been repaired by the manufacturer within 24 hours. Yep! A quality machine with good service to boot. How unusual is that these days?

Update: Dec 2003
My has just died, well I say died. The machine still lives and works fine its just that the AGP slot which the graphics card plugs into has stopped working. If you stick a PCI graphics card in the machine it works fine, but ive bought another machine. Another !! 4 years isnt bad for a break down when the machine is constantly switched on. Still Ive bought another one, lets see how long this one last :)

Update #2 : April 2006
I needed a new laptop and guess what I bought? Yes another Dell. A Inspiron 640m. Its an absolutely fantastic machine, its light, its fast and the battery lasts for upto 10 hours. Best thing was it was on a special offer and was £700!

Links
» Dell - http://www.dell.co.uk

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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed below are strictly those of the individual author/poster. The views and opinions shown below are not necessarily those of Mike Porter, his associates and/or sponsors. We do not endorse any view below or necessarily agree/disagree with these views. Views posted below are entirely those of the poster, not me!

You should get a mac!
You still on winders ;)

mykp says:
I love mac users, there so smug. "Ooo, look at me, i m a mac user, look at my mac - so much better than youre PC! "

1. Who cares, nobody except mac users
2. so what!?

Posted by: Rob Spaull on 22 February 2009

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