Stay away from Dell, Compaq, and HP unless you are just looking for cheap.
I’ve got a Dell XPS. I’ll let you make your own price/value trade off which I thought was very good.
An intangible is that after a year my HD failed which I suppose is a knock against them. On the other hand, their warranty service was excellent. And in one business day a tech came to my home and replaced the HD. After the replacement HD, I reloaded my OS and went online to download drivers etc. All OK but my wireless didn’t work...I’m an above average computer geek but couldn’t fix it. A quick call to their wireless help group. We spent 2 hours on the phone troubleshooting. It wasn’t obvious. They took control of my ‘puter over the internet and found the problem. A driver had failed to load properly and we had to reinstall. *&%$@#. There is no way I could have solved that on my own. Thanks Dell.
Bottom line I’d get another one.
All My Dells Are Belong To Me & Still Up And Working.
I am computer challenged — only know how to do such things ads type boring and annoying posts to FR. But for what it’s worth, I have a Dell, bought last Christmas, and so far, so good. Certainly better than the HP I had. That one stunk.
I had a HD problem after one year, and they quickly replaced it. It just took me a while to figure out that the problem was a bad HD.
On a side note, the Gen 2 machine did have a slight design flaw in that the front MIC jack was low-powered and didn't work. The sound card in the back had a MIC jack and I had to run a patch cord from the back to plug in a microphone. Other than that, the machine worked well and was easy to open and add more cards.
I still run that PC as my desktop. My other PC is now an HP dv7t notebook.
-PJ
Whatever you do, don’t buy Toshiba! I bought a L-305 laptop when my desktop crashed and trust me....it’s not even been six months and I am now having to use a borrowed desktop. It seems that Toshiba has changed their policy on warranties just this last Monday to the effect that, instead of being able to take it into an authorized repair location close by, where I could have the pc back in a day or two, I NOW have to UPS it back to the Toshiba repair depot (which is apparently just a third party repair company in Tennessee, and wait probably several weeks or longer. Basically, their warranty isn’t worth the crappy paper it’s printed on. I’ll never buy another Toshiba product of ANY kind.
So far, it's been a total disaster.
The hard drive has been replaced THREE times (and it's still noisy), the mother board was replaced three weeks ago, the APC adapter died out of the blue two weeks ago, the audio is horrible (even with an external sound card), and now the system is blue screening....
I worked at Dell for six years in marketing and I have great respect for the company. Micheal Dell is also a republican which is really great.
However, I will NEVER buy another Dell again.
I bought an HP last week with windows 7, 6MB of memory, a 7200 RPM hard drive, and a Intel Duo Core 2.4 processor. It puts the Dell XPS to absolute shame.
Some advice if you do go with the Dell ---
Best time to buy is Black Friday (by far the best deals of the year)
Dell outlet pricing is NOT very good. You might save $20-$100 bucks over a similar config, but it is NOT worth it to buy a returned system.
Be sure to get windows 7 -- it rocks! Be SURE to get the 64 bit OS -- the 32 bit OS can only handle up to 3mb of memory!!!
The AUDIO on XPS sytems are NOT very good. Be sure to get an external sound card to compensate. (Sound on my HP without an external card is fantastic BTW.
For your uses, you probably do not need 6mb of memory. For basic word processing and Internet you can easily get by with 2.1 ghz processor and 4gb of memory. Take the savings and apply to the extended warranty!
good luck!
ASUS Laptop
If I were to buy a desktop.. I would try to also get an Asus or for a little more money Alienware...
But for cheap and easy.... I can't recommend Dell or the others... thought the GPX Dell seems pretty good for colleges.
My current employer and my previous employer are both “all Dell” shops. In both places, the Dells just run and run and run.
I have a Dell XPS 730 with Quad core, 8GB and Vista x64. Absolute powerhouse for video and graphics. Chassis and internal features are amazing. Not a single crash in the 11 months of ownership. Love it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/875386/posts
It is a few years old but it has colored my perceptionof dell. I also understand that they support limiting the second amendment.
So, I buy through Tiger Direct and have not had a bad computer yet. My last computer is an Acer Aspire intel computer. It has been a dream. nice in every way.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/875386/posts
Post 28 explains what happened
It is a few years old but it has colored my perceptionof dell. I also understand that they support limiting the second amendment.
So, I buy through Tiger Direct and have not had a bad computer yet. My last computer is an Acer Aspire intel computer. It has been a dream. nice in every way.
So naturally, I held my last puter for 3 years.
The latest one is a Toshiba...I don’t care about the labels or the nomenclature...This baby does zero to 60 in less than 5.....Loving it....Best one ever....of the 6 or 7 I have previously owned.
dellauction.com refurbs cheap if that suits you.
My advise? Stay away from Dell
I’ve bought over a dozen Dells. Top notch PCs. No other PC manufacturer is a consistentenly good, in my opinion. I also have some Sony, HP, and Apple computers.
Replying on my Dell Studio 1535 laptop. Just now a year old and have had no problems. 2GB RAM, 250G HDD, Intel Core 2 Duo T5750. Linux OS. Love it.
We’d been loyal Dell consumers for about seven years. Then earlier this year I ordered a new laptop. It wouldn’t connect to the internet via cable. I could deal with that — just return it and get another; not a problem. It happens. Howevever, the customer service/tech support had become absolutely intolerable! Nobody spoke English. It made my hair hurt to have a simple conversation. I’d call, speak to someone who would take my number to return my call. Not one call was ever returned.
That’s the streamlined version of three days in Dell Hell. We’ll have nothing more to do with Dell until/unless they revamp tech support. The Dell went back. Got an HP instead.
Did you get adequate feedback already? I have some first hand experience but won’t belabor the pint if you’ve gotten enough info.
I was waiting on Windows7 before I made my next purchase. I played with the W7 demo at the store, and it didn't wow me, so I bought my first MAC.
So far so good. The price of the iMac27 is a lot cheaper than a comparable Dell at this time when you figure in all the software that comes on a MAC.