Dell computers, are they really that bad?

[joxley1990]

Ok yeah, the mobo's arnt amazing, and they complicate things when trying to upgrade, but they ain't half smart. Check these pics

 

[Lac3y]

I thought Dell were the world's number 1 PC supplier?

So they can't be that bad.

pricey though...

 

[joxley1990]

Yeah their good, but not for people who want to upgrade 24/7. The price aint too bad...I got a Dimension 3000 with TFT for £300 odd

 

[Kage]

In terms of prices, they aren't bad, but then again, you could build a better PC than the 3000 for about £300, though minus the monitor.

The thing I have against Dell, and any pre-built company is the fact they give you no choice on the motherboard, which is usually the issue to keep things cheap.

 

[joxley1990]

Yeah that is true, got to be said the Dell monitors are very very nice

 

[Speedydowt]

Dell, funny thing. you want to game on a dell? go to hell this is becuase as mentioned earlier pre flashed bios allows no over clocking, limited features, often intergrated graphics and limited dimms for ram. Also dell has a deal with Pentium so theres no amd 64 (754 sockett let alone 939) and even the new lga 775D core is shocking for gaming. Far as price goes there fantastic for "i use my pc for the internet, email and animating clippy" becuase for sub $500 you get 17" crt or sub $700 for 17th lcd which even building your own pc cant beat ( dont quote me on that kiddies)

 

[Kage]

Still, its probably still best if you can build a PC to build one yourself, or even someone who hasn't to gain experience.
I agree on those points though above, and its all to do witht he cheap motherboards that are just on par to work with all the components.

Though, you could probably build a great system for $700...probably again minus the monitor, but I don't know what specs that $700 model has

 

[here_is_gone]

i've got a dimmension 4400 and i've had it for probably close to 5 years. we've had to wipe the hard drive a couple times, but it's reliable, i've upgraded the video card and the RAM, and its not all that bad for gaming; i play halo on it all the time

 

[Kage]

Yeah, I was actually shocked when I played Halo on an oldish laptop. It actually runs rather good and doesn't look too bad at the default settings either that it was runnning on.
You know by any chance what video card that 4400 uses? I'd suspect onboard considering its DELL...

 

[UK31337]

I've still got my Dell from 6 years ago.

5 years ago, the DVD drive failed for some reason, not even the Dell tech knew why. He gave us a new drive and IDE cable - the same drive's worked non-stop perfectly for 5 years now.

The only other component I changed was the hard drive in April this year, and the old one only broke because I corrupted it by accident and connected it to another PC, at which point it blew up.

So on the whole, that Dell is a beauty - still is, although it could probably do with a bit more RAM to speed things up a bit.

Dell are stupidly expensive though - I was going to buy an Inspiron 9300 or XPS Gen2, but it was just so expensive it was unreal.