Need some advice from geekus maximus, below are the specs for a Dell desktop that I am looking at. It's not used for gaming, just everyday stuff internet, wordprocessing, etc. Any good for the price?

Processor - Intel® Pentium® G620 Processor (2.60GHz, 3MB)

Operating System - Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit, English

Memory3 - 4GB3 Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz

... Hard Drive - 1TB4 SATA hard drive (7200RPM)

Video Card - Graphics : Intel® HD

Optical Drive - DVD +/- RW Drive (read/write CD & DVD) with DVD Burn software

Keyboard - Dellâ„¢ USB Entry Keyboard - UK/Irish (QWERTY)

Wireless - ll Wireless 1502 (802.11n) WLAN Full-height Mini

£319 delivered, this doesn't include the monitor.

If you go to the Dell outlet you can pick this up for £267.38 delivered:

Inspiron Desktop 580 MT

Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64 BIT)

Processor: Intel Core i3-540 (3.06GHz, 4M)

Hard Drive : 320GB (7200RPM) Serial ATA II with NCQ and 16MB DataBurst Cache

4 GB DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz (2 DIMMs)

16X DVD+/-RW Drive

English Genuine Windows 7 SP1 Home Premium (64Bit OS)

Back Up Media Not Included

Shame you weren't looking last week because you could have got this if you had been quick enough - http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/dell-new-inspiron-620-mt-now-164-50-with-50-off-1038295 !!

If you go to the Dell outlet you can pick this up for £267.38 delivered:

Inspiron Desktop 580 MT

Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium (64 BIT)

Processor: Intel Core i3-540 (3.06GHz, 4M)

Hard Drive : 320GB (7200RPM) Serial ATA II with NCQ and 16MB DataBurst Cache

4 GB DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz (2 DIMMs)

16X DVD+/-RW Drive

English Genuine Windows 7 SP1 Home Premium (64Bit OS)

Back Up Media Not Included

Shame you weren't looking last week because you could have got this if you had been quick enough - http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/dell-new-inspiron-620-mt-now-164-50-with-50-off-1038295 !!

That looks good apart from the hard drive, I really want 500GB or larger......is it a refurbished one?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00461LT6S/ref=nosim/?tag=hotukdeals-21 £48 bringing you up to £315 and you will then have 1.32TB

The 580 doesn't include a keyboard and mouse, I do have a wireless system atm but that is also getting a bit tired....

The problem with Dell and similar companies is that they load down their computers with "crapware", stuff you dont want and will never use/need. this can make them a LOT slower than needed, they sometimes also use non standard parts, making repairs difficult, and old/obsolescent parts.

You are better off going to a PC fair and talking to the system builders. Usually they have a menu of specs and parts, you pick a case, then come back 20-30 minutes later to collect it. Talk sweetly and they will even install the OS for you.

(Dont skimp on the case, get something that is not made of tissue paper; personally, unless space is an issue, go for a full tower, so there is plenty of space for extra drives etc.),

It will probably cost the same, but you will have a PC made of standard parts that are current stock and easy to repair/replace.

Then you go home and install all the programs YOU want and YOU will use.

If you want a monitor, Dell DO sell some of the best on the market.

The problem with Dell and similar companies is that they load down their computers with "crapware", stuff you dont want and will never use/need. this can make them a LOT slower than needed, they sometimes also use non standard parts, making repairs difficult, and old/obsolescent parts.

You are better off going to a PC fair and talking to the system builders. Usually they have a menu of specs and parts, you pick a case, then come back 20-30 minutes later to collect it. Talk sweetly and they will even install the OS for you.

(Dont skimp on the case, get something that is not made of tissue paper; personally, unless space is an issue, go for a full tower, so there is plenty of space for extra drives etc.),

It will probably cost the same, but you will have a PC made of standard parts that are current stock and easy to repair/replace.

Then you go home and install all the programs YOU want and YOU will use.

If you want a monitor, Dell DO sell some of the best on the market.

Dell don't put any bloatware on and haven't done for years. They also haven't used bespoke parts for years either and are easily upgraded/repaired.

The only software they put on is Dell system monitor and usually an Office trial or MS Works. Simple to remove by going into programs. Or if you want to be sure just shove a Windows 7 CD in when you switch it on and do a clean install before you start.

Would not touch a computer fair with a bargepole. Who is going to be there in 6 months time if something fails? I have been burned far too many times by computer fairs. Typically, it is usually cheaper spec for spec to buy a Dell than a home made job.

Good advice from both there, I have to say I can imagine getting home from the PC fair to find the tower full of bricks......especially if the fair is near Dale Farm!

I think I will probably go for a Dell, the DVD went on my current one many years ago and it was any easy part to source and replace and customer service from them has always been good. From experience if I call them they will beat the internet price, not quite sure how that works but if it saves a few quid who am I to complain?

Don't forget quidco if you're buying from Dell

Don't forget quidco if you're buying from Dell

??????

IMO a dell PC is going to be great for what you need, as you say 'your not after a gamer beast'

sure there might or might not be software pre-installed, thats easily rectified with a quick tappety tap of appwiz.cpl in the run command and remove whatever you wish.

The other reason for getting a branded machine is that Dell and the like have spent a lot of time and I should imagine thousands of pounds on research into what components are compatible with other components. They dont take a look at the shelf behind them and pic and mix their hardware into the box.

If they did, then we'd all be a Mr Dell selling PC's on the internet and earning millions.

£320 for a PC is a good price. Sure you can go to Jo Bloggs round the corner with his full shelves and get one cheaper, but you pay for what you get.

I looked recently for my father and saw this:

Acer Aspire AX3990

Intel i5 2300

3Gb of RAM

500Gb Sata hard disk drive

DVD-RW

Windows 7 Home premium which includes Windows Media Centre

HDMI slot

9 USB Slots

Multi Card Reader - SD etc

From amazon £349 - the difference is that it has a faster Core i5 processor running at 2.8GHz - its quicker as it has 4 cores instead of 2. the hdd is half the size though.

paul

Bloat ware? Then just remove it. The images Dell seem to be using at the moment are very slim though so I can vouch for them not using bloat ware and I don't think they have for a while.

With custom builds there's a time and a place for them - and budget to mid range computers is not one of them. I would only go custom build for top end gaming rigs and even then I would recommend getting a pre built bundle off the likes of Aria or Novatech.

For budget builds you will never ever touch the likes of dell for price and keeping a keen eye on the outlet brings the price down even more. IME the greatest influence on pricing a budget system is the OS license. Win 7 is typically about another 70 precious quid on top of the hardware but going Dell really does bring the price down.

I've had two laptops off the outlet and haven't had a problem. Got a great deal both times. The added benefit of the outlet is that as the systems have been out once and been RMAd is that you are pretty much never going to find a fault on delivery, because someone else found it first

Dell Outlet is the best idea I've seen, very popular on the Overclockers.co.uk forum too.

I've had two laptops off the outlet and haven't had a problem. Got a great deal both times. The added benefit of the outlet is that as the systems have been out once and been RMAd is that you are pretty much never going to find a fault on delivery, because someone else found it first

I had one. It came with the wrong charger. It took days of emails before they would accept their fault ("Our database says you have the right charger sir", oh really, well if you can explain how I can get this cloverleaf lead into this two-pin transformer, I'm all-bloody-ears!) and in the end I emailed my order number and pictures of the charger to every Dell email address I'd dealt with before they finally agreed to swap it. The support can be troublesome as you get a lot of script monkeys in foreign call centres. Alternatively if you pay through the nose for their extra warranties they can be very good. We had gold level support on all our Dell servers, and whenever there was a fault it took about 10 minutes on the phone before I had an apology and a replacement part on 4 hour shipment.

Dell hardware is fine while you have a warranty. If it breaks out of warranty, you're screwed, cost of replacement proprietary parts is almost always prohibitive unless you have a REALLY good reason to keep the machine. We had a number of Optiplex GX270s which were hit by a serious capacitor fault rendering the motherboards useless. North America got an extended warranty recall, the UK got "sorry, it's out of warranty, several hundred quid for a new motherboard please". Normally you'd replace the machine, but these things were all over the NHS where they'd be required to get the old machines up and running so as to keep a consistent fleet, so they were had over a barrel by Dell IMO.

I would buy Dell if it were cheap enough, but I'd much rather have a build made of standard parts, even at the low end. There's more chance of you salvaging a machine that way, if your low end motherboard dies after 3 years you can probably still get a compatible motherboard for pennies. Try doing that with a Dell (or any other big OEM, really), you'd have to replace the whole machine even if you didn't really need to.

Everyone's experience is different, and I was just talking from mine

Faults occur with everything and anything, be it Dell or even proprietary high quality components. For example I just had a £500 EVGA graphics card fail on me whic was rare but the support was great.

And typically 3 years is ample time for the life cycle of computer equipment. Most companies should definitely be renewing equipment every 3 years anyway after the warranty expires, and I know that I follow suit for my personal tech too.

I had one. It came with the wrong charger. It took days of emails before they would accept their fault ("Our database says you have the right charger sir", oh really, well if you can explain how I can get this cloverleaf lead into this two-pin transformer, I'm all-bloody-ears!) and in the end I emailed my order number and pictures of the charger to every Dell email address I'd dealt with before they finally agreed to swap it. The support can be troublesome as you get a lot of script monkeys in foreign call centres. Alternatively if you pay through the nose for their extra warranties they can be very good. We had gold level support on all our Dell servers, and whenever there was a fault it took about 10 minutes on the phone before I had an apology and a replacement part on 4 hour shipment.

Dell hardware is fine while you have a warranty. If it breaks out of warranty, you're screwed, cost of replacement proprietary parts is almost always prohibitive unless you have a REALLY good reason to keep the machine. We had a number of Optiplex GX270s which were hit by a serious capacitor fault rendering the motherboards useless. North America got an extended warranty recall, the UK got "sorry, it's out of warranty, several hundred quid for a new motherboard please". Normally you'd replace the machine, but these things were all over the NHS where they'd be required to get the old machines up and running so as to keep a consistent fleet, so they were had over a barrel by Dell IMO.

I would buy Dell if it were cheap enough, but I'd much rather have a build made of standard parts, even at the low end. There's more chance of you salvaging a machine that way, if your low end motherboard dies after 3 years you can probably still get a compatible motherboard for pennies. Try doing that with a Dell (or any other big OEM, really), you'd have to replace the whole machine even if you didn't really need to.

GX270! You are going back a good few years there (8 years) and i haven't seen any for years. Todays machines are pretty much standard and if the motherboard goes after 3 years you would pretty much go for a new machine anyway so can't really see the argument (I believe that dell use standard size mobos now anyway?). If it did break before 3 years but out of warranty (same goes for anything up to 6 years old) then i would be quoting the SOGA to them. Have successfully done this with just one phone call on a 18month old laptop that wouldn't boot up. I was very impressed with the service. A Home user has the law on their side and a business less so.

??????

http://www.quidco.com/dell/?ac

My experience with NEW Dell PC's is 6 years ago I will admit, maybe they have changed; but my experiences with PC fairs are that I have never been ripped off once, the stall holders are all "policed" by the cover organisation that runs the fairs, in my case "Excalibur". On the two occasions I have had problems, the stall holder has exchanged or upgraded the faulty parts. Some RAM that wouldnt work in my board, and a duff batch of Gigabyte boards.

If you re paranoid about finding you have a box full of bricks, stand there and watch them building the system for you.

Dell, like other mega builders, pay only a couple of £ for the win7 license, but do you get a real copy these days, or just a rescue disk that you may have to pay extra for?? it is the same for the "extras" "worth £xxx" they used to install, they paid a fee of roughly 1/10th the RRP for the products.

The main problem with all of the big suppliers, that I have come across time after time, is using old parts, gfx cards that are already obsolete, slower or older spec HDDs, custom BIOS mobos etc. The worst problem (Dell and Compaq) was custom sized cases that only took their own custom sized psu's; although again, i have not seen this in more recent cases, only stuff over 3-4 years old.

The other advantage of PC fairs is, if you dont need the latest spec, there is usually at least one stall selling business ex rental systems for peanuts. I have bought systems for £20-£40 before now, and office servers for £100 each

These systems also benefit from REALLY strong cases, the server boxes are strong enough for me to jump up and down on (I weigh 130KG buck-naked), in comparison, a cheap PC I was given bent when I picked the case up by one side only.

I wouldn't recommend this way of getting a home pc for 'Internet' use. Cheap or not.

iPhone using Tapatalk

Dell hardware is fine while you have a warranty. If it breaks out of warranty, you're screwed, cost of replacement proprietary parts is almost always prohibitive unless you have a REALLY good reason to keep the machine. We had a number of Optiplex GX270s which were hit by a serious capacitor fault rendering the motherboards useless.

Ditto on the 270's, and the 280's as well have the same fault with capacitors failing. We have just replaced the entire PC estate at work with 380's, I hope they are more reliable.

Everyone's experience is different, and I was just talking from mine

Faults occur with everything and anything, be it Dell or even proprietary high quality components. For example I just had a £500 EVGA graphics card fail on me whic was rare but the support was great.

And typically 3 years is ample time for the life cycle of computer equipment. Most companies should definitely be renewing equipment every 3 years anyway after the warranty expires, and I know that I follow suit for my personal tech too.

Yeah, on a corporate basis we replace every 4 years (buying 4 year warranties), and on a personal level I tend to change every few years (although self-builds so I'm actually off-warranty after the first year). But I would never tell anyone else they HAD to replace a personal computer every 3-4 years, that's their decision to make. In my Dell case it's not the incorrect Outlet shipment that annoyed me, it was the terrible way it was handled. When a customer rings you up explaining they've opened their refurbished-but-supposedly-as-new laptop and tells you they've been sent the wrong charger, as a support person your first thought should be "well they have it in their hand right now straight out of the box, it's probably wrong" rather than "our database says it's right so I'm going to argue with them about it regardless of what might have actually been in the box". It was clearly a simple mistake which had probably happened because they'd had the box open to check the condition as it was going through the Outlet rather than straight off an automated production line, so yeah, it happens. Just don't try and tell me what I'm holding because I know perfectly well what's in my hands and that it's not going to fit together in a month of Sundays regardless of what your level 1 script monkey database says

GX270! You are going back a good few years there (8 years) and i haven't seen any for years. Todays machines are pretty much standard and if the motherboard goes after 3 years you would pretty much go for a new machine anyway so can't really see the argument (I believe that dell use standard size mobos now anyway?). If it did break before 3 years but out of warranty (same goes for anything up to 6 years old) then i would be quoting the SOGA to them. Have successfully done this with just one phone call on a 18month old laptop that wouldn't boot up. I was very impressed with the service. A Home user has the law on their side and a business less so.

Yup, purchased December 2003, and I think the first ones started failing just out of their 3 year warranty (mid-07 from memory). Since then it's been a steady decline, there's been no money available to replace them so they've carried on using those machines while they still work but finally replaced the last of them last November. I don't know enough about the Sale of Goods Act to know whether we could have applied it or not, we tried for some goodwill replacements from Dell but got the impression that our uni was just too small to matter to them (i.e. the support was crap cos we didn't spend enough on our desktop contract). The other annoying bit was that some countries got a pro-active recall, the UK didn't get squat from them.

It's a shame because I generally like Dell hardware, and I did buy another laptop personally even after the cocking around with the Outlet one. Unfortunately this one turned out to be bitten by the Nvidia 8400/8600 laptop GPU fault (had a bad revision of the Geforce chip which would likely fail) but again Dell refused to do a recall even though it was a known upstream fault. They'd only replace the chip if it failed, and only if it was under warranty (I asked them but they said no extended warranty for that fault). Again, I could probably have applied SoGA but I don't know enough about it, I just sold the laptop on as working and left it to become someone else's problem...

Edited 25 October, 201114 yr by gavinchappell

My experience with NEW Dell PC's is 6 years ago I will admit, maybe they have changed; but my experiences with PC fairs are that I have never been ripped off once, the stall holders are all "policed" by the cover organisation that runs the fairs, in my case "Excalibur". On the two occasions I have had problems, the stall holder has exchanged or upgraded the faulty parts. Some RAM that wouldnt work in my board, and a duff batch of Gigabyte boards.

If you re paranoid about finding you have a box full of bricks, stand there and watch them building the system for you.

Dell, like other mega builders, pay only a couple of £ for the win7 license, but do you get a real copy these days, or just a rescue disk that you may have to pay extra for?? it is the same for the "extras" "worth £xxx" they used to install, they paid a fee of roughly 1/10th the RRP for the products.

The main problem with all of the big suppliers, that I have come across time after time, is using old parts, gfx cards that are already obsolete, slower or older spec HDDs, custom BIOS mobos etc. The worst problem (Dell and Compaq) was custom sized cases that only took their own custom sized psu's; although again, i have not seen this in more recent cases, only stuff over 3-4 years old.

The other advantage of PC fairs is, if you dont need the latest spec, there is usually at least one stall selling business ex rental systems for peanuts. I have bought systems for £20-£40 before now, and office servers for £100 each

These systems also benefit from REALLY strong cases, the server boxes are strong enough for me to jump up and down on (I weigh 130KG buck-naked), in comparison, a cheap PC I was given bent when I picked the case up by one side only.

Bit of a contradiction there stating that they are using older parts etc then you state an advantage of PC Fairs is you don't need the latest spec!

You get a real copy of Windows and the PSUs have been standard for years.

Pagey isn't looking for a gaming rig, just a new PC to run 7 and browse the internet. You won't beat a Dell for that i am afraid.

Build your own. It's much easier than you think.

All your parts will be off the shelf and therefore easily replaceable or upgradable, plus you'll know how to do it.

The down side is that it's very unlikely to be cheaper than a Dell outlet machine.

My home brew PC had lasted 8yrs and is only now starting to creak.

If you've kids ir you or partner work in education you can also get software cheap

Really appreciate all the comments and advice, as people have said everyone has different experiences. Mine to date have been good with Dell, however a couple of mates have had a nightmare with them.....

@Prolfe, the Acer you mention from Amazon would be perfect (I presume it's this on) fast processor and more than enough storage space, my dimension has only 160gb but with all the pictures, music etc I still have a little space left + I have a 250gb external HD. I only looked at the 1TB drive as thats what came with the deal.

Taking a completely different direction, I have thought about leaving the desktop in place and getting a more up to date laptop, while looking I came across this which looks pretty good -

Dell Inspiron 15R

Going down this route I could reinstall the OS on my desktop then my boys could use it. I could also get my hands on a VCDS cable.....

Just noticed the Acer doesn't have a graphics card. :(

Again for a laptop the dell outlet will win. Just make sure you get a core i model and avoid celeron or pentium or amd as these will kill the battery quicker.

For £300 you should be able to get an I3 15inch off the outlet. I have probably bought around 15 over the last couple of years off there and never had a problem. They are 99% cancelled orders and as new.

You don't need a graphics card on them as they're built into the motherboard.

Edited 25 October, 201114 yr by jrw