Thinking of getting the Dell 5150 desktop which is really cheap at present,

The simple rule is "you get what you pay for" (at best)!

Fortunately the areas which are cut back on tend to be "customer services" rather than the actual hardware, and in fairness the percentage of people I know who have had problems with the machines is very low. However, I know when they've dealt with customer services it hasn't been an easy and pleasant experience.

Not sure on the noise volume of the coolers, a lot will depend on the case design and that...should imagine it won't be excessively noisy though!

Rob.

Not sure on the noise volume of the coolers' date=' a lot will depend on the case design and that...should imagine it won't be excessively noisy though!

Rob.[/quote']

We have bought several Dell desktops for the office over the past few months. They do the job ok and one thing they all have in common is that they are near silent in operation.

I believe that customer services is now based in India so I shall say no more!

My current pc is a Dell albeit now 7 yrs old. When I first had it I had a few problems with numerous lengthy phone calls to Dell (in those days I think technical support was in Ireland). However once it was up and running it was mainly ok though now I have shut down / resource problems but then it is 7 yrs old)

At work we have Dell desktops and I don't think the firm has had any problems per se with the hardware.

I expect my next pc to be a Dell but I think I will pay the extra to have home installation and take the worry/hassle out of set up and hope that I won't need to call India.

A lot of Dell PC's use non standard parts.

Eg the 80mm fans have special connectors on them, so self repair isn't the easiest.

IIRC they also wire the power pins on their m/boards and power supplies slightly differently so a standard one won't work

Have you had a look at mesh they are UK based too

The dells are quiet, however one problem IMHO with the Pentium D and the A64 are they have a huge thermal envelope of about 135W which means a CPU is dissapating 135W of energy as wasted heat. You can therfore imagine what that will do to your electric bill.

As i said in another thread, intel Core 2 Duo is due out this month which will see better PC's for less and the current gen undergoing a price cut. I'd wait and get one of these over a old school P4 D definately.

Touch wood here, but i come across Dell pd's in every area of my life, friends, work, home and i have NEVER know one to go wrong, they're quiet too! A lot of UK commercial radio stations use them, and banks and hospital's too.

A lot of Dell PC's use non standard parts.

Eg the 80mm fans have special connectors on them' date=' so self repair isn't the easiest.

IIRC they also wire the power pins on their m/boards and power supplies slightly differently so a standard one won't work[/quote']

This hasn't been the case for quite a long time.

The Dimension 5150 uses standard connections on everything so could be repaired easily enough if you need to.

As for noise they are nice and quiet machines with huge slow fans and well designed airflow.

I've bought about 30 Dell's over the last couple of years and in that time only had a single fault which was dealt with quickly and efficiently under warranty

I've bought about 30 Dell's over the last couple of years and in that time only had a single fault which was dealt with quickly and efficiently under warranty

I'm guessing you have a business account with them? I've never known business buyers to have bad service, but it's a different story for domestic buyers...

Rob.

I'm guessing you have a business account with them? I've never known business buyers to have bad service' date=' but it's a different story for domestic buyers...

Rob.[/quote']

We do , yes , but I'm pretty sure when we had the faulty machine (duff fan) I just rang a general customer service number and gave them the service tag off the case. Of course that may have flagged it as a business customer with higher priority and it was ordered from the small business side of the website.

My dad bought one recently as a private user and when he needed to swap something that had been ordered in error he said they were very helpful arranging the changeover

I had a Dell that was 3 months from the end of it's warranty when the HD packed up.

The indian call centre went through a walk through of opening the case, checking cables etc. before arranging to send out a new HD (twice the capacity of the old one) free of charge.

Couldnt' fault them at all and would buy another Dell desktop PC without considering an alternative.

My current and previous work PC's are Dell's and they'r every fast, reliable and stable. They make littl enoise too as they use a big CPU fan which spins at low speed rather than a small fan that spins really fast.

My dad bought one recently as a private user and when he needed to swap something that had been ordered in error he said they were very helpful arranging the changeover

Perhaps they've taken steps to improve things on the customer service front - companies are usually quite sensitive to bad press relating to this sort of thing and so tend to take steps to sort it out. E-buyer have been through a similar thing recently (though I still think they're a bunch of cretins... ).

Rob.

I either buy Dell or build my own machines for the office. I also have a few Dell laser printers.

The prices I get when I call my business account manager are just too good to turn down. I've had no problems at all with the quality of the machines, and never had any cause to call tech support (though I have got 3 years NBD on site support thrown in for free on all of them ).

Last order included 2 3.2ghz P4 desktops with 160gb SATA disk and 2gb of RAM and 2 DVD RWs in each machine with 3 years NBD... Worked out at just a smidge over 500 each.. Bargain!

Perhaps they've taken steps to improve things on the customer service front - companies are usually quite sensitive to bad press relating to this sort of thing and so tend to take steps to sort it out. E-buyer have been through a similar thing recently (though I still think they're a bunch of cretins... ).

Rob.

I think Ebuyer are great - I ordered a 512MB SD card, and they sent me three (in three separate courier packages! Must be their new customer welcome policy

Perhaps they've taken steps to improve things on the customer service front - companies are usually quite sensitive to bad press relating to this sort of thing and so tend to take steps to sort it out. E-buyer have been through a similar thing recently (though I still think they're a bunch of cretins... ).

Rob.

Trouble is you'll get people repeating the same old stories for years after they have lost all relevance.

Our company was reluctant to buy dell because they'd had a customer service problem 8 years ago and I'm forever seeing people claiming that Dell machines can't be upgraded at all.

I've been using ebuyer for at least 4 years now and have always found their CS perfectly acceptable and at times excellent but you still see more people complaining about them despite not having shopped there in ages.

It's very difficult to get rid of that sort of reputation

Our dell workstations at work have odd connectors and they vary from new to 3 years old. The PSU on the Precision workstation we had to repair a few weeks ago required us cutting the ATX leads and swapping two wires over. I'm just saying what I am seeing in front of my very own eyes.

We have a business account here and still get dreadful service from them.

We have next day cover for the laptops and desktops and they are all business machines with the top level of cover provided for support. Weeks for a resolution including the thing going back to base once for what they said was a couple of days. Turned out to be a week and a half and even then it wasn't fixed.

Yes they replaced the whole machine but no it wasn't good enough as it was needed for customer meetings and the owner was without it for weeks. That was only a few months ago too.

Its probably like car makers. Sometimes you get a lemon and other times they'r ebullet proof.

I think you should be asking what other machine you could get for the same money and what the support would be like on that one ?? Very few machines will be to the same spec at the Dell price and I doubt the support would really be any different.

We use Dell at work and at home. We also re-sell Dell machines to our retail customers, never have any hardware problems. They run nice and quiet and i've struggled to build PC's myself that undercut Dell.

The only upgrade problems we have had is when we tried to add some RAM once with a same spec generic brand that didn't work for whatever reason.

The only upgrade problems we have had is when we tried to add some RAM once with a same spec generic brand that didn't work for whatever reason.

I've had the same memory upgrade problem with an early Windows XP system they supplied to the mother of a colleague. We managed a work around with something that was lying in the office - no idea how old that was!

The only problem I've seen on three separate Dell systems is the need to reinstall audio and/or video drivers if you are using certain Java based applications. Affected systems just crash when running the applications but the reinstall clears it quickly. I usually do the install by finding the latest driver from the component manufacturer's website. While it could be dodgy initial drivers I've only seen it on Dells. I've not bothered with customer services as it was an easy one to diagnose. Two of these were business systems and one was a home system.

Bought a Dell system in April last year as I couldn't build a better system less myself. Still running well. Didn't have any problems in the warranty period so didn't need to use customer services. At their prices I wouldn't hesitate in buying from them again if I was just after a boggo-spec machine.

The only thing I'd be careful with is the ordering process. The advertiesed systems are great value but if you want to tweak the spec with a bit more of this or more of that (RAM, disk space etc) you pay a large premium.

I've had my Dell Inspiron 5150 laptop for about 3 years now. It's still prety good by todays standards: 2.8Ghz P4, 40 gig HDD and 1.25GB RAM (1 gig added, 256 removed to make room). It's not liking windows Vista at the moment though :(

I've also got a 20" DELL LCD ASAD monitor as well for UT2004 on my PC, it's a cracking piece of kit!

The laptop motherboard went pop about 6 months out of it's warranty but they sent a courier to pack it into a foam padded box and send it away for repair.

It came back 4 days later with a new motherboard and they replaced the top wrist rest and touch pad as well. Thats pretty good service if you ask me.

There was also the usual business of checking this connector and that connector etc. but that's to be expected.

Where SWMBO works they use dell PC's everywhere and according to her they are generally very good.

And when you come to choose a model it's normally cheaper overall to get the more expensive model than spec up a lower priced one. Pretty much what Daiking said actually .