Your thoughts?

Not the 'They never deliver when they say they will' but the quality of their product keeping in mind they're cheap.

I went for the Axim/tomtom package and i have been quite pleased with it, the only problems have been after i have been mucking about with the software so that is my fault really. A friend has one of their desktops and has had no problems as far as I know.

I chose them for our work machines and many of our customers kit their whole networks out with them. Can't complain at all. Good well built kit. Std graphics are not up to gaming but then you'd get a specialist card for that anyway. All in all

They're not the very cheapest but they've always been fairly competitive. I'm on my second Dell Dimension which is getting a bit long in the tooth as it dates from September 2000. I've never had any complaints about the quality of the kit. I can't comment on customer service because I've rarely needed to use it.

Thumbs up from me. I use a D600 with all the toys as my laptop, an Axim with 802.11 as my palmtop and Dell desktops are the standard at work. They have a very sensible warranty policy (for us anyway, don't know about smaller org's) whereby we swap the faulty parts, and they provide us with new ones or, if we haven't got a part in stock, send one out immediately. No questions asked. The British call centres we deal with are very good as well.

We own an aged Dimension Pentium 200 PC, an Inspiron 8200 laptop (fantastic screen) and an Axim. Not the most exciting specs these days - particularly for graphics and sound if you are into games etc - but rock solid reliability.

I'm thinking about getting a

i was looking at a dell laptop too, but waiting on advive on what one to buy, maybe a sony viao or a dell

You can't really go wrong with Dell if it's for business use. Solid, quiet machines.

Must echo that. We use these Optiplex SX270 machines (http://img.dell.com/images/global/products/optix/sx270_usf_45degree_131x145.jpg) at work and they are absolutely faultness and very good value for money. No issues with my home Dimension 4500 either. It's good stuff and saves you the effort of building your own at a marginally cheaper price.

This would be for home use. The website is good in that you can pick and choose what you want but it took a phone call to find out that you can just buy the 'box' without all the peripherals. I've already got the monitor, speakers, keyboard, modem etc so why buy the whole package. The savings were considerable.

Build your own ??

You can't really go wrong with Dell if it's for business use. Solid, quiet machines.

Solid yes but mine isn't quiet. The fan has always been quite noisy and I replaced the original hard drive because the noise was driving me mad. It still works though! I suspect they've improved a lot in the past three years.

it took a phone call to find out that you can just buy the 'box' without all the peripherals.

I didn't know that and it certainly isn't obvious from their web site. What sort of prices are they quoting if you don't need a monitor etc.?

Never used them...but if you want an alternative quote let me know...

Rob.

You could also try www.evesham.com

Dell are the standard at work. Seem like good workhorses. Only problem I've had is that I had a CD re-writer with Roxio software. Apparently this is a known no-no with Windows 2000 and eventually the PC limped to a halt. Now I have an updated version of Roxio and all is well.

The NHS in North Essex have used them as a standard for some time so I would take this as an indication of their reliablity.

Jane

I didn't know that and it certainly isn't obvious from their web site. What sort of prices are they quoting if you don't need a monitor etc.?

I spoke to a nice man in Hyderabad (sp?) who caught me on the hop a bit because after I asked if you could cut the system down he then went on to ask me what system I was looking at. Anyway the one I picked out from the catalogue (as an example) was one of their multimedia monsters with 3+ gig processor, HT, huge hard drive, loads of RAM, nVidea GeForce 4 etc etc. It was advertised at about

I've just bought a dell 500M laptop (Centrino). The main reason I went for a dell was the flexibility on the build spec.

First impressions: - Disappointed with the casing and keyboard. Casing is plastic (rather than magnesium) and doesn't feed very strong - especially the screen housing - it tends to flex quite a bit. The keyboard keys are also very flimsy and I don't see them lasting to long with regular use.

I keep getting problems with it unable to find my wireless network (out of range - from 20ft away!!) , but I've yet to accurately diagnose the problem (ie the laptop or the network) I'm sure its the laptop as my desktop doesn't have this problem.

I haven't had a chance to really hammer it yet so I can't comment on performance.

I think the base price is about

on Dell can you design ur own spec on the website?, ie processor speed, RAM, hard drive

on Dell can you design ur own spec on the website?, ie processor speed, RAM, hard drive

Yep - each machine is listed with a choice of upgrades.

Yep - each machine is listed with a choice of upgrades.

But they seem to be even more flexible over the phone.

cool, im looking for a laptop, so ill take a look

cool, im looking for a laptop, so ill take a look

A good tip for the Dell site is to look in the Outlet section. Here's is where Dell's return are sold offset...great spec. pcs, laptop for greatly reduced prices.

I got a Dimension 4600 with the P4 2.66GHz upgrade, 14'' TFT screen, 2 for one memory upgrade, upgrade graphics card (although I didn't get the 32bit NVidia pukka card to make better use of the screen), Harmon Kardon speakers....all for around

14" TFT?! :jawsmall:

Rob.

14" TFT?! :jawsmall:

Rob.

Ooops....made a mistake it's an 18'' digital flat screen...picture quality is superb.

SWMBO's Toshiba laptop is a 14'' TFT.

Dell now doing 20'' and 21'' (I think)digital flat screens.