Dell is offering a respectable desktop for $299 and a laptop for maybe a few hundred more. What’s the catch here?
Economy of scale? Rebates? The usual? What’s your problem with a $299 PC? It’s just crappy, it’s not a trick.
I’m typing this on a Dell I bought online at the price it was advertised at.
Other than it taking three weeks to arrive, I didn’t experience any catch.
Dell does very strong volume so they can build a computer more cheaply than other dealers.
Uh, can you say low profit, too? We checked on line, and it isn’t seem so crappy. I wonder what’s the S&H? - Jinx
I’m typing this on my two month old $299 Dell. It got here 6 days after I ordered.
It actually cost just a little bit more. 'Cause, the flat screen monitor was just an additional $75, and the CD burner my kids need was another $75, and the improved speakers so I could listen to music were $35 more,…you get the idea.
My $299 turned into $800. Not that I’m unhappy.
Just depends on your needs and your restraint.
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- It’s a low-profit, low-performance setup, intended to get you to look at better choices they offer for more. But it is priced lower than probably anything comparable you could build by shopping for parts on your own.
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- I saw one catalog offering a basic setup (with monitor) for only $199, but the catch was that you had to pre-pay for a year of AOL. Definitely a bad deal, IMHO.
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Re additional costs shipping a PC and 17" CRT monitor is not cheap. It can easily cost $ 60- 90 delivered so you’ve got to add that to your “deal” and Dell charges sales tax.
Count me as another satisfied $299 Dell customer (although the extras, including a dinky flatscreen monitor, did push it up in to the $500-600 range.)
I think it’s just fine for home use. I don’t really need the HP xw8000 workstation I use at work just to do home stuff, like read the Dope and store photos.
I almost ordered the Dell last week. Office Depot just ran an ad today for a Toshiba laptop (modest specs) plus a free w/ rebate PalmZire 21 for $549. Major good deal, IMO, for what I’m going to use it for. I volunteer for a non-profit military group (FRG) and that laptop is perfect for my use. The PalmZire is a glorified address book but it’s a good deal for free.
I’ve found that the most expensive part of building a new computer isn’t the hardware but the software. However, they also manage to get rid of some of that cost by deals with Microsoft and not including much of any other software–there is just WordPerfect, for instance, not Microsoft Office or even OpenOffice. I’d assume everything else is economy of scale.
I don’t know if this is true but I’ve heard that you can only have dell printers and scanners and such for dell computers. If you just look around you can usually find a good deal or if you know someone. A friend that worked at Compusa got me a sony vaio laptop with bluetooth wireless and dvd player/cd burner and a 60gb harddrive for only 650 bucks! Unfortunately it got stolen when I was working in Florida. That really sucked but I bought a toshiba laptop with 80gb harddrive dual layer dvd burner and trubrite screen with a 2 year T.A.P. agreement for only $1078 before a $150 mail-in rebate.
I used to have a Dell (an 8100 so this was a $2000 computer instead of a $200 computer) and other than a very annoying proprietary power supply and case/motherboard design, I never had any problems with peripherals or adding/changing hardware. Now I suppose they could be basically DRMing their hardware with something in the software, but I don’t see why they would do that (mostly I don’t see what they gain.)
Purely from anecdotal evidence, I don’t think this is true…I have a Dell laptop hooked up to an HP psc (printer/scanner/copier) and I’ve never had any problems with 'em.
When low end computers are advertised, they bring up specs for hard drive, CPU, RAM ASF. There are other things to a computer. The casing, fans, power supply, keyboard, mouse. My mouse was about $100 and I would never trade that.
You may find that a cheapo casing and loud fans get very annoying after a while and you’ll want to replace them. However, check the warranty. Many large makers, that ship and offer on site support, will not honor the warranty if you tinker with the computer in any way at all.
TANSTAAFL and you get what you pay for. But you knew that.
Count me in the satisfied Dell consumer group. My laptop, a Dell Inspiron 6000 normally runs for around $1500, but one of my friends showed me a deal for an online code for $750 off if I got online at 6am on a certain date and bought it (they were only letting a few thousand use that code for the discount) by entering the code as I checked out. The laptop took a little over a week, but I got a 60gb hd, widescreen 15 in monitor, external floppy drive and a 256 mb flashkey, internal wireless yadda yadda and the standard software and hardware for $825 (shipping was free!). I didn’t need to spruce my laptop up too much as I’m not a techgeek like my SO, but it works very well for the things that I need it for. I think it was a very good deal since the specs are exactly tuned for my wants and needs.
So I guess they just want to spread the laptops so more people get interested and buy more of their products. They’re coming for you next!
This site is worth bookmarking. They always have the most up to date tech deals, and discount codes. They often have Dell specials as well.
Just thought I would mention it if you want to do some comparison shopping.
And no, I have nothing to do with the site other than get my geek jollies looking at it on a regular basis.
Ya’ see, Dell pretty much advertises the same way auto dealers do. When they list a price, it’s for the absolute bare minimum. But really, who’s going to buy a car these days with out power steering or air conditioning?
I too bought a Dell and wound up spending about $400 dollars more than I thought I was going to. But I’m not unhappy either.
Another happy Dell customer here - in the UK of course so all the prices are different, but they do the same thing. You see the cheapest one, but then you decide that it’s worth getting the better motherboard… and then a bit more RAM, and a DVD drive… and wireless networking, obviously, and Microsoft Office, not Works… and suddenly it’s not quite as cheap.
But I reckon they’re still a good deal - I’m very happy with mine.
Getting what you want for a good price from Dell can be quite an exercise. If you start adding optional features the price can rise dramatically and of course shipping is a big cost. I watched the ads until what I wanted was on sale for free shipping. I needed to get a minium of options so price was still quite reasonable. I did add my own RAM which saved a lot. I’ve got a Dell 3000 and my only complaint are the fans which absolutely roar when the CPU temp goes up. Still looking for quieter replacements if anyone has any suggestions.