I love Dell.
I have purchased 3 refurbished boxes in the last 4 years for my office, not a bit of trouble with any of them.
The Dell laser printer I bought started to show a glitch with the drum, so I called customer service at 5:22 central time and had a complete new printer by 3:30 the next day.
Now Gateway they suck… 
Bad news: Dell is now living off a hard won 12 year run of Top Quality.
Since 2004 they have sunk down into the pit that all Computer companies live in.
The first response Tech support is now in India. Quality control now stinks. DOAs are up. Failures in the first year are up. They are now no better than buying a E-machine, Compaq, HP or Gateway. (Sony’s are still rated near the bottom, stay away from them).
If you are buying a laptop, look at Toshiba (IBM laptops are no longer owned by IBM, they sold to a Chinese Company)
If you’re buying a Desktop it is a crapshoot. If you want Hi-end one look at Alienware.
Alienware is ok, but watch what’s covered where you are.
My brother bought a stupidly expensive and fast laptop from them, and less than a month later it had a big colour inverted stripe down the screen. They fixed it with no charge of course, but it cost him 100$+ to ship, as for some reason they don’t cover shipping from Canada.
4 thousand bucks?!?
Tell me you were exaggerating on the price. Please. Cause if not, you got seriously ripped off.
You can buy an absolute top of the line gaming computer for thereabouts.
I have an Inspiron laptop, and the hard drive just failed the other day after a little over a year of fairly hard use. I didn’t even bother calling Dell. I need it for school, and I figured that buying a $130 hard drive and fixing the thing myself would pay for itself in saved aggravation and time.
I have discovered that the CD’s that came packaged with the computer are rather ridiculously counter-intuitive. The driver’s CD comes with an interface program that shows you all the drivers, but doesn’t tell you outright what’s installed, what isn’t, what you need, what you don’t. And the “add new hardware” not only insisted there were no drivers that I needed on the CD labeled drivers, it insisted that the hardware the drivers were for wasn’t even in the computer. When I went through and installed the drivers one by one, things started to work.
On the other hand, I’ve had Gateways for the last seven years without any problems that weren’t self-inflicted. I have a Dell Optiplex at work that is new and seems to function okay, but every Dimension that I’ve had has been a piece of shit. And I REALLY hate those fucking recessed drive bays that they put on them.
Not quite 3 years ago, my mom bought a refurbished Dell to replace her old Gateway. She’s not a power user by any means - mostly email, word processing, and downloading pictures from her digital cam. Towards the end of the second year, her modem died. I know it was the modem because we had the exact problem some years before.
As I was looking thru her documentation, I found out that she’d (luckily, for her) purchased the 3 year service contract. So I told her to call Dell and get them to replace her modem. As mentioned above, their call center is in India. She got stuck with a tech who forced her through the troubleshooting script, to the point where the guy wanted her to reinstall Windows. She was on the phone for something like 2 hours over 2 days before I got there, and she spent 45 minutes when I was with her.
When she ended that call, I told her she needed to demand to speak to a supervisor and to have a tech sent to replace her modem. My mom doesn’t take shit from anyone when she knows she’s right. She got the supervisor, she got the service call, and 2 days later, she had a new modem. And her problem was solved. She’s only got 2 or 3 months left on that contract - I expect she’ll let Dell go and seek help elsewhere.
We’ve got a Dell also and that’s all I’m gonna say. Don’t need to jinx it.
Reminder to all PC buyers:
Individual experiences vary tremendously.
PC Magazine & PC World both do annual reviews of Large PC makers.
I help maintain over 100 PC’s, Laptops & Servers.
I also help maintain/purchase/build another 20 of friends & family.
Most Computers will work and work fairly well until the operating system gets corrupt. The operating system for a moderate internet user will be good for maybe 3 year and then should be reloaded.
If you are not having any problems, that is great and don’t refresh.
Following PC maker trends since 1990:
Dell took over the top quality spot around 1991 and held in through 2003.
Gateway was near the top in the 90’s but then started downhill.
Ratings are based on DOA, failures in first year and failures in first 3 years, Tech support wait time and helpfulness and actual performance of the PC’s.
The primary reasons Dell has been downgraded are the same reasons I have experienced.
When you need help, the wait time has crept up to 20-30 minutes.
The 1st contact help is now overseas in India.
They no longer send the operating system on CD, greatly reducing the long term ownership value.
They also have actually had a small increase in component failures.
This does not make Dell bad; it is just that Dell has fallen back in with most other makers.
**This years roundup still puts them #1 but they are no longer a lot better. **
When buying now, you should largely look at price and features.
PC Mags 18th Annual Reader Satisfaction Survey Excerpt