All the computers are pretty much self destructing at about the same time so I think it’s about time to replace everything. That pretty much means three or four simple desktops, maybe one laptop. I’m clearly not a techie, nor is anyone else in the family, otherwise I don’t think I’d be asking for help here.
We don’t need anything too sophisticated. Not sure we even need more than one CD burner for all of us. Durabililty and customer service are very important. I’d like a company that can help me out without keeping me on hold for two hours.
I’d like to know what experience dopers have had with HP and Dell and which do you recommend.
Also what should I do about storage devices? The one desktop that still works pretty well has a ton of photos and all of our itunes on it. What’s the best (easiest) way to back up all this stuff?
While I can’t speak concerning Dell, I can for HP. Run, run like the wind far, far in the other direction. Don’t look back or you may turn into a pillar of salt (or worse end up with an HP). For a while HP was pretty groovy and did what my family needed, now … oi, they are a major cause of agita. Customer service is nonexistent. If you need to call it, I’d recommend calling first thing in the morning on your cell, leaving it on and ringing and then around lunchtime you might get your call answered. Be prepared to be told that your problem isn’t covered under warranty (even if it is); your computer doesn’t exist (which surprised me as I was looking right at it). Let’s see, they’s the fun of having the wrong product to fix our problem sent not once, but twice at our cost that was wrong both times (with the insanely long waiting time on the phone and the constant switching to different departments and you’ve talked to the same 4 people 10 different times and they keep switching you make it stop make it stop no no no!!!
Ok, I’m done curling up in the fetal position and I’m feeling better. :p At my house we’ve had 4 HPs and my Uncle’s house had 2. The machines from when HP first introduced their computer line are much better than their later versions. I’ve found it interesting that the lady in charge (I think she was the President) who was all about introducing the computer line is no longer with the company. One of the newest ones we had decided one day to start smoking it is no more. Good luck with your computer purchases and if you’re looking into playing games, beware the onboard graphics card. ::shudder::
Myself and several people in my family have owned Dells, and none of us have had any major problems with them. Only warning I have is that they use a proprietary board design, which means that you can’t upgrade the motherboard or the case, without replacing both. Most of the other stuff can be upgraded, however.
You’re no doubt thinking of Carly Fiorina. Although Hewlett-Packard, under Lew Platt, had already decided to spin its historic core business (scientific instrumentation) off into Agilent before Fiorina’s stint as CEO, she was the one responsible for the merger with Compaq, as well as several other business decisions that reduced H-P from a much-admired Silicon Valley company down to just another purveyor of beige PC boxes, with a consumer reputation that seemed to go further into the toilet each year. As the Wikipedia article suggests, she is one of the more polarizing execs that the Valley has ever seen. It probably didn’t augur well when she took the portraits of Hewlett and Packard down from H-P’s entrance lobbies…
On the plus side, her successor (Mark Hurd) seems to be turning H-P around somewhat. He’s in a pretty deep hole, however, at least as far as consumer-level PCs are concerned.
For backups of photos etc, I burn the files to CD or DVD and add them immediately (with as little handling and exposure to dirt etc) to a stack on a spare ‘cakebox’/spindle, which is kept in a cool, dry cupboard. If I really cared about what might happen to my backups in the event of force majeure, I would probably burn two copies and ask a trusted friend to keep one copy on a spindle in a cool dry cupboard; if I really cared about the longevity of my backups, I would probably plan to copy the contents of all my backups to fresh media at least every ten years.
I can’t speak for home users of Dell, but corporations love em. I worked on them for 2 years or so, and when I had to call tech support it was always picked up right away. The tech always listened to what the problem was, and listened to what I had already tried to solve the problem. 90% of the time I was at the hardware replacment stage, and the tech would send out a part without a problem. 5% of the time they would ask me to repeat a few steps I had already done to make sure it didn’t fix it(usually on the more expensive parts). The other 5% was software that wasn’t working right that I needed them to send me patches for. Every time they were polite, and knoledgable. They did send alot of jobs out of the US (India, or whereever), and even then the support was great. I have heard that they brought the support back to the US because of complaints about accents, etc.
Whenever a part was sent it was sent overnight, and if it wasn’t in stock they would tell me right then with an ETA on when I could get it. They also offered to have a tech come out to do the repair, but I usually did the repair myself.
The equipment itself is usually very stable. I found that if the machine ran well for the first 30 days or so it would run for ever without a problem. If it had problems out of the box it would always have problems.
Stay away from the slim line Dells they are selling. Not sure what model it is, but it is the really small desktops they have. There have been problems with them, and as far as I know they have not been resolved.
All in all I think Dells are great, and that is what I suggest friends, and family get when they want a new system.
Another option is to go with a white-box dealer. The benefit to white boxes is that you can specify exactly which components you want installed, which can make maintenance a lot easier (in contrast, two computers from the same model line of a large dealer may actually have components from different sources).
Additionally, you should be able to get a white-box PC without an OS or software preinstalled (in case you already have copies of the software on hand). That might be possible with a major dealer, but will probably be harder.
However, I don’t know the story on white-box dealers offering support–if it’s important to you to be able to contact the original dealer and get support, you should just go with Dell.
It’s amazing. Agilent makes such good stuff (if you need that kind of equipment) and the stuff HP makes pretty much blows.
As for data backups, not a problem. Just install your old hard drive. I don’t believe the old installation of the OS will try to run. You can copy those music and graphics files over to the hard drive of the new computer, wipe the old drive, then copy everything back, having removed the old OS and given yourself extra drive space. Make sure to deactivate your old computer through iTunes first.
I was not happy with Dell when I had to call tech support. Their “solution” when the power supply failed was for me to strip the motherboard, reinstall everything, and then see if it worked. Honestly, I’m not quite sure why I went along with stripping the board. If I had been able to get the machine to boot they probably would have had me reinstall the OS. Not that I would’ve done a damn-fool thing like that when it was clearly a hardware problem. And then it cost me far more than it should of to replace the PS because it was proprietary. I mean, really, who makes a proprietary power supply? So that’s the beef I had with my Dell. In its defense, it ran pretty well for four years, except for the PS failure, though I did make a lot of upgrades over the years. Things like replacing both the DVD-ROM and CD burner, adding a hard drive, upgrading to WinXP, putting in more cards in the PCI slots, and so on.
So these days I homebrew my system. When you’ve already got the software, the hardware costs aren’t too bad for really good stuff. But, if I had to recommend a national dealer, I would probably agree with Dell.
Is Dell using SATA for the hard drive these days or is it still IDEE?