Dell, horror stories, or good ones

[Cobster]

Wondering how their laptops are and who here has personal accounts on dealing with them.
I've heard pretty much 50/50 type deals.
Any personal accounts?

 

[LancsLad]

We have had many over the years and have found them to be generally very reliable and good value for money. Thankfully we have had virtually no service problems so I can't comment on their support people.

 

[Cobster]

A lot of Bob's over there in India.
Russel Peters should write this stuff into his routine.

 

[raven@mirage]

I have a dell laptop, I order it a year ago, they take the monthly payments out my account, and send me the invoice statements in the mail before the payment comes out.

Some of thier sales rep are very horrible but generally they are very helpful like thier financial department and thier tech support department.

I will need a desktop soon I am still comtemplentating on who to get it from I think for the desktop I am going to go on a leasing plan with MDG computers or alienware.

 

[DATYdude]

Good experiences so far,first with a used off-lease Dell purchased privately through this board, worked beautifully until I sold it and then got a Laptop (Inspiron 1300), so far so good.

 

[Cobster]

I have a dell laptop, I order it a year ago, they take the monthly payments out my account, and send me the invoice statements in the mail before the payment comes out.

Some of thier sales rep are very horrible but generally they are very helpful like thier financial department and thier tech support department.

I will need a desktop soon I am still comtemplentating on who to get it from I think for the desktop I am going to go on a leasing plan with MDG computers or alienware.

MDG?
LMFGDAO!
Miss Minnie, you obviously aren't in the know of them.
WORST PLACE to get a computer or even blank CDs.
Get one built...durrr.

 

[Cobster]

I heard about exploding batteries that catch fire in Dell laptops fairly recently. I hope that problem has been solved. Scary.

That's what warranties are for, that's why you play the hell out of the unit within the first 30days of purchase.

 

[raven@mirage]

my laptop is customized. I told them exactly what I wanted in it

15.7 inche flat screen
80 gig harddrive
wirless internet
seperate video drive for computer games
wireless mouse
microsoft office
40 gig external hard drive
digital camera
4 flash memory cards 256 gig

Value 2,800$ approx.

3 year warranty
travel case
changeable laptop covers.

o yea a DVD player/CD burner combo

 

[taylorR7]

My current laptop is a dell, had 2 IBM's, Toshiba, and a HP. The Ibm worked the best so far. My current Dell freezes about every 2 weeks, support was not bad. Probably go back to IBM next.

 

[Cobster]

My current laptop is a dell, had 2 IBM's, Toshiba, and a HP. The Ibm worked the best so far. My current Dell freezes about every 2 weeks, support was not bad. Probably go back to IBM next.

I love IBM thinkpads, but they're a bit too steep in price.
If money wasn't as much an issue, IBM all the way, great stuff.

 

[fip]

Great Tech support

Wondering how their laptops are and who here has personal accounts on dealing with them.
I've heard pretty much 50/50 type deals.
Any personal accounts?

Bought desktop a year ago christmas (Dec 2004) and called last week cause the keyboard quit working. They walked me through getting it backonline - support was only free for a year but they were kind enough to help me out for free.

Neighbors had harddrive failure on their dell and support had a new drive shipped to them within a week and then walked them through replacing it and they were back online an hour after the courier brought them the package.

Haven't heard a lot of bad things about laptops either. Deapite their vulnerability to being dropped etc / screen pixel failure.

 

[Keebler Elf]

My laptop burned out after only 14 months. Piece of shit garbage. I'll never buy from Dell again. And, in fact, when I bought my new laptop I steered clear of Dell.

 

[monkeychan]

they sent me the wrong laptop, and when I told them about it they asked for the serial number. Then they told me I'm reading the wrong serial number because it's not for the laptop I ordered.


DUH !!!


Didn't I just told the CSR I that got the wrong laptop?

 

[Cobster]

Didn't end up getting the Hell lappy.
Got a Toshiba one, sweet deal $1049+tax, intel centrino duo, 1 gig.
Runs real nice.

 

[monkeychan]

Didn't end up getting the Hell lappy.
Got a Toshiba one, sweet deal $1049+tax, intel centrino duo, 1 gig.
Runs real nice.

does it come with non-shiny screen? I hate that stuff.

 

[foolnarnd]

My inspiron 8200 is probably 4 years old now. It's turned on 24/7 and the hard drive finally packed it in about 6 months ago. It's both my desktop and my carrying around machine. Since it's backed up often to a network drive I didn't worry. I bought the new drive from a place on the 'net and never regretted it for a moment.

Dell's sales people are terrible. I bought a desktop back at Christmas from them and I think half of what they said they dropped when I repeated it back, along with "Really?" stuck on the end.

Their support services are shakey until you get escalated to an American rep on the phone - then they chill out and actually stop reading from a script.

 

[Cobster]

does it come with non-shiny screen? I hate that stuff.

Nope it's glossy, true brite shit.
Matte finishes are almost hard to find.
But I really can't complain for the price.
I hate the glossy screens myself, but hey...

 

[Cobster]

My inspiron 8200 is probably 4 years old now. It's turned on 24/7 and the hard drive finally packed it in about 6 months ago. It's both my desktop and my carrying around machine. Since it's backed up often to a network drive I didn't worry. I bought the new drive from a place on the 'net and never regretted it for a moment.

Dell's sales people are terrible. I bought a desktop back at Christmas from them and I think half of what they said they dropped when I repeated it back, along with "Really?" stuck on the end.

Their support services are shakey until you get escalated to an American rep on the phone - then they chill out and actually stop reading from a script.

I only dealt with Dell Canada when I purchased my monitor last year.
Great guys here, but the majority of the time, it's the Bob's in India that bother me.

 

[WoodPeckr]

Thinking about getting a Dell.
Several people at work have them and the only guy that knocks them is the Mac guy. He's trying to talk me into getting a Mac.

Dell seems to have some great deals going.
Priced out this Dell Dimension E510 Series at a cost of $1047 USD.

It's pretty loaded:

Pentium D Processor 940 Dual Core 3.2Ghz, 800FSB
OS: Win XP Media Center Edition 2005, with re-installation CD.
2 GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM @533 MHz memory.
80 GB Serial ATA HD (7200RPM) w/8MB cache.
Dual drives: 16x DVD-ROM, + 16x DVD+/- RW w dbl DV 16 DVR layer write capability.
13 in 1 Media card reader
Monitor: 19" Ultrasharp Digital Flat Panel
Video Card: 128MB PCI Express
Sound: Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
Dell 30 Watt stero speakers/Subwoofer
Enhanced Dell Keyboard/Optical mouse
1yr Ltd Warr, 1 yr At-Home service & 1 yr HW Warr Support.

Not sure if I should go for it or wait for a better deal or the upcoming Vista OS.

 

[Cobster]

There was a sweet Inspiron 6400 deal this weekend.
I mean, REALLY sweet.
1gig ram, DDR2, Intel Core Duo, great graphics card, all for just over $1000.
S-ATA 80gig 5400rpm's.

My ONLY issue is, if something happens, there's no store.
I got my Toshiba, since there's a head office here in the Toronto area.
As much as that Dell deal is better, I don't want to risk it.