Buying a new Dell?

This is a bit random but if anyone is planning on buying a higher end desktop or laptop from Dell I have a 40% off coupon.

Every month with my bill Dell sends codes you enter on the site that give you varying amounts off certain things. Mine this month was for 40% off any Inspiron worth a bit over $2K. (I don't recall the exact amount it is over $2K)

I've no use for it and if anyone wants it feel free to IM me and I'll pass you on the code.

-Sun
(this is so off topic I've hesitated posting it, but eh, what the heck)

Dude! Someone's getting a Dell!

Dude, my daughter already got her dell laptop for college. Dang, the kid lives better than I do.

coco

DUDE. I'm NOT getting a Dell.

Why buy a system that is guaranteed to have at least one major component break before it is a year old? Dells are pieces of shit, I swear... !@#$ing sub-standard parts used to keep prices low I guess.

ok ok dells are good for those who dont know how to build their own computers, but i have found you can usually build a better computer, using better parts, for less just by buying the individual parts from multiple online suppliers.

The sum of the parts cost less then the sum of the whole.

I think this applies to Dell desktops mostly. I've had a Dell laptop for a couple of years now, and it's still going strong without any trouble (knock on wood). My last Dell desktop, on the other hand...

As soon as the warranty ran out (naturally), it became plagued with bizarre lockups and errors. Couldn't figure it out. Not until years later did I discover that they used the infamous "Quantum Fireball" hard drive in it. Its death was inevitable due to that one crappy component.

So yeah... Dell desktops... overpriced, underpowered, cheap components. It's much better to get a custom built one from a hole-in-the-wall computer shop ... or build one yourself, if you know enough to choose the right components.

Normally, I would bash Dells from sunrise to sunset. However, in this case, Sunshine may actually be getting one of Dell's better offerings. Since its priced over 2K, its less likely to have crap components. With discount codes, the price might move down to reasonable. Even with discount codes, its probably still overpriced. On the other hand, it probably won't have a weak, slower than constipation Celeron.

My Dell desktop is over 3 years old and doing great. My last Dell desktop, though, got a broken modem; they replaced it; it broke again; they replaced it again. Now it's lost its mind and can't even do a system restore anymore. Unlike my original VAIO, there is no disk to bring it all back to day one.

However, the laptop I ordered for my daughter does have an (optional) disk to bring it back to day one. So what they once told me about how they couldn't make those on account of all their computers were all so different has either been fixed or was never true in the first place.

My daughter's laptop was close to 3,000. She argued me into get way more memory than I figure she will ever need - 1 GB. It won't do games. But I got it 4 years of warranty, and it came with a free printer. And a Student/Teacher Windows program, and other junk we had to get, cords, extra ink, I forget what all. But those things all jack up the price.

Obviously, no Celeron at that level, and pretty much good things all around, I made sure. Plus the laptop was already 20% off on the website. And the college she is going to is in partnership with Dell, so that was an extra 12% off, bringing the price closer to 2000.

So I figure she's probably pretty well set for the next four years for doing practically everything a future teacher would want and need to do, except playing online games.

Plus for all my effort, I got to order me a Scrapbook Factory Deluxe, for only $24! That was my little reward.

coco

lol!

Well I don't know about laptops or "high end" Dells, maybe they are better, but I wouldn't bet on the high end stuff being much better. IMO they seem to maximize what "looks good" on paper compared to their competitors by using unreliable junk that "technically" looks good on paper. That "theme" can probably go for more expensive systems as well as cheap ones (which are 100% guaranteed to die at some point I'm sure). Am I willing to purchase an expensive Dell to find out if it's more reliable? hahahaha...lolz

At my old job there was a Dell server, which admittedly WAS old, but it was randomly unable to reboot without being powered down. It would freeze in the middle of it's bootup, etc (BEFORE it made it to windows so it wasn't an OS issue), blah blah. The one I have here will NEVER reboot--it's totally incapable of it. Even if I'm in the BIOS settings and telling it to restart, it locks up. Oh, and it also had a piece of shit CDRW drive that had to be replaced, because it had the tendency to close without being told to close. Another Dell I've seen, I think the CD/DVD or whatever it was just totally died. Another (desktop) at my old job had it's hard drive go "Plehbhbahbabhtfffftt" (dramatization) and then it died. DUDE. I'm never gettin a Dell again!!!! lol...

I used "higher end" mostly to mean price, not to represent the quality of parts.
I wasn't suggesting someone buy a Dell. Just that if they were already going to they could
save $1K or so if they wanted the coupon code since I wasn't going to use it.

Anyway, the code has been passed on to someone else.

-Sun

Yeah, that's good savings, even if it is running the risk of a problem down the road. You may be ok, who knows, I've just had nothing but terrible experience with Dells.

But mostly, it's fun to make fun of!

I'd disagree with that blanket statement... I have a Dell Dimension 4550 (P4/2.5ghz/60gb) that I bought in May '03, and I've had ZERO problems with it. At work, I support about 75 Dell GX260/270/280's, and I can count on one hand's fingers the number of times I've had to call Dell to replace a part on these machines. But at the same time, the support tech I replaced, was an HP/Compaq fan and he ordered several of their machines, then left the company, leaving me with these headaches... I'll take your statement "Dell's are pieces of s$#%" and change it to be "Dell's home-user support is a piece of s%$%#"!! I'm my neighborhoods support tech and my next door neighbor's new Dell had a bad harddrive. I ran the diags, told him what to tell the Dell operator to ease getting a replacement drive, and I'd install the drive and reimage it... He couldn't get past the thick indian accent, and after him trying several times, and my trying (and wasting several hours on the phone) I decided to give him one of my spare drives and skip trying to get thru the garbage.. I even tried calling the corporate number I use at work, and giving his service tag #. The first thing out of the techs mouth was that I had to call the "home" number... So yeah, I'd agree some parts of Dell are pieces of sh@#$#!!!

TasPerth

I recently found an old Dell Optiplex 150 in a pile of scrap computer junk. I thought the case looked nice, so I took it home. There was a post-it stuck to it that indicated it had a bad fan.

When I looked inside, it had a really weak, proprietary power supply with what seems to be a case fan stuck to it. Most of the usable components were missing. I guess this was a donor machine. Processor, memory, hard drive and optical drive were long gone. The motherboard was a cheesy PIII board with integrated sound and video. Even worse, they included an AGP slot which could only accept half height cards.

For the pure hell of it, I rebuilt this machine. Its probably much better than the machine that left the factory. First, I replaced the fan. I had to momentarily get over my personal bias against Intel to find a used 1ghz Coppermine PIII. I went into my spare parts for some things, and added a DVD/CD burner combo drive. Found a GeForce 4MX card for video. Yeah, its a crappy card, but it was PCI, SL capable and cheap.

In the end, this machine can run SL with nearly everything turned down. Its also very quiet. Unfortunately, there isn't much you can upgrade, due to the proprietary motherboard. I use it mostly for playing MP3s.