Dell Laptops

[Little Pete]

I have an Inspiron 1501 which is a nice piece of kit. It's new (Xmas pressie) so I've not got much time with it to say whether it is long term reliable but my family have used Dell for a long time. Both my parents have home offices so my sister and me got computer cast offs when upgrades happened

It has been very nice for me so far.

- AMD Turionx2 64 processors
- 1 GB RAM
- Radeon Graphics
- 15.4" glossy screen (LOVELY)
- 60Gb Hard Drive
- DVD writer
- Li-ion battery with ~4-5 hours life (I tried to get SLA in a waist mounted canister to stay DIR but they said no go )

All been good so far except the windows media centre edition which just annoyed me with all the pretty graphics that made it more awkward to use (only my view though).

Pete

[essexbloke]

Originally Posted by Little Pete

I have an Inspiron 1501 which is a nice piece of kit. It's new (Xmas pressie) so I've not got much time with it to say whether it is long term reliable but my family have used Dell for a long time. Both my parents have home offices so my sister and me got computer cast offs when upgrades happened

It has been very nice for me so far.

- AMD Turionx2 64 processors
- 1 GB RAM
- Radeon Graphics
- 15.4" glossy screen (LOVELY)
- 60Gb Hard Drive
- DVD writer
- Li-ion battery with ~4-5 hours life (I tried to get SLA in a waist mounted canister to stay DIR but they said no go )

All been good so far except the windows media centre edition which just annoyed me with all the pretty graphics that made it more awkward to use (only my view though).

Pete

i bought this as well at Christmas for my daughter it is a nice bit of kit and very cheap.
totally recommend

[hopper]

I have a Inspiron 5150.

2 and a half years of no problems at all. Then the whole computer dies.

Its not under warrenty so I agree to pay £260 for a new motherboard and an engineer to call on site.

2 motherboards latwer and the compiter still crashes on me, I phone Dell and they offer (seeing as I have had 2 reapirs) to send me a new laptop free of charge.

The new one has arrived and I am transfering all my date and programmes.

Plus its a duel core one as well!!!

All in all, I can't complain except getting through to the right person on the help lines is a nightmare.

[Brick]

I'm mostly happy with mine at the moment. The bluetooth hasn't worked properly for about 2 years, but I've never really used that, so no big deal. It seems to be getting progressively slower but it's filling up with crap so not surprising. I did have a lot of issues early on, though - screen kept going funny so had to go back to be fixed. Then, just outside of warranty period, the motherboard died and needed replacing. They wanted to charge me some inordinate amount so I kicked up a fuss, complaining to every department - their customer service is truly terrible. Eventually, they offered to repair it (they claimed 'as goodwill' while the people I spoke to in the know said that it should be covered by consumer rights legislation. Dell claimed that since they offered a warranty, the consumer rights legislation didn't apply...). I'd be reluctant to buy another Dell - mainly for the customer support issues - but if I did, would be getting an extended warranty as the motherboard issue seems to be VERY common!

[JAG]

Due to space I replaced one of my desktops with a Dell Inspiron 6400 about 3 months ago and very happy with it. Decent spec. I priced it all up on the Dell site then spoke to a guy on Ebuyer and got the same spec for £250 cheaper.

[Hellenic Diver]

I've had 2 dell laptops - an inspiron (aaround 5 years ago) in which the system board died after 3 years - so got binned - nad I've got an inspiron 1501 due for delivery on monday

I was happy with my previous laptop so reordered

however I work in IT support and would not touch a dell desktop with your barge pole let alone mine!

they are 'economically' constructed, have 'unique' dell system boards, psu's and cases - so if soemthing goes you cant just swap the system board - you have to go back to dell...... all this is normal on a laptop - but I find totally unacceptable on a desktop workstation -

also watch when you order as they 'bundle' in a couple of years of over the phone IT support for £70..

although they do provide you with system disks for the OS and drivers - which I like

and yes their customer support is truely terrible - I had the misfortune of having to call them for every one of 300 dell workstations to get an engineer out to them..... and if you actualy tell them what the fault is they wont beleive you.....record was three visits by an engineer to replace a faulty power button on a barnd new out fresh out of the box pc - the frist two engineers replaced the cpu and a stick of memory.....

[Jen S]

Originally Posted by Brick

I'd be reluctant to buy another Dell - mainly for the customer support issues

Completely agree!!

I have the Inspiron 8600, which I've had for 2 years now. It's not been a bad laptop, though I have had a few issues with it. The DVD drive started to go dodgey about 6 months after buying it. Phoned Dell, but their customer service was absolutely appaling. They couldn't seem to grasp the concept of an intermitent fault. To them, it worked (if not all the time), so it was OK. Eventually my warranty ran out and they didn't want to know anymore. Took it to my local computer shop who fitted me a new drive for £50. It works fine now. I also broke one of the USB ports a few months after, but having had all the hassle with Dell customer service before, I've just not bothered to get it fixed - not that they would do anyway as the warranty has run out.

So, overall the laptop is a nice piece of kit and is OK for my needs. However, I do think there are better for less. My mum has just got a new Acer, which is a very nice bit of kit. Tried to get mum to swap laptops, but she said no! If I was to get a new laptop now, I would go for an Acer, mainly because of Dells Customer Service.

Jen

[I_J_D]

I have a dell desktop Dimension 8400, but I have a Toshiba laptop, great bits of kit.

The company I work for uses a lot of dell kit from servers to laptops, from what I have seen from the laptops there are fine when just having a basic model, soon as you up the spec they tend to become a bit more expesive.

Your right about the support very poor, even when your logging server issues, they tend not to beleive you.

Acer does seem to be upping it's game at the moment with decent spec for decent money.

End of the day it's best to go with the brand that does the job it's needed for, and for the best price

[Mary]

I've had two Dell laptops in the past 3 years (however this is my fault as I did drop the first one and it died )

I'm very happy with it, so much so that I replaced the old one with a newer one with the insurance money.