Any experience of Dell computers?

[kaymar]

Our 10-year-old Dell is now moving even more slowly than me and we are seriously thinking about replacing it with something a bit quicker.
We use it mainly for web-browsing, e-mails and photo storage and, to be fair, it has been pretty good for a long time.

We have been looking at another Dell and were close to ordering their Inspiron 15R until we read some reviews on their own web-site, some of which were very negative and rather put us off.

The alternative is possibly their 660 desktop which, like the 15R has 8GB memory and a 1TB hard drive. Price, including a new monitor is similar at around £500.

Does anyone have either of these or any experience of them or, if not, any alternative suggestions with a similar size of memory at around that price (or less!)

[emjay45]

Hi Kaymar
I had a Dell Inspiron. I don't know if it's the one to which you refer, but I have only had it for 3 or 4 years and it gave up the ghost on Wednesday. I'll ask my son if it was a 15R I may have just been unlucky. I am at present using my husbands Dell Inspiron duo that he bought to take on our cruises.

[Boris+]

Yes, and it wasn't a happy story. I moved to Compaq and so we now have that and a Samsung - and we are more than happy with both.

Em

[GillD46]

Yes, and rapidly moved to a Mac.

[CaroleF]

I've had really good experiences with Dell. My laptop is a Dell - I know nothing about the technical side. My daughter and partner who are both in IT got it all set up for me and I haven't had any problems with it at all. My other daughter is a great Dell fan too.

Carole

[sumdumbloke]

Yes, and rapidly moved to a Mac.

We had bought 3 Dell laptops within 12 months. The 366th day of ownership of the 1st one the HD failed. Dell were unmoved, citing the 12 month warranty legal position (which I never questioned anyway).

Within 2 years another had failed, and the remaining one became so sclerotic over a fairly short time that it was a joke (probably windows' shortcoming rather than Dell)

Like Gill above we moved to Macs. I am writing on the Macbook bought in 2008, and it is as quick and efficient today as it was then. The newer ones are even more of a revelation. They're more expensive but it really is a chalk-and-cheese experience.

[Stephen]

I wouldn't touch Dell again with a barge pole. My wife's Inspiron M5030 laptop is the most useless, slowest piece of cr*p going.

If I were buying a laptop depending on budget it would be either a MAC or a Samsung brand. As for Desktop PC's I have a fairly new one which I configured to my requirements using the company below. That way I wasn't paying for a load of stuff I either didn't need or was never going to use.

http://www.palicomp.co.uk/

[Kendhni]

My general view is that 'they are computers' no more or less reliable than any others. The company I used to work for was entirely Dell based (servers, laptops and desktops) ... and, as development machines, those computers took some hammering. Given what you want to do (web, email, photos) then you may find that all you really need to do is backup your data and then reinstall a lean windows environment .. this alone can give old computers a new lease of life (and really speed them up). What spec is the old machine?

[Silver_Shiney]

I've never like Dells either.

One thing to check for, when buying a new PC, is this: is it made of generic parts or manufacturer-specific parts? Some brands make their own computers from their own parts and, in the event of failure, you have to go back to them for an expensive replacement (nearly always happens just after the warranty has expired. Other brands are PC-assemblers - they buy in the components and build the machine. If a part fails, it's easy to get a replacement.

Another thing - ensure you get the installation disks for the operating environment (Windows). I've been involved with three HP machines and, on initial boot, you are asked to insert blank DVDs to create copies of the installation disks. Each time, the process has either failed, or the disks produced were useless.

It is really not difficult to purchase the parts needed and build one yourself to your exact specification.

[Dark Knight]

we had a Dell for years, never had an issue with it
we upgraded the memory and chip , and gave it a right good clean up and deleted all the rubbish and transferred a lot of stuff to flash drives and off computer storage and it was fine

it may be cheaper to upgrade the memory and chip, than buy another, also you will end up with the new windows 8. whatever, which is rubbish

[Gill W]

We've had Dells over the years, and have never had any problems with them. The only reason they were replaced is because they became obsolete and we needed to upgrade.

I'm typing this on my laptop - a Dell Inspiron 15R. I've had it for two years, it's in use every day and it's (at present, at least) doing fine.

[Manoverboard]

I use a Dell 22" Monitor and the quality is very good ... have only ever heard good reports, thus far, about their Desktops but have no personal info about their Laptops.

[gravy1955]

We've has 3 Dell laptops over the years and wouldn't recommend them.They seem to last about a year and then just as the warranty has run out they go haywire and play up.First time I thought bad luck, second time I put it down to coincidence but the third time was too much. If you haven't taken out their extended warranty then you are up the creek without a paddle. Also their customer service is at best lacking.

[kaymar]

Thank you all for your responses which have confirmed my suspicion that more people seem to have had bad experiences than those (myself included) who have not.

We are now leaning towards Acer and their Veriton X2611G with the Intel Core i3-3240 processor which runs Windows 7 pro rather than Windows 8 which seems also to have more than its share of detractors.

Fortunately this one continues to work, albeit slowly, so there is no immediate rush but if anyone has the Veriton, I would welcome comments on that also.

[kaymar]

Despite Gill's very positive support for Dell, we eventually opted for an AcerHP all-in-one, the S3230 with 8GB memory and 2TB hard drive. It was running Windows 8 but offered an update to 8.1 which we have taken (fingers crossed that the gremlins have gone).

So far, so good - very quick and reasonably easy to use, although there are absolutely no instructions in hard copy form. Still, it will be fun finding out as we go along!

And the ten-year-old Dell is still running (well, walking!) happily.

[david63]

Despite Gill's very positive support for Dell, we eventually opted for an AcerHP all-in-one, the S3230 with 8GB memory and 2TB hard drive. It was running Windows 8 but offered an update to 8.1 which we have taken (fingers crossed that the gremlins have gone).

So far, so good - very quick and reasonably easy to use, although there are absolutely no instructions in hard copy form. Still, it will be fun finding out as we go along!

And the ten-year-old Dell is still running (well, walking!) happily.

One thing that you may want to do is install one of the utilities that re-activate the start menu in Win 8.1 - once you have that then Win 8/8.1 becomes a usable operating system

[Silver_Shiney]

One thing that you may want to do is install one of the utilities that re-activate the start menu in Win 8.1 - once you have that then Win 8/8.1 becomes a usable operating system

operating environment - MS-DOS is still the operating system although it's well hidden

[Kendhni]

SS, not any more .. unlike very early incarnations, windows now runs natively. I can't remember when the change was made (I think it was either at Windows 3 or 95). MS-DOS could not possibly have supported the modern windows platform due to its very limited memory architecture.

[kaymar]

Despite Gill's very positive support for Dell, we eventually opted for an AcerHP all-in-one, the S3230 with 8GB memory and 2TB hard drive. It was running Windows 8 but offered an update to 8.1 which we have taken (fingers crossed that the gremlins have gone).

So far, so good - very quick and reasonably easy to use, although there are absolutely no instructions in hard copy form. Still, it will be fun finding out as we go along!

And the ten-year-old Dell is still running (well, walking!) happily.

One thing that you may want to do is install one of the utilities that re-activate the start menu in Win 8.1 - once you have that then Win 8/8.1 becomes a usable operating system

Pardon, David?

[Kendhni]

Kaymar, have a read at this
http://betanews.com/2013/10/18/get-a-re ... ndows-8-1/

[david63]

With previous incarnations of Windows you have the start menu in the bottom left hand corner For some reason best known to MS they have disabled this part of the OS - even though it is still there. There are several utilities available for down load that will re-activate this code and make Win 8 work like a proper OS.

I agree with both Ken and SS - MS operating systems are still use DOS based commands and can still be used if you so wish - however there is so much built on top of it that DOS is virtually unrecognisable.

[kaymar]

Thanks, chaps. Actually, I'm happy enough (for now, at least) just to click on the "desktop" tile which takes me to a simple menu page - most of the time I am just looking for Google chrome favourites or mail.

[Silver_Shiney]

SS, not any more .. unlike very early incarnations, windows now runs natively. I can't remember when the change was made (I think it was either at Windows 3 or 95). MS-DOS could not possibly have supported the modern windows platform due to its very limited memory architecture.

Ken, I had a problem a couple of weeks ago that could only be solved at the DOS level. Run cmd - you're back in DOS.

[Kendhni]

Not quite SS .. what you do is open a command shell within the windows environment ... it is more like a DOS emulator (no different to any other program).

Trying to keep it simple (and therefore missing out loads of information) ... If you go back in time MSDOS consisted of two main files, IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS (these were hidden but had to be present for a computer to boot MSDOS). Then there was the COMMAND.COM program which was a command interpreter that provided the front end that we all came to know and love (including the c> prompt, and built in commands such as cd, md, copy etc.). Basically running the cmd program is running the windows equivalent of the MSDOS command interpreter - its sort of like a virtual MSDOS environment hosted within windows.

Ever since Windows NT the DOS/Windows relationship ended. I was wrong in my earlier email the DOS/Windows went right up to Windows 98 and Windows ME .. since that all versions have been built on the Windows NT platform which is not layered on DOS (inc. XP, Vista, 7, 8, 2000, 2003 and probably several other incarnations). There are however still some legacy artefacts from the MSDOS era that are utilised within Windows (event NT).

[Silver_Shiney]

I agree that io.sys, msdos.SYS and command.com have been bypassed on boot-up but there are still things that can only be done at the DOS level.