DEll Laptops

movingtables · 8 May 2007 at 13:00

Hope I'm ok to mention Dell here? (overclockers sell Dell products).

anyway .....

I'm considering switching to a Dell laptop in a month or so.
The one I'm currently looking at come to about £995 incl vat + delivery.

These days I play games on my Xbox360.

The laptop will be used for surfing, Word and "some" dvd encoding.

Here are a few specs of the laptop:

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T7200 (2.0 GHz, 4 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB)

Memory : 2048MB 533MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM (2x1024)

Operating system : Genuine Windows Vista™ Home

graphics : geforce go 7900.

my question is. anyone here own a dell laptop and can give an overall opinion on if they are decent machines?

thanks, andy ....

semi-pro waster · 8 May 2007 at 13:05

I don't own a Dell laptop but I've use a few fairly recently, I don't particularly get on with the keyboards (on one I somehow managed to make the enter key pop off repeatedly and I'm not a heavy typist) and I don't like their touchpads much but they are generally pretty solid laptops with decent build quality (that one keyboard excepted as I think it was an isolated incident) and reasonable specifications for the price.

Paul11 · 8 May 2007 at 13:09

dell laptops are fine.... ive seen many of them.

some people complain about dell, but overall, there good.

though having said that, as always, shop around and see what you get for your money

ANDARIAL · 8 May 2007 at 17:19

i have 2 dell laptops.no problems with either in the years i have had them.what i particularly like about them is ease of access,hdd,cpu,and battery.mem and mini pci are all accessible under doors underneath the lappy

i have had to do some repairs to other makes and had to strip them down to the baseboard

looking at getting another dell for my niece to take to collage soon too

skanky · 8 May 2007 at 17:34

movingtables said:
my question is. anyone here own a dell laptop and can give an overall opinion on if they are decent machines?

we use dell latitude's at work, nice machines with good build quality (not ibm/lenovo quality but the latitude's are almost there).

MRBARKER · 8 May 2007 at 17:36

I have a Dell inspiron 9400 fully loaded to spec , great laptop

My Dell spec below

Dell Ispiron 9400
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T7200 (2.0 GHz, 4 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB)
Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium
17" UltraSharp™ Wide Screen WUXGA (1920x1200) TFT Display with TrueLife
2048MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM
256MB DDR3 nVidia® GeForce™ Go 7900 graphics card
Dell Wireless 350 Bluetooth + Dell Bluetooth 2.0 Stereo Headset - EUR
LCD Back Cover - Mediterranean Blue

Trigger · 8 May 2007 at 17:47

skanky said:
we use dell latitude's at work, nice machines with good build quality (not ibm/lenovo quality but the latitude's are almost there).

We use Dell Lattitudes at work as well as HPs and Lenovos and they're all fine although I wouldn't say that Lenovo have the best build quality. Dells business support is also fairly good- I've never used the home support so can't comment on that but the business support is good

The spec you posted looks very good also, should be very nice :cool:

SeanDrake · 8 May 2007 at 17:56

Hi I have an old XPS Gen 2 build quality is pretty solid the screen is excelent and like sombody said a lot of the parts are very easy to upgrade or replace.

As far as i'm concerned the only problem can be drivers as dell use a lot of custom drivers and have a habit of stopping surport quickly and without much notice.

Oh and unless somthings changed in the last 2yrs there customer services sucks big time.

MRBARKER · 8 May 2007 at 18:07

One problem with dell , not many English people work for them , if you know what i mean

hard to understand them

squiffy · 8 May 2007 at 18:08

I would buy from a manufacter that has good customer service. Dell isn't one of them.

MRBARKER · 8 May 2007 at 18:11

The are very helpfull ( Sometimes ) is the call centre in Delhi

Trigger · 8 May 2007 at 18:13

squiffy said:
I would buy from a manufacter that has good customer service. Dell isn't one of them.

Busines support has been fine. We've had quite a few Dells which had a big stripe down the the screen in which the colours would all go funny and they sent us an engineer out who changed the screens no problem. Also a while back we had one with a dodgy power connector on the mainboard and again, an engineer came out and changed the board. As I said, I can't comment on the home support as I've never used it but the business support has been fine for us

Wolf11 · 8 May 2007 at 22:19

My parents bought an Dell Inspiron lappie about 3 weeks ago and from a bit of time messing around on it I think its fine,solidly built ,nice screen etc plus they actually upgraded the cpu to a faster one than ordered ( I assume they were out of stock

) .I just downloaded the decrapifier the day it arrived to get rid of all the preinstalled stuff on it !

MRBARKER · 8 May 2007 at 22:21

are the cpu stuck to board ? or can you upgrade

Deanje · 8 May 2007 at 22:43

Apart from the bundle of tat that gets pre-installed with Dell's, I think they're decent machines overall.

I have a 5 month old Inspiron and the build quality is good; i've seen worse from more expensive laptops at work (HP/Compaq mainly).

Raikiri · 8 May 2007 at 22:49

My Dell is fine, now I have got rid of the pre installed vista and stuck XP on it

gumbald · 8 May 2007 at 22:54

My experience is that Dells seem more solidly built than some other brands. Can't vouch for the customer service though

Cyber-Mav · 8 May 2007 at 23:14

don;t trust their batteries, had one dell lappy which refuses to charge over 49% now, and its only 4 months old.

TheVoice · 8 May 2007 at 23:37

My 630m is a little over a year old now and it's been absolutely solid. Never had any problems with it, nice machine.

movingtables · 9 May 2007 at 08:50

thank you for the reply's