To Dell or not to Dell?!

Miss McT

Miss McT

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I'm looking to buy a laptop and getting a Dell seemed like an 'easier' option (for me - technically challenged miss mct!) but I've heard mixed reviews...

I'm just starting out with all this photography stuff but plan to be taking lots of pics ;) and getting to grips with Photoshop. I'm also going to be doing a postgrad course so I'll be amassign lots of PDFs I would imagine :eek: Need it to serve me well for both!

So do I go with Dell or look elsewhere? Any thoughts would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance :)
 
I have a Dell Inspiron 6400 ... was in same boat as you about a year ago and did my head in looking through the options ... since going with Dell I have absolutely no doubt it was the right thing for me ... great spec ... great prices ... superb back up ... and great quality devices that can be expanded in future if necessary ... what more do you want ... :shrug:




:p
 
I'm in the same boat at the moment I want to replace the Acer laptop I use, and for value for money Dell seem to take some beating and I will try them, yes I have heard bad stories about Dell but I had a huge problem with Acer over my girlfriends laptop that we sent in for repair.
They seem to sort out the better Dell deals on http://www.hotukdeals.com/forums/
 
Great - thankyou :) I'm learning lots from lovely TP folk! Decisions decisions - seems to be so much choice out there!
 
Ok, A different view...
I have a pc built by Kustom PC's.
I chose them as they talked to me, we discussed things, and I dealt with one person, who I had a direct contact with. They are not the cheapest, but the extra cost was so well worth it. I ended up with a pc that is still doing great things for me, and when I recently contacted them to inquire about upgrading them, they could recall my pc details, and have come up with what seems to me to be another good set-up.
Dell, Mesh, Evesham etc all offer very good value gear, Kustom, along with others, offer a higher level of service, and a pc or laptop with a better spec for what you want.
Might be worth a try...
 
I can confirm what Stave is saying. Graeham over at Kustom Pc does a great job. Ive used them quite a lot for various bits and bobs, and have always had top service.
 
:thinking: hmmm food for thought...thankyou very much - I shall do some more investigating (I'm just being impatient!)
 
If you decide to go for Dell, you can buy very slightly cosmetically damaged outer casings with around 30%off at the Dell Outlet Store on ebay.

I recently bought one and only has a minor 5mm long hairline scratch. 3 weeks ago I paid £730 for T200 2.0GHz Duo Core Inspiron 9400, 1920 x 1200 17" glossy screen, 2Gb Ram and 160Gb Hard disk. 9 cell battery. Although they have just stopped doing the 9400, it was a significant saving from nearly £1100 on the full retail price.

You may have to be patient to get the spec you want, but lots of them go cheaply if you can bid in the daytimes.
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Dell-Outlet

Happy Hunting.....
 
Hello,
Where I work we have four Dell laptops. They have all gone wrong at various times and the customer service is shoddy, even though we paid (a lot) extra for certain service commitments from them.

I have two computers a desktop and a laptop. Both are made by a German company called Median. Both have worked perfectly from day one. The only thing is they make machines in bulk for places like Tesco, Toys R US etc this tends to give them a down market status but they are cheap for the speck!
 
As a student you get a discount on apple computers at apple.com
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I'm about to buy myself a mac mini as i want a desktop - but if you want a decent laptop go for the Macbook - might be more expensive than some of the windows ones but they are worth it :) and plus if you need to you can install windows aswell using Bootcamp.
 
lloyd1450 said:
I'm about to buy myself a mac mini as i want a desktop - but if you want a decent laptop go for the Macbook - might be more expensive than some of the windows ones but they are worth it :) and plus if you need to you can install windows aswell using Bootcamp.
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what he said!

i've got windows XP (with OSx) on my mac, and i never use the windows partition.
the funny thing about installing xp on a mac is it its quicker and easier than installing it on a PC!
 
I prefer my iMac, but I have a decent Dell laptop for work - a Latitude D420 with C2D and 2GB of ram - seems to fly along even with all my work software on there. Nice and portable too and the battery lasts 4 hours with a moderate screen brightness
 
I personally don't like photo editing on Laptop screens, but dell give great customer service :) (I had a motherboard replaced twice nearly a year and a half after purchasing - and they paid for transport both ways on both occasions, which is pretty good), having a PC custom built will save you a fortune though, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend that for someone who's not in the know. My mom needs to have a phone number next to the PC, so that if it all goes wrong she has someone to bother :)lol:), that's a dell number, and she seems to be doing ok.
 
benneh said:
I personally don't like photo editing on Laptop screens, but dell give great customer service :) (I had a motherboard replaced twice nearly a year and a half after purchasing - and they paid for transport both ways on both occasions, which is pretty good), having a PC custom built will save you a fortune though, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend that for someone who's not in the know. My mom needs to have a phone number next to the PC, so that if it all goes wrong she has someone to bother :)lol:), that's a dell number, and she seems to be doing ok.
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you were very lucky then.. i bought a dell axim with tomtom bundle from them and they called me a month later to tell me they had no axims left (the tomtom software had already got to me). they wouldnt let me return the tomtom software and wouldnt send me a replacement axim. i argued with them for 2 more months, and most of the time they couldnt speak english or understand a word i said. i tried to tell them the tomtom was useless without the pda and they would have none of it.
they kept promising me call backs and refunds and all sorts and i never received anything. I swore i would never buy anything from them again.
 
dell seem to be like marmite - people either love them or hate them...
 
I Love them, I've got 1 laptop and 4 desktops & never had a problem with any of them.
 
xynamic said:
you were very lucky then.. i bought a dell axim with tomtom bundle from them and they called me a month later to tell me they had no axims left (the tomtom software had already got to me). they wouldnt let me return the tomtom software and wouldnt send me a replacement axim. i argued with them for 2 more months, and most of the time they couldnt speak english or understand a word i said. i tried to tell them the tomtom was useless without the pda and they would have none of it.
they kept promising me call backs and refunds and all sorts and i never received anything. I swore i would never buy anything from them again.
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:(, sounds like you had a bad ride dude. It might well be that I got lucky a few times, but generally I hear good things (but yup, the foreign call center/support can be a bit annoying, especially for someone like my mother who's not so technically minded - they have always sorted my problems out though to be fair).
 
Just over a year ago I had trouble with the video card in my dell desktop and they sent me a replacement card which unfortunately had a different fault on, this dragged on for three weeks with numerous phone calls then out of the blue I had a call saying that my new computer would be delivered in three days, so they replaced my three year old computer with a nice new Dual core, so I am happy with them.
 
Thanks for all your comments and sharing your experiences - very varied but very useful in helping me to decide. Think I'm going to take the plunge and go with the Dell Inspiron 1520 as I think that'll do everything I need it to do (probably more) and like your mum Benneh I'll probably have the Dell number with me at all times, hehe!

Thanks again everyone :)
 
Or...maybe not!

"Due to unprecedented demand for this system, we regret to inform you of a 5 week delivery time on your order."

BOOOOOO I say, BOOOO!
 
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