Anyone using Dell Notebook

[dot dot dot]

Opinions....

I have used a Dell desktop PC now for close to 4 years, perfect machine....

Bought the machine back in Holland, had 3 year warranty with 24/7 service.

Once got a major virus (Mc Affee expired....) here in Singapore, called the Dell helpdesk, they checked and found out my PC warranty was not worldwide... One would expect that it would end there, but they offered me to service anyway. 2 hours later I got a new 180Gb harddisk for free, a new subscription for Mac Afee added to it and I was up and running again. For free...

A friend of mine is also always cursing Dell, but I looove them.

And Bremen, I think Dell indeed has a perfect and sharp purchasing power. But not just focussing on the cheapest available, definitely also the best components for the best price, it's a combination.

Adn when spending a few billions a year on R&D, I would think they do not just simply assemble any components to build machines...

AMD versus Intel, always the same battle....

I am an ex-Inteller, so be careful....

Eric

[Bremen]

Adn when spending a few billions a year on R&D, I would think they do not just simply assemble any components to build machines...

AMD versus Intel, always the same battle....

I am an ex-Inteller, so be careful....

Eric

Dell does NOT spend on R&D.

Well, ex-inteller or not, until we see the real, third-party benchmarks of the upcoming Conroe architecture, the performance and power consumption advantage is clearly AMD's.

[dot dot dot]

Sorry, I was not that clear on the R&D, I was referring more to Intel as such, meaning all the big IT mnc's spend huge amounts of their revenue on R&D. Dell is indeed a smart one here, they leave it to the others to do so...

Ahum, as an ex-Inteler, I am not supposed to say anything on AMD....

You're not an AMD-er by any chance, are you?

Eric

[Bremen]

You're not an AMD-er by any chance, are you?

Eric

Nope. Just someone who does his research before buying.

FYI:
Personal Laptop: AMD Turion64
Previous Personal Laptop: Intel Pentium M (Centrino bundle)
Personal Desktop: AMD Athlon X2
Office Laptop: Intel Core Duo
Office Desktop1: Intel P4HT
Office Desktop2: AMD Athlon64

So I really use them all...

[Plavt]

Bemen

I just placed an order for dell desktop. why would u avoid it like a plague....

cheers

Generally shoddy quality, lots of harddrive failures, cheap components, and they only sell the massively power-hungry and hot-running Intel chips. I prefer dual-core CPUs, and in the dual-core desktop arena, AMD is king.

Interesting you should be saying this Bremen; I have had several Dell computers but can't say they were shoddy quality, certainly no hard drive failures. Whether components are cheap or not I would not know and somehow I prefer Intel chips.

However, it is true that Dell are more expensive than anybody else or were as I am not up to date on that score. What I don't like about Dell is their customer service which is located in India and all too often after a long wait you have a technician who cannot understand what you say therefore prolonging the call. In addition there is often the excuse 'the line is bad' which I am disinclined to believe anymore having heard that excuse so often. Fortunately I rarely call them but in the past when I have called Dell regarding other issues I have been given the 'run around' on the phone from one department to another and eventually back to the very people who were the cause of some gripe to start with.

The machine I am using to type this is a customized 8600 laptop and there are stains on the case where the palm the heel of my hand is when I am typing. The outer casing is flimsy and the keyboard inferior as when typing I caught my finger underneath a key and broke it off and as a result had to have complete new keyboard. A while ago I bought a cheap Celeron PC from Dell (something to fiddle with) with a printer thrown in free for £350 which has been reliable although a little slow.

I am now considering a Mac as they have no moving parts (cooling by convection), have a Unix based operating system which doesn't crash and is less prone to viruses. Not really sure what the drawbacks are or if the company will survive much longer. Perhaps Bremen can enlighten us on that last remark.

Plavt.

[Bremen]

I am now considering a Mac as they have no moving parts (cooling by convection), have a Unix based operating system which doesn't crash and is less prone to viruses. Not really sure what the drawbacks are or if the company will survive much longer. Perhaps Bremen can enlighten us on that last remark.

Plavt.

No moving parts? One of the only macs to use cooling by convection was the (failed) Cube. All other macs run way too hot to rely on convection, and use active cooling (the 2.5Ghz G5 chip even needed watercooling).

The new macs now all use Intel chips, and I wouldn't believe Apple's "up to 4x faster" hype. Independent benchmarks have shown the new "Mactel" systems to be 20% faster to 50% slower than the older systems. On the bright side, the new "Bootcamp" software lets you run Windows on the Intel-based macs.

Yes, it may be unix-based, but it's a horrible bastardization of OpenBSD. It allows unsigned apps to run at root level, has a bloated UI, loses track of file and folder permissions, and has many security holes, though nobody could really be bothered to exploit them. And yes, it crashes, though gracefully. Oh, and it looks pretty too.

I worked as a support supervisor for Macromedia for 3 years... A good chunk of our customers were on Macs, and almost all issues were the OS flaking out.

And Apple support.... *shudder*

[Bremen]

Extra thoughts: I think some of the slower single-core mac minis and the single-core iMacs are passively cooled, but I'd need to double-check. AFAIK only the Mac Cube was fully passively cooled.


EDIT: Just checked. They're actively cooled.

[Plavt]

Bremen,
I have done some checking, you are right about the issue regarding moving parts it seems what I was reading was badly written. You are also right about the hype (which I have not seen) regarding the speed although the reason for the slowness seems to be due to the integration with intel.

Most of the other issues you mention are true of just about any other computer one would care to mention. A number of the issues you raised, not incorrectly, are due to the fact that much has to be made simple for the vast number of users who are not computer literate.

Macs do crash as you say but at least it is only one program without taking down the whole lot as so often happens with windows.

However, for the moment I have a lot to read up but would like to mention the apple techical support here is no worse than anybody else altough extented warraties for machines are, as far as I am concerned over-priced. Still can't make out why technical support in Singapore should be so bad for apple.

Plavt.