Laptop wanted

It's about timeI got a laptop and wondered if anyone had experience of DELL

I have heard conflicting comments from reliable, excellent value for money etc to keep away.

Their pricing policy per their website seems a bit quirky with headline offers but then very costly extras if the advertised machine is not exactly what is required. I wondered if the hardware was similarly quirky.

If you have one, or know someone who does, are they any good?

Our company switched to Dells exclusively for both Laptops and Desktops, and we have about 200 of them installed (about 200 laptops) Their support (once you get past the first level) is quite good, and their QA seems to be pretty good as well. It got to the point where we couldn't justify the cost of doing it all ourselves...

I actually worked a bit (between other jobs) at a Dell PC support centre, but they went with overseas outsourcing and I moved back into programming...

Having said that, I can't speak for the average home user, as I'm one of those 'build-your-own' types...

I've used Dell laptops, and generally they're pretty good value for money. A couple of tips regarding their website:

* Their offers are renewed every Thursday. If you don't see what you want, then hang on.

* Try all combinations of deals at the time. I jot down the specs and the price. I've known a price differential of a few hundred quid

* Try both the Home and Small Business (but add VAT). There are different deals.

* Note that the deals in print (like in the newspapers) are not on the web - you key in the code and adjust from there. So there are LOADs of permutations... but it's worth checking them out.

The nice thing with Dell is that it generally just "works" and you can rebuild the OS from scratch (assuming you pay the few quid extra to get the driver and OS CDs).

However, I still rate Toshiba higher in terms of build quality. www.insight.com/uk are a good place to start. Again, Toshiba have numerous different "build" states of the same model - so pay attention to the small print in the spec and the price.
And sometimes places like PCWorld do get Tosh deals (but I wouldn't rely on their support, and would never pay extra for their "extended" warranties )

HTH!
Matt

I have a Dell Inspiron.....2600 I think, its a bit dated now and comparatively slow, but it has been very reliable. My only gripe is the plastic on the lid near the hinge has cracked and has steadilly got worse.

My son also works in IT, (networking) and he says Dell are OK. coming from him that is a compliment

Most of the Dells I've had experience of seem to be quite 'plasticky' and flimsy. I know laptops aren't meant to be bulletproof, but I'm very impressed with the build quality and running of my Hp nx6110. Came from www.laptopsdirect.co.uk.

The company i work for uses Dell laptops, and mine has been fine in terms of reliablity. The screen is useless for imaging though.

Our own laptop is a Toshiba with a diamond screen, and that is much better. We actually bought from Comet as the price and spec were right. I guess you need to check out the offers very carefully as bargains do crop up from time to time.

However, for imaging, you can't beat a good CRT in the quality/cost ratio stakes.

Before you buy Dell, have a look at Acer's notebooks here. They are well specified and robust. Buy three years collect & return warranty for about £100.00 = peace of mind computing. Their additional warranty also includes accidental damage cover. I use them exclusively.

Regards,

Buying a Dell through their website is fine, as long as you don't want anything out of the ordinary. Some years ago I bought a home desktop PC. I wanted to pay 50% cash and 50% on finance. In the end it took three months to complete the transaction because their system had difficulty in accomodating this, their telephone operators had difficulty in understanding this. In the end I resorted to subterfuge. When Dell were ignoring me, I would email them and b.c.c. m.dell @ dell.com (and variations thereof). Now because M Dell was bcc'd the person I was emailing would have been unaware of the fact. However in each case I got a response within 12 hours, so someone at Dell (I doubt Mike does it himself) has the job of catching these emails and chasing up.

My previous company bought Dell equipment, and again all was usually fine, however on a couple of occasions things went awry and we resorted to the b.c.c. m.dell @ dell.com route and, surprise, surprise, things were swiftly resolved.

I have two dells, a desktop and a laptop. My original thinking was that every company I have ever worked for (some very large like the BBC) use Dells so I figured they must be relaible and cheap! I've been using a succession of Dells now for around 12 years. I've never called a helpline and never had a breakdown. I took delivery of an Inspiron 6400 a couple of weeks ago only because its predecessor fell off a shelf, I like it a lot especially the built in card-slot, wi-fi, bluetooth and firewire. At work we use G6 Macs with a terrabyte of storage so I know that Macs are 'better' perhaps for media work but at home and compromising with the needs of running a small business, I've been really happy with Dell PCs. As Matt rightly says you have to do your research. The latest one was quoted with a delivery time of 10 days, it came in 4 and the build quality is far better than the one it has replaced.

Where do you buy your shelves?

G

I bet he got them for a knock-down price!

Sorry, I'll shut up again.
Dan

You could always try www.rockdirect.com they are a UK based specialist notebook manufacturer. We have four machines from them used for various things: music recording and audio processing, mathematical simulations, photography work and games.

They have a forum if you want advice on notebooks, not jut their own but any others too. www.rockforum.co.uk

Really depends on your budget range, but some of the 1680x1050 1.75MP and 1920x1200 2.3MP screens are amazing for working with photos. You can choose gloss or matt screens son some of their models depending on how you want colour to be rendered.

Thanks for all the comments. I have been surfing the bargains/offers for about six months now looking for something to replace my Flashtrax and at the prices for Flashtrax or equiv I decided that I might as well go for a low end laptop and get a bit of processing power as well.

Every laptop supplier I can find is on my favorites list.

As a temporary storage device, a HDD of 60gb is sufficient for me, and 1GB RAM is now becoming available in machines under £400. Dell had an Inspiron 1501 on offer with an AMD dual core processor for £399 which I thought I might go for, but the ability to take a few knocks is a concern.

Trouble is, it comes with Vista

If you are referring to my recent tragedy, my laptop fell 5 feet onto a hard floor, dont think anything would have come out of that unscathed! I would think of the external HD as the primary storage device, its good practice to keep the media on a different drive from the OS. I use a Freecom 80GB as my main storage device for photos (its tiny, shirt pocket size) and use a 250gb mains powered one to back up everything and that is kept in a safe. Just because I'm paranoid... etc.

Ken[/i]

Don't worry. You decide, phone 'em up and say "Put XP on instead" and they say "Don't you want the latest and greatest?" - "NO". No problem You get a laptop with XP.
You'll notice that XP is available for business Dell sales, and they've been in the news for going back to XP.
Matt