[bruiser]

I was wondering how much propritery stuff is in a Dell desktop. Are they upgradeable with off the shelf parts, or do you have to get parts from Dell?

 

[ebackhus]

It varies. I've had some that happily accepted everything I added even though they weren't from Dell. Others adamently refuse to work with parts from outside vendors.

 

[ninety5eclipz]

I have a Dell XPS Gen 4 that I bought a few months ago. I've RAM, Video Card, Fans, CD drives to it. Looks about like the only thing that would be a pain to install would be a new Power supply.

 

[shadow121]

It varies. I've had some that happily accepted everything I added even though they weren't from Dell. Others adamently refuse to work with parts from outside vendors.

The only thing that is made by dell on the desktop's if the casing all other parts are branded and will work in a Dell
BUT!!! there are new hdd's that are no using SATA and not ide so be careful when buying a hdd

 

[big_gay_stephen]

we have a dell at my work, it is a basic 'inspiron', workstation type model. I had a quick look inside and it only had one hard drive bay.Also, i think it may only have had one dimm for ram but i can't remember for sure.
either way, not the best for upgrading.

 

[ebackhus]

Plus it's a Dell, nuff said.

 

[bruiser]

Plus it's a Dell, nuff said.

So, Dell is not recommended?

 

[phubeone]

It depends what you're going to do with this PC. For offices Dells are great, I like the warranties and the onsite support, so if something break down, they'll stop by and replace the part or they usually ship it and I get it the next day. As far as servers I've been happy with Dell, I can broken parts on the same day within couple hours after the call.

 

[ebackhus]

I'll just say that my experience with them has made me unwilling to buy one even if I were paid to.

 

[phubeone]

for home users, the support sucks, I get transferred to india and it takes 2 hours for me to get a new power supply, we all know that the power supply is dead but they insist to run all these test to waste your time. I've never owned a Dell and never will, but when it comes down to the office computers I'll stick with Dell.

 

[bruiser]

Here's what I use the pc for: surfing, some gaming, I collect oldtime radio shows which get burned to cd, and do some video work.

 

[shadow121]

for home users, the support sucks, I get transferred to india and it takes 2 hours for me to get a new power supply, we all know that the power supply is dead but they insist to run all these test to waste your time. I've never owned a Dell and never will, but when it comes down to the office computers I'll stick with Dell.

Well if you find it a waste of time then dont buy dell.. These tests have to be done so as a part can be booked. It is not as easy as ring up-tell problem and get part. The root of the problem has to be got.

 

[ebackhus]

For the Dells we have here where I work we have replacement parts in our IT department downtown. Still takes some time to get it done, though...

 

[phubeone]

2 hours to run these test twice is a waste of time IMO especially if you have already done them. For server support, I call them, I tell them the RAID controller is dead and I tell them all the test I did and they send me the new part withing 15 minutes of the call and it gets to the office withing 3 hours. I call support for home users and get transferred to india, I tell them all the test I did, they have me re-run the test and two hours later I have to speak to a manager so that I can stop wasting my time re-running all these tests I have done couple times already.

Business support is good, regular support blows.

These tests have to be done so as a part can be booked. It is not as easy as ring up-tell problem and get part. The root of the problem has to be got.

I told them what the problem and what I did, we redo some of these tests and clearly at this point he sees the power supply is dead, we even tried another power supplied and it worked fine, but he insists on running the tests again. Waste of time?