After a lot of thought, we have decided to replace our aging laptop.
Yesterday I bought a machine from Dell, but wanted to point out that you can haggle with them. I made our new machine on their website (netting £60 discount) and then called their sales team and asked if they could do anything about the price. £30 was knocked off and a quote emailed through. A mate suggested upgrading the monitor for £10. Dell added this in for nothing too! Total saving £100!!
If you're buying new machines, and more than one, definitely give them a ring!
I bought my pooter, then Dad bought his, so when my sister ordered hers, Dad phoned them and asked them if there was any kind of discount on offer, seeing as there'd already been 2 ordered for the same address.
are Dell compoopters any good? what are their customer services like? any breakdowns in any of yours?
my beast came from a place called Wyvern... customer service sucked, machine sucked and so I gave up trying to get them to fix anything and invalidated my warranty by giving it a total overhaul.
oh how I love my tea, tea in the afternoon. I can't do without it, and I think I'll have another cup very
ve-he-he-he-heryyyyyyy soooooooooooon!!!!
I bought from Dell around 7 years ago and had lots of problems with their customer services - ended up handing it over to the credit card co (I always pay with a credit card for stuff over a certain amount as it offers some protection if the goods are not up to scratch) - I ended up with a copy of Encarta on DVD as compensation (yeah right, big deal!).
Hopefully they've improved but it did rather put me off buying from them in the future (if I could ever afford to!)
If you're incredibly tech-savvy and can build a machine with your eyes shut and give Bill Gates a run for his money sort of person then Dell's probably not for you...
...but if you're not then they're good machines (wouldn't say the same about their printers though!) I've paid for the home-help thingie which means if my pooter (Little Bob 2's Big Brother) dies or goes wrong they come out to my home and fix it for me, they've agreed to extend this cover to my uni address too so I'm totally covered fro both home (down south) and temporary (Leicester) address... with no extra cost!
They're also pretty good at fixing things virtually as well if it's a software problem.
If there's specific things you need in your computer and they're not online when you order it (for me it was FireWire ports, needed them for my M-Audio sound card, they're great for external hard drives too!)give them a ring and they'll help out!
So yeah... I like em, they're not BRILLIANT machines... but everyone's looking for different things, they work, pretty stable and generally quite good... been working with Macs recently though and (even though I hate to say it) they're a LOT more stable then windows machines...so it's up to you!
Good Luck!
PS Yes, they're GREAT at haggling too! With LB2BB, I did get £200odd off! :-D
If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.