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So what's the verdict? My brother's fiancee wants to get this for him.

Dells suck. Now it sounds like the situation doesn't call for a home assembled PC, so I'll look around and find you something better in the price range.
Edit: I haven't had much experiance with budjet PCs, but just going by specs this is a much better value. I'm revising this again, go for the hp I linked to over the dell. Unless someone has some horror story about how a hp will eat your children or something it would be foolish to choose the dell over it due to it's vastly less sucktastic specs. Now ideally your brother's fiancee would be building this gift as that yeilds the best cost/performance ratio but the fact that a dell is even one of the serious options tells me that that's probably out of the question as far as computer competency goes in this situation.

Dell really sucks.

*Looks at your link*



Okay:

It's a Celeron. Celeron = crap. I've seen tests where a 2.4 GHz Celeron got pounded by a 1.8 GHz P4. 40 gig HD. Sorta on the low end, though survivable if he's not an obsessive user Horrid graphics. Survivable if he's not a gamer. CD-ROM. No DVD, no CD-RW, no nothing. No speakers. No floppy.

The only pros I see is that it has a monitor with it and is a low price.

Same price on ibuypower could probably buy the same thing, except CD-RW, 80 GB hard drive, Athlon XP 2800+ (much faster than a Celeron), better graphics, 3 peice speakers, etc, but no monitor. Check out the Athlon XP DDR configurator.

Shop around before you grab the Dell

EDIT: Oh yeah, HP has some pretty good prices btw.

I'm on a Dell right now. I have precisely zero complaints. And I'd take this over, say, a Gateway.

Rogue 9 wrote: And I'd take this over, say, a Gateway.

Can't argue with that

darthdavid wrote:Dells suck. Now it sounds like the situation doesn't call for a home assembled PC, so I'll look around and find you something better in the price range.
Edit: I haven't had much experiance with budjet PCs, but just going by specs this is a much better value. I'm revising this again, go for the hp I linked to over the dell. Unless someone has some horror story about how a hp will eat your children or something it would be foolish to choose the dell over it due to it's vastly less sucktastic specs. Now ideally your brother's fiancee would be building this gift as that yeilds the best cost/performance ratio but the fact that a dell is even one of the serious options tells me that that's probably out of the question as far as computer competency goes in this situation.

Yeah, well, I was going to build him one with my old components but she wants to buy him one. Neither are very computer-savvy really.

I'm tempted to say fuck it and tell her to get the Dell since I'm around...

No. Dell sucks balls. I have a Dell, and I sent it in for some minor scratch-repair to the screen; when I got it back, the OS was fucked, and the CD/DVD drive was busted, I'm going to have to get that fixed at a local shop at great expense.

And Dell has the worst customer support in the world. Ever. Absolutely terrible. It's impossible to talk to anyone; after I paid in full for the repairs to my laptop, they flagged my account. I talked to six different departments, several times, for hours, over a period of weeks, and it is still flagged. And it's not just me. Agreement about Dell CS suckiness is fairly universal.

Used to have a Dell at work. It sucked

Now I have a Compaq. Still sucks

What are the good brands?

Gandalf wrote:What are the good brands?

IBM. But they tend to be pricey. Still, you get what you pay for.

Build your own, that's my solution. I don't buy brand names.

I second that, DIY's the way to go. The best bit is that it's much easier to upgrade individual components when you get some spare cash if you built it yourself in the first place.

I love my Dell

It is hasslefree, well supported and the Price/preformance is good IMHO

Pcm979 wrote:I second that, DIY's the way to go. The best bit is that it's much easier to upgrade individual components when you get some spare cash if you built it yourself in the first place.

To reiterate: DIY is not an option in this case.

My two cents:

Gateway. I hate them. They personally fucked me over a few years ago with a POS system that had habitual HDD failure, because they were fucking morons when they assembled the system. Each time, instead of trying to recover my data (despite the fact that they offered the service and we were willing to pay), they just yanked the old HDD, threw in a new one, and gave me a big "Fuck You". Meanwhile, a local mom and pop computer place was able to actually recover my data.

However, as I understand it, over the last several years, Gateway has been reforming. As I understand it, in the latest Consumer Reports, Gateway has actually been in the lead in system quality and service and support, while Dell has slipped due to various reasons.

I'll try and verify this myself when I get the chance though.

Dell
Alienware
HP

Gandalf wrote:What are the good brands?

IBM: Good support, durable notebooks, slightly pricey.
HP: If you want a cheap computer, get HP instead of Dell.
Apple: Well, you know I had to put this one in here
Alienware: Good performance, though battery life sucks.
iBuyPower: I've heard fairly good things in PCWorld about them.

Really, anything but D(H)ell and Gateway should be fine.

HemlockGrey wrote: And Dell has the worst customer support in the world. Ever. Absolutely terrible. It's impossible to talk to anyone; after I paid in full for the repairs to my laptop, they flagged my account. I talked to six different departments, several times, for hours, over a period of weeks, and it is still flagged. And it's not just me. Agreement about Dell CS suckiness is fairly universal.

It's true. I had a friend who bought a Dell- I can't remember EXACTLY what happened, and I wouldn't ask again (she was so distraught and stressed over it that I couldn't even say the word Dell ), but the tech support took her on a huge runaround, pulled some loopholes on her, refused to give her the rebate money, wouldn't fix the computer right, etc, and she ended up losing several hundred dollars over the whole ordeal (rebate + getting the computer fixed).

Dalton let you stop you right there....
You see these hands?!(Of course you don't)
These hands bear the scars of countless fools who though that Compaq was a "good" brand... With their extra sharped cases, shitty support and non-standard screw setup(Cheaper you go worse it gets), you will pay for it in the shorts later on if you ever want to open the thing up or take it someplace and get it repaired

Three things

1.Don't buy a computer for less than $500... Period(Minus if its stolen to begin with or its off a tech friend)
2. You can get away with onboard sound, never an onboard video card(Minus the Nforce motherboards from Nvidia)
3. Monitors last forever(Relativly speaking) the same $300 21 inch monitor I bought in 97 is still working in 2004 and still looks just as good and has survied three computers so far

As far as they are concered however... Just tell them the first one, and let the second two guide you

A homebrew computer should never be in the offering for anyone except yourself and those who live with yourself. At the least you'll be able to point them to (however poor) OEM technical support.

Now, IBM makes great machines and has stellar service. You pay up the nose for that service. Dell can have good service, but often does not. Gateway has seriously reformed over the last few years -- and I've worked in many a P3/800EB midtower they produced. It was an absolute joy to work with. HP/Compaq is a bit of a crapshoot -- their business/professional projects are good but their consumer line varies.

Don't even bother with Alienware, Falcon Northwest or whatnot unless you're made of money and know you're wasting it.

I like my Dell.

lol

their stuff is overpriced for what you get, and they are real tech support fascists...

they had the gall to tell my friend he had violated the warrenty because I blew canned air through his machine, to fix a previous problem....

I have had my Dell for sometime, never had a problem and got it at 200 dollars cheaper than a Gateway or HP for the same stuff. I would of made my own PC personally but i didn't have the time. I'd give Dell the good nod if you can't make your own PC

I have Dells and I don't, nor have I ever had a problem with them. They are cheaply priced, and about the only major problem with the cheaper ones is the integrated graphics. They're also easy to upgrade.... though I've never bought any parts from them, as I find other cheaper means for quality parts to put in.

Such as my desktop which I've had for... I want to say a year? But it has 5x the RAM in it now and 2 Harddrives.... no issues whatsoever with putting that stuff in. (this was not long before they realized 128MB of RAM is NOT enough memory anymore) I got more RAM elsewhere for cheaper than from Dell though, so that wasn't really a problem either - which I ordered at the same time, so I never really even used it with just the RAM it came with.

Other than that it's been a reliable system. I'd say if you could, go for a Pentium system instead of Celeron though, that L2 cache makes a whole lot of difference. And then if they want more power later, you could always put stuff in for them?

my advice: do. not. go. with. celerons. celeron processors are generally pieces of shit. it's worth spending a couple hundred more bucks to get a Pentium 4 or an Athlon. Personally, i've not used dell very much, but when i have i haven't had any trouble with their machines. What's he wanting to use the machine for btw? gaming? basic office stuff? general websurfing and mp3 listening? etc? if it's anything more than the basics, definitely don't go with dell. don't suppose you know what type of budget they're looking to spend on the machine?