Does Dell make its own motherboards?

Essentially, don't count on being able to change out the motherboard in
the original case..

We had a similar discussions just before Christmas. Dell UK had a stunningly
good offer available which for £420 got you a fast Celeron, 256MB, 80GB HDD,
17" TFT, printer & DVD-writer. When I looked at reviews of this obviously
low-budget system, I can to the same conclusion that it's not very
upgradable. Only thing I wished it had was an AGP graphics port which meant
you were stuck with the on-board graphics card.

But when I did the math, it worked out that even if you threw away the
entire base unit less the HDD, the rest of the bits bought separately came
very closed to the £420 price, esp. considering the 17" TFT.

So what I said was "if you need to upgrade, don't worry about throwing the
base unit away - you almost got it for free anyway".

Just how they are making money, I just don't know :-)

Rob.

If your ever considering "looking under the bonnet", or peeking at the
BIOS - don't do Dell!

But if you want a well built system with good specification at a low price,
then do seriously consider Dell. For the majority of the market out there
who just want it to work, Dell fits the mark.

I used to build PCs for friends and family. Don't bother anymore if they're
looking for a new system - can't beat Dell on price esp. when you add in the
operating system (which lots of home builders seem to forget :-) and the
hassle factor is so much less.

Rob.

Anybody that buys a brand name computer is an idiot.
Build it yourself using good brand name hardware and build it the way you
want it. You will be very pleased with the results.

Are you serious?? :-) I would estimate a very high percentage of PCs are
bought by non-technical users who just want to plug it in and go. Building
your PC from parts, whilst not exactly difficult, is occasionally fraught
with difficulties. Like the questions & problems that this group is filled
with.

And on price, I'm not sure anymore that a custom build PC to the same
specification is any cheaper when bought in components. This doesn't include
my time as well.

Rob.

chosen to buy in some Dell PCs for the office. One reason might be that I
am, as you say, an idiot. The other reason might be that the Dells do the
job I need for the office, and they cost 20% less to buy in ready-built
than the price at which I can buy the parts.

20%? Yes, that probably sounds about right. We've only built one custom PC
at work (a dual Athlon XP system) and we've had no end of problems with it -
it's always got the top off :-) The Dell PCs & servers just sit there and
work 24/7.

Rob.

20% for not being able to support them *properly* when the machine goes
down is worth it is it?

Dell kit is incredibly reliable mainly because you don't mess around with
it. The only Dell hardware we've had fail is a CD-ROM and video output from
one laptop. Compared to the Compaq iPAQ that litereraly blew up, the custom
built Gigabyte system that decided to stop working with WD hard disk and
won't run through the KVM, the 3 Toshiba laptops that have developed several
faults etc...

If one of the Dell base units failed, we wouldn't bother trying to fix it.
We'd simply buy a new base unit for ~£200. £200 doesn't buy you a lot of
"fixing" time and you'll have a nice new higher-spec box anyway.

Rob.

I can build and have a system up and running in about half a day.

And what about time spent purchasing the components and did that include the
operating system and software?? What about those times when you got an
awkward new motherboard which didn't work with a component?

And don't get me started if one of the components was DOA! Getting the
supermarket suppliers like Dabs & Insight to replace them is a nightmare...

Rob.

As you say though getting an engineer out can sometimes be
problematic. I've been finding their call center problematic at times.

Dell's customer care did go down hill last year, about the same time they
outsourced to India... I believe there have been so many complaints that
this is under review. We had one particularly hilarious support job where we
just wanted a missing CD-ROM for a laptop (it was missing on delivery). The
probably spent more time on the support call than the £1 CD-ROM.

But compared to Gigabyte support...

Rob.

"But I have 3 year on-site warranty" you say

For what Dell charge? You must be joking! :-)

We don't bother with the 3 year on-site warranty except for the servers -
one year RTB is fine. For desktops and even laptops it just doesn't make
financial sense. For the occasional system that might fail, then just buy
another one. 2 x new systems in a 50 user site compared to 50 x 3 year
warranty - you do the math :-)

Rob.

I have the impression (correct me if I am wrong) that the component
qulaity and the build quality of a Dell is pretty decent. Sure it is

The build quality is probably unmatched. Laptops are a bit less reliable but
then again, they always are...

Rob.

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 10:04:54 GMT, "Rob Nicholson"
wrote:

chosen to buy in some Dell PCs for the office. One reason might be that I
am, as you say, an idiot. The other reason might be that the Dells do the
job I need for the office, and they cost 20% less to buy in ready-built
than the price at which I can buy the parts.

20%? Yes, that probably sounds about right. We've only built one custom PC
at work (a dual Athlon XP system) and we've had no end of problems with it -
it's always got the top off :-) The Dell PCs & servers just sit there and
work 24/7.

This is the thing with Dell compareed to many self builds. Dell go for
reasonable quality components that are not pushing too hard but are
stable. They have checked for compatibility so you known there most
likley won't be odd conflicts (at least at the driver release you
get).

How many people self build a server with a hot swap SCSI array and hot
swap redundant power supplies? Thats the sort of area where Dell is
good..
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