New Dell desk-top computer.

[DeadPoolX 9]

i hate dell..

had a friend who got a 5k comp there and their support is just plain horrible

That's unusual. One thing Dell has always been noted for is their excellent customer service. I suppose that's gone downhill over time (I wouldn't know as I haven't bought a Dell since my Pentium II 266MHz sometime around 1997). I have some good memories of that machine. I got my first 3D video card then -- the Diamond Monster 3D, which utilized a 3DFX Voodoo1 chipset. To give you an idea of how "powerful" those cards were back then, it had all of four megabytes of RAM and was PCI; not AGP or PCI-E.

XP is an average operating system and being canned June. The biggest complaints about Vista are because of people trying to use 5 year old hardware with a new operating system designed for the latest hardware. My Vista ultimate 64-bit machine kicks ### over my XP PC. Using it for over a year now..

I have a new machine running Vista and the operating system for a while refused to play nice with the video card, until the most recent SP update. Vista was a royal pain in the butt. I have no idea what the hell they were thinking. It's like they decided to get the worst of both worlds: reduced backwards compatibility and still very bloated.

That said, I agree that XP might not be the way to go since MS is discontinuing support.

The vast majority of difficulties people are facing with Vista right now are due to a lack of overall driver support. That's the trouble. The OS doesn't work by magic; it needs drivers to run efficiently and effectively. Previous operating systems had the same problems as well. I clearly remember XP being quite a difficult OS for many in its early days and let's not forget that Win98 had so many bugs they had to release an "updated version" called Windows98 Second Edition.

WinXP won't be discontinued for some time yet. Microsoft knows lots of people still use it and probably won't be switching for a while yet. Support may slow down, but it won't completely disappear. Not for a while, anyway. Support for Win95, for instance, lasted for years beyond its initial lifespan, as did support for Win98SE and Win2K (other lesser used operating systems, such as WinNT and WinME, died off sooner).

As I've said over and over, I truly believe Vista will become a very capable and fully functional operating system in due time. Unfortunately, once that happens, Microsoft will release a new OS and expect everyone to use that, thereby restarting the entire cycle.

[Ban Hammer 13,334]

i hate dell..

had a friend who got a 5k comp there and their support is just plain horrible

That's unusual. One thing Dell has always been noted for is their excellent customer service. I suppose that's gone downhill over time (I wouldn't know as I haven't bought a Dell since my Pentium II 266MHz sometime around 1997). I have some good memories of that machine. I got my first 3D video card then -- the Diamond Monster 3D, which utilized a 3DFX Voodoo1 chipset. To give you an idea of how "powerful" those cards were back then, it had all of four megabytes of RAM and was PCI; not AGP or PCI-E.

dell tech support blows. i bought a dell for my dad, which included extended on-site warranty and tech support. they refused to send someone out to work on the computer, dad got it fixed at a local shop for $50.

neighbor had a similar situation, they sent out a tech only after she took the computer to a local dell authorized repair center and they told dell the machine had issues. all the tech did was slap in a new hd and memory and he was gone in 10 min. didn't stick around to insure the new parts worked correctly nor assisted with setup.

[DeadPoolX 9]

i hate dell..

had a friend who got a 5k comp there and their support is just plain horrible

That's unusual. One thing Dell has always been noted for is their excellent customer service. I suppose that's gone downhill over time (I wouldn't know as I haven't bought a Dell since my Pentium II 266MHz sometime around 1997). I have some good memories of that machine. I got my first 3D video card then -- the Diamond Monster 3D, which utilized a 3DFX Voodoo1 chipset. To give you an idea of how "powerful" those cards were back then, it had all of four megabytes of RAM and was PCI; not AGP or PCI-E.

dell tech support blows. i bought a dell for my dad, which included extended on-site warranty and tech support. they refused to send someone out to work on the computer, dad got it fixed at a local shop for $50.

neighbor had a similar situation, they sent out a tech only after she took the computer to a local dell authorized repair center and they told dell the machine had issues. all the tech did was slap in a new hd and memory and he was gone in 10 min. didn't stick around to insure the new parts worked correctly nor assisted with setup.

I suppose you didn't bother reading the part where I wrote "I suppose Dell tech support gone downhill overtime" and that I "haven't owned a Dell machine in over ten years," right? It's not too difficult to believe that Dell's customer service and tech support departments were better back then -- or at least, they were when I used them. Your experiences may differ, of course.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

i hate dell..

had a friend who got a 5k comp there and their support is just plain horrible

That's unusual. One thing Dell has always been noted for is their excellent customer service. I suppose that's gone downhill over time (I wouldn't know as I haven't bought a Dell since my Pentium II 266MHz sometime around 1997). I have some good memories of that machine. I got my first 3D video card then -- the Diamond Monster 3D, which utilized a 3DFX Voodoo1 chipset. To give you an idea of how "powerful" those cards were back then, it had all of four megabytes of RAM and was PCI; not AGP or PCI-E.

dell tech support blows. i bought a dell for my dad, which included extended on-site warranty and tech support. they refused to send someone out to work on the computer, dad got it fixed at a local shop for $50.

neighbor had a similar situation, they sent out a tech only after she took the computer to a local dell authorized repair center and they told dell the machine had issues. all the tech did was slap in a new hd and memory and he was gone in 10 min. didn't stick around to insure the new parts worked correctly nor assisted with setup.

I suppose you didn't bother reading the part where I wrote "I suppose Dell tech support gone downhill overtime" and that I "haven't owned a Dell machine in over ten years," right? It's not too difficult to believe that Dell's customer service and tech support departments were better back then -- or at least, they were when I used them. Your experiences may differ, of course.

From what I understand Dell's Tech/Customer support is a lot better than it was 10 years ago ("Dell Hell" was the popular term for it back then) though even then I don't think they were significantly worse than any of the other major manufacturers (Gateway was my particular hell) though the level of service you get depends largely on the kind warranty you buy when you get the machine. Used to be that you would only get a basic 1 year back to base warranty - these days you can extend that up to 3 years and get coverage for in-home service as well as accidental damage coverage. All this of course isn't free - but it can be worth it...

A few weeks back I had an unexplained error message appear on startup - the sort of annoying pop-up message that a few years ago you'd have to live with - short of reinstalling Windows. I was able to log into my account on the dell website and IM an IT support guy who was able to remote control my machine and fix the problem. Hard to fault that.

One thing that hasn't changed among the major vendors is that if your machine breaks, or if part of it breaks for whatever reason and you cash in your warranty to get a replacement part/system the item you get won't be brand new - it'll be factory reconditioned. Microsoft got a lot of flak for that with the first run of the Xbox 360 which had that overheating problem. This seems to be a standard industry practice.

I used to think that building your own PC was the way to go, and you can save a lot of money that way but you're on your own as far as Tech Support goes.

Edited May 6, 2008 by Number 6

[Caladan 19]

It may indeed be just driver support that causes most of the problems with Visa, but more than a year after the OS has been released, that's not an excuse, especially since I didn't upgrade an old system & drivers to Vista, but had purchased a new one.

MS is still projecting discontinuing primary support for XP in 2009. That's moved back from the end of June this summer.

[Ban Hammer 13,334]

i hate dell..

had a friend who got a 5k comp there and their support is just plain horrible

That's unusual. One thing Dell has always been noted for is their excellent customer service. I suppose that's gone downhill over time (I wouldn't know as I haven't bought a Dell since my Pentium II 266MHz sometime around 1997). I have some good memories of that machine. I got my first 3D video card then -- the Diamond Monster 3D, which utilized a 3DFX Voodoo1 chipset. To give you an idea of how "powerful" those cards were back then, it had all of four megabytes of RAM and was PCI; not AGP or PCI-E.

dell tech support blows. i bought a dell for my dad, which included extended on-site warranty and tech support. they refused to send someone out to work on the computer, dad got it fixed at a local shop for $50.

neighbor had a similar situation, they sent out a tech only after she took the computer to a local dell authorized repair center and they told dell the machine had issues. all the tech did was slap in a new hd and memory and he was gone in 10 min. didn't stick around to insure the new parts worked correctly nor assisted with setup.

I suppose you didn't bother reading the part where I wrote "I suppose Dell tech support gone downhill overtime" and that I "haven't owned a Dell machine in over ten years," right? It's not too difficult to believe that Dell's customer service and tech support departments were better back then -- or at least, they were when I used them. Your experiences may differ, of course.

yes, i did. i was giving my recent experience with dell tech support.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

i hate dell..

had a friend who got a 5k comp there and their support is just plain horrible

That's unusual. One thing Dell has always been noted for is their excellent customer service. I suppose that's gone downhill over time (I wouldn't know as I haven't bought a Dell since my Pentium II 266MHz sometime around 1997). I have some good memories of that machine. I got my first 3D video card then -- the Diamond Monster 3D, which utilized a 3DFX Voodoo1 chipset. To give you an idea of how "powerful" those cards were back then, it had all of four megabytes of RAM and was PCI; not AGP or PCI-E.

dell tech support blows. i bought a dell for my dad, which included extended on-site warranty and tech support. they refused to send someone out to work on the computer, dad got it fixed at a local shop for $50.

neighbor had a similar situation, they sent out a tech only after she took the computer to a local dell authorized repair center and they told dell the machine had issues. all the tech did was slap in a new hd and memory and he was gone in 10 min. didn't stick around to insure the new parts worked correctly nor assisted with setup.

I suppose you didn't bother reading the part where I wrote "I suppose Dell tech support gone downhill overtime" and that I "haven't owned a Dell machine in over ten years," right? It's not too difficult to believe that Dell's customer service and tech support departments were better back then -- or at least, they were when I used them. Your experiences may differ, of course.

yes, i did. i was giving my recent experience with dell tech support.

Dell tech support was awesome with my old Inspiron XPS laptop. They sent a tech out immediately when the HD crashed, inside of 48 hours and back up and running with a new one installed. Then it appeared that the motherboard's integrated graphics were dying, new one was sent, but I managed to work out the real issue on my own after some patient Dell online help. And finally, days before my warranty expired, they sent me a new keyboard for the thing.

They went downhill for a while, but when you get their top of the line computers, you tend to have fewer problems, and with XPS systems, the support is the best. Every contact I had with Dell regarding the old laptop was very friendly and they were helpful and stuck behind the product even though all of my issues cropped up nearly four years after purchase.

[Niels Bohr 72]

A computer savvy person don't need tech support!

I see everyday people buying high-end hardware and only uses about 10% of its resources. Hey, it's great for me because it makes them cheaper to buy! Thank you!

[Niels Bohr 72]

A computer savvy person don't need tech support!

I see everyday people buying high-end hardware and only uses about 10% of its resources. Hey, it's great for me because it makes them cheaper to buy! Thank you!

Just advice. If you own a 64 bit processor, I do recommend that you use the 64-bit Vista. XP could only take advantage of 4gb max of memory because 2^32 bits is about ~4GB. In other words, realistically, if you have 8GB, you will still be only using 4GB. However, with Vista 64-bit it can let you use up to 18,444 Pentabytes or 18,444,000,000 GB. AMAZING! Hardware potential of the 64-bit feature is tremendous. Technically, the memory chipset is capable of taking over a few gigabytes due to hardware limitations with other I/O devices.

No paging with VISTA if you have 8GB of RAM. Paging makes your machine run slower by substiting hard drives (virtual memory) for the lack of memory. You can turn off paging. Most software will still page eventhough you have over 8GB, such as Adobe Photoshop. The limit for max memory that Photoshop CS is 4GB. Yes, software do have max memory limit if you want to run page-free mode. But, it will make your machine super fast!

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Dell tech support was awesome with my old Inspiron XPS laptop. They sent a tech out immediately when the HD crashed, inside of 48 hours and back up and running with a new one installed. Then it appeared that the motherboard's integrated graphics were dying, new one was sent, but I managed to work out the real issue on my own after some patient Dell online help. And finally, days before my warranty expired, they sent me a new keyboard for the thing.

They went downhill for a while, but when you get their top of the line computers, you tend to have fewer problems, and with XPS systems, the support is the best. Every contact I had with Dell regarding the old laptop was very friendly and they were helpful and stuck behind the product even though all of my issues cropped up nearly four years after purchase.

I had my old Dell laptop for 4 years before it gave up the ghost - ended up overheating, a problem that plagued that particular model. No way they could fix it - motherboard was toast.

Had my desktop for about 6 months - no complaints so far.

[William33 110]

Damn, this thread got buried on page 9 in less than 8 days, given the flood of political threads....

Anyway, all XPS 420 components have arrived as of today (tower, monitor, speakers, keyboard/mouse and printer).

Having marveled over the items for a few hours (modeling on the DR room table), I have a question about the OS.

Why did I not receive an "original copy" of Windows Vista?

Instead, I got an imaged disk of the load from Dell....What up with that?

Anyway, I will get the new computer installed tomorrow and report the expected good results.

Thanks for any advice.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Damn, this thread got buried on page 9 in less than 8 days, given the flood of political threads....

Anyway, all XPS 420 components have arrived as of today (tower, monitor, speakers, keyboard/mouse and printer).

Having marveled over the items for a few hours (modeling on the DR room table), I have a question about the OS.

Why did I not receive an "original copy" of Windows Vista?

Instead, I got an imaged disk of the load from Dell....What up with that?

Anyway, I will get the new computer installed tomorrow and report the expected good results.

Thanks for any advice.

Its the OEM version. It is the full program though.

[William33 110]

BTW, I got this e-mail before the XPS arrived:

We hope that you are enjoying your new XPS system. As an XPS owner, you now have access to Dell's XPS first -class service. To help ensure that you receive the best possible support with your XPS, we would like to share some information about your system and how to best contact us. Please print out this information and keep it handy as it is the key to accessing your XPS first-class service.

Not sure what this means exactly, but hopefully better customer service than has been reported here.

[yogib37 3]

i hate dell..

had a friend who got a 5k comp there and their support is just plain horrible

That's unusual. One thing Dell has always been noted for is their excellent customer service. I suppose that's gone downhill over time (I wouldn't know as I haven't bought a Dell since my Pentium II 266MHz sometime around 1997). I have some good memories of that machine. I got my first 3D video card then -- the Diamond Monster 3D, which utilized a 3DFX Voodoo1 chipset. To give you an idea of how "powerful" those cards were back then, it had all of four megabytes of RAM and was PCI; not AGP or PCI-E.

dell tech support blows. i bought a dell for my dad, which included extended on-site warranty and tech support. they refused to send someone out to work on the computer, dad got it fixed at a local shop for $50.

neighbor had a similar situation, they sent out a tech only after she took the computer to a local dell authorized repair center and they told dell the machine had issues. all the tech did was slap in a new hd and memory and he was gone in 10 min. didn't stick around to insure the new parts worked correctly nor assisted with setup.

I suppose you didn't bother reading the part where I wrote "I suppose Dell tech support gone downhill overtime" and that I "haven't owned a Dell machine in over ten years," right? It's not too difficult to believe that Dell's customer service and tech support departments were better back then -- or at least, they were when I used them. Your experiences may differ, of course.

From what I understand Dell's Tech/Customer support is a lot better than it was 10 years ago ("Dell Hell" was the popular term for it back then) though even then I don't think they were significantly worse than any of the other major manufacturers (Gateway was my particular hell) though the level of service you get depends largely on the kind warranty you buy when you get the machine. Used to be that you would only get a basic 1 year back to base warranty - these days you can extend that up to 3 years and get coverage for in-home service as well as accidental damage coverage. All this of course isn't free - but it can be worth it...

A few weeks back I had an unexplained error message appear on startup - the sort of annoying pop-up message that a few years ago you'd have to live with - short of reinstalling Windows. I was able to log into my account on the dell website and IM an IT support guy who was able to remote control my machine and fix the problem. Hard to fault that.

One thing that hasn't changed among the major vendors is that if your machine breaks, or if part of it breaks for whatever reason and you cash in your warranty to get a replacement part/system the item you get won't be brand new - it'll be factory reconditioned. Microsoft got a lot of flak for that with the first run of the Xbox 360 which had that overheating problem. This seems to be a standard industry practice.

I used to think that building your own PC was the way to go, and you can save a lot of money that way but you're on your own as far as Tech Support goes.

Yes that is true that you get factory reconditioned part I hate that I buy brand new computer or what ever and it breaks they ship a factory reconditioned. Damm I bought new I want new replacement. Lexmark actuly sent me a brand new printer since mine was DOA.

also with Dell I had a video card go bad and they sent a reconditioned one, damm thing craped out in 20 mins so I called up dell and talked to someone at dell, I demanded a brand new Video card. I put it in when I got it, and I had no problems with it since

Yogi

[ready4ONE 5,400]

BTW, I got this e-mail before the XPS arrived:

We hope that you are enjoying your new XPS system. As an XPS owner, you now have access to Dell's XPS first -class service. To help ensure that you receive the best possible support with your XPS, we would like to share some information about your system and how to best contact us. Please print out this information and keep it handy as it is the key to accessing your XPS first-class service.

Not sure what this means exactly, but hopefully better customer service than has been reported here.

It means they will be on call for any troubles you may have, and also you will get in home service if there is a hardware issue in need of repair. Dell stands behind their XPS systems the best! Dell skimped a bit on customer service a few years back, and when it started costing them business they moved back to their old solid support.

You won't really need them, just a beer or two to get over the shock of Vista for the next week to ten days! You will figure your way around Vista and have a seriously sweet computer in no time!

Congrats!