Shoutbox

I'm looking into buying a laptop, and I've been thinking about going with Dell. Does anyone personally own a dell that can give me some advice before I buy one? I own a Dell PC and it's perfect for my needs .

Well, I bought one for my sister back in May 2005, so my advice would not be good for you.

One thing I can tell you though, Dell gives out plenty of discount coupons, so you just have to be patient if you want a really good deal.
I remember I paid $1,000 for my sister's laptop while the laptop was valued $1,700.

Good luck.

Dell should be satisfactory -- especially if you go with the business oriented Lattitude series instead of the consumer oriented Inspirion, and pick something in the middle of the offered product range, not the bottom.

You may also want to consider Fujitsu and Lenovo.

hey,

well i own a dell inspiron 9400, i have 2GB of ram, 80GB hard drive, Intel dual core T7200 2.0 GHz processor, 17" screen, 256MB ati grapics card, Bluetooth, Wireless card, Xp media centre with upgrade to vista home preimum, macafee for 36 months, ect....


that cost me £976

It is very good, good build quality, sturdy, resonable design, good for multi-media purposes ect ect....

One thing i have noticed that if you get the XPS costing a fortune you get only a small amount extra, like if you chose the 9400 over the 6400 you dont get that much more for your money, so chose a cheaper one to start off with and upgrade it before you buy.

one thing i dislike is the fact i never got the ultra high res. glossy screen, i have seen it on other laptops and would highly reccomend it as it just makes it look much nicer. This is called truebright, or something along those lines.

The other thing to note is tat they are quite heavy and bulky.

you can add me on msn or WLM and i will happly show you all the 'ins and outs' of the laptop. Just send me a PM and i will give you my WLM adress.

Hope this helps

If you have any questions you would like to ask i am more than happy to answer them.

P.Toye

My Dell Inspiron has been fine for years, it was expensive at the time but it was top of the range. It's still good today.

The only problem is that the mute button above the keyboard has stopped working in the past week..

i got an inspiron, works simply great

I have a Dell Latitude D600..its perfect ..and it takes a beating,gets thrown in the boot of my car ...traveled with me back and forth to states upteen times..comes with me everywhere...
Owned a latitude before this one too...it still goes..only reason I have the newer model as I got it as a gift .
Its a great work comp,reliable and easy to use.
Only problem I have had is I had to get the battery replaced but DELL gave me one even though It wasn't under warranty..

.

if you want style as well as performance go for acer. If you want durability and don't care how big and thick the laptop is go for dell

quote:

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Originally posted by Nathan
if you want style as well as performance go for acer. If you want durability and don't care how big and thick the laptop is go for dell

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yeh, good point...or you could get a mesh laptop...

quote:

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Originally posted by RebelSean
I'm looking into buying a laptop, and I've been thinking about going with Dell. Does anyone personally own a dell that can give me some advice before I buy one? I own a Dell PC and it's perfect for my needs .

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First decide what your laptop should include and what the specs need to be.

Decide what is important to you: graphics, disk storage, cpu, connectivity, external ports, ... on what should the emphasize be on (eg: for what is your laptop going to be used the most and what is only secondary or nice-to-have-too).

Think about stuff like: do I need a serial RS232 port? Are 2 USB ports sufficient or do I need more? Can I do something with a PCMCIA port? Do I need a SVGA output? VGA port? Does it support dual view or only clone view? Do I need extra buttons to toggle the sound, start applications, etc? Do I need a webcam? Do I need a dedicated keypad? And even: what's the maximum wide my laptop can be, as there are laptops which are as big as your whole desktop... What is the max weight they can be (factor which is quite often forgotten). Does the touchpad have a seperate scroll area or not. Does the laptop have a touchstick (the small button like stick in the middle of the keyboard). Is the laptop going to travel with you all the time, or just sporadic... etc...

Second, decide in what price range you want to stay. Then you can look at several brands and compare their offers...

I would never buy a laptop just by brand, I would buy a laptop (or anything for that matter) depending on the specs...

Dell isn't bad. It also isn't uber-good. It is just yet another brand laptop. They have good laptops and shitty laptops, like any other brand. (though I find them usually bigger/bulkier than compareable brands; it's like they waste more space ).

Advantage for going for such brands as Dell, HP, etc is that those brands are highly commercial brands; each PC store has one on offer, so you could often find good deals in one shop or the other.

(then again, you can order any brand you like from anywhere in the world these days in almost any shop, it just takes a few days longer for a laptop to be ordered (within 3 days I had my Fijutsi laptop which isn't available in any shop and needed to be ordered directly from wherever they make them)).


With lots of searching and patients you should find the laptop you want with the specs you want in roughly the pricerange you want. But you need to be patient and look around a lot and compare a hell of a lot of specs and brands... unless you're lucky of course ... (It took me a few months to find the one I wanted)