I have a Dell Dimension at home and a Latitude C810 at work, and I love both. I've been in deskside PC support for about five years now and I wouldn't have anything but a Dell PC, or a Dell or IBM laptop. I used to build my own, but I've found that 1) I don't want to take my work home and make my home PC into a work in progress and 2) a warranty is like a warm blanket on a cold night. Hardware is so cheap now! I've worked on every major brand on the side, too.

Now, who is surprised that I am a Dell Certififed Hardware Technician?

 

I work with a Compaq and XP. Plan for the future a laptop with xp and wireless lan.....

Jens

 

i have a soyo motherboard which allows a raid set up. by meaning raid it is a way to hook up more then 2 hard drives. what you can do is first buy 4 hard drives. i choose the 60 gig drives, i wanted mass storage since i am always downloading movies and star trek voyager epsiodes, and i wanted to save them so when i burn them all i can burn them in order they were released. well a raid system lets you hook up all the hard drives togather, so the pc sees them as one driver. so when you install stuff it uses the drives as one so pieces go here and pieces go there and so on, it makes booting a program up almost instantly. ever sit and wait for a program to start up ? well i usually dont have to wait. plus having 240 gigs of hard drive space allows pretty much anything you want. although i do plan on upgrading it next year and putting in 4 120 gig drives.

 

MAC all the way!!!!!

 

MAC eh? arn't those the one that almost every high school has? I know ours did and I cussed them daily and some days hourly. I'll stick with my DELL. Hey. Didn't the "dude your getting a Dell" kid get arrested for pulling weeds out of ditches?, or somethin like it.

 

Mac, HAH!
Built mine myself. Bought everthing online and slapped it together. Only problem I ever had was a bad AGI slot from installing a card with too much force.
PII 233mhz
Abit motherboard
The rest is no-name stuff and "borrowed" software

 

i have a compaq presario,7360, and i like it a lot, its got a lot of memory, its fast has a cd burner, and a scanner, web cam and a new printer to with it, and it all works great, dont think i owuld buy any other one.

 

i just spent 4 hours rebooting a compaq presario 5000, friend of mine bought it and when he tried to upgrade it, it crashed bad. i have always had bad luck working on them, but it sounds like you got a good one, or maybe just the ones i work on have a problem between the keyboard and the chair or have a ID 10 T error, which is usually caused by the user ID 10 T = ID10T or IDIOT error

 

I despise Dell.

I have a small company that markets mostly to small businesses though I obviously can do consumer pc's for friends and what not.

Getting a computer built to exactly what you NEED and what you can AFFORD is wonderful.

I have several machines in house including the one I have been trouble shooting for longer then I care to admit, I sent in the motherboard convinced that was the problem and the RMA dept. sent it back saying its working, I just tested again still no good.

Anyway

Current PC:

My brand (Fast Computers) P4 3.0/800MHZ FSB 2x512OCZ DDR400



blah blah I wont bore you.

My servers an old AMD T-BIRD 1.0GHZ (5 workstations using it as a file server waste of money to go up to a dual xeon "real server")

All the other computers in my house are AMD's, they are all 1ghz or less. No one else needs a fast computer and can afford it. So they dont get it.


Small shops will give you the best deal if you become friends, I hate how impersonal big companies like dell are.

If you have problems would you rather talk to a 10$/hour guy doing tech support reading out of a book who could be in school majoring in physical ed.

Or would you rather talk to the owner who relies on your money to eat?


My $0.02.

Chado


ps. Laptops can be bought in "white box" format as well. You dont HAVE to buy a dell laptop, or even a Fujitsu or Toshiba for that matter.

TTX is a brand I'm currently reviewing and may carry. Custom built laptops with a 3 day turnaround.

Chado

 

Have compaq computer, Their tech support is a bunch of crap too, 5$ for 3 days or somthing like that. I think if I buy a computer from you, then you better %^&$ well help me out with it when somthing goes wrong with it, and not just tell me i need to give you more money for help. Thats crappy customer service, and half there people there couldnt speak english. This computer crashes, freezes, and skips. I hate this computer. I think dells customer serviece from what i hear seems to be better than compaqs. But i'd rather talk to someone who has their own shop, rather than talking to someone over the phone.

 

No Compaq or HP. I have had Gateways before and I use a Dell laptop. My desktop is hand built by yours truly. It's my work in progress.

 

Started messing around in 82 with the Atari 400. (Wow, tape drives and you better learn basic.) Still have it and my first 8088 up in the attic someplace. Been building my own and upgrading ever since - always about 1 1/2 years behind the current processor - I'm cheap. Always been PC, except for school, years ago.

I was at the store the other night with one of the kids and we played with a new Mac. I was impressed. The OS seemed to make sense. The layout of the desktop and how things worked gave the impression that effort was put into it. (Don't think Windows has made me feel that way since the really basic 3.0- I think anyone that's been on the internet in DOS felt the same way.) I liked, not only the speed, but how smooth apps seemed to run.

I doubt I'll change, but I don't put Macs down any more.

 

Desktop is HP Pavilion 763n, P4, 2.53 ghz, 80 gig ultra dma HD, 1 gig DDR SDRAM memory, 64 MB Nvidea GeForce4 graphics card W/TV out. 48 max. CD rom, DVD 200i writer. Running XP pro Logitec speakers w/ floor sub. Wanting 19 in. Flat panel.
Just got a HP all-in-one 6110 officejet so far so good.

Laptop is 5 year old Compac running XP home, on its last leg.

 

i wanting that dvd writer you got lol. thats next on my list, you should have went with the 128 meg g force 4, i got two of them wanna trade for the dvd writer ? lol

 

<!-- I'm a Sr. Tech Specilist for Dell. I work in the Nashville office which is right down the road from where we build all the machines. If you've ever called Dell for help, and they couldn't resolve the issue, it usually gets transfered over to me and my buddies who fix the problem.

At this point in my life, I've had just about every type of PC you can think of. I'm not bias from one brand to the other, but just like a quality machine. I have had personal experiences with each company, and here's my thoughts. My opinion on all the brands:

Dell - Great machine. When you buy a Dell, you're not just buying a collection of parts that is called a computer, you are buying customer and tech support services that have been award winning for 10 years running, with an unbelieveable 3-4 year onsite service contract. They use top notch parts. The only thing you have to worry about with a Dell is the onsite warranty, b/c it only covers hardware replacement. All software is 100% phone based with no local stores to bring it to. Another good point is the tech support is for the lifetime of the machine, and not for just how long the warranty last, and it's FREE. A bad point about Dell, is if you don't like it, you better return it within 30 days, otherwise they don't take it back.

Gateway: Good product, with local stores you can bring it to if it's messed up. Their tech support is really sloppy, and you may bring it in or call in 15 times before the problem is finally resolved. The replacement warranty is alright, but it's not a free tech support after the warranty runs out. Another good point about Gateway, is they offer it where you can trade the machine in for a newer one.

HomeMade - You can never go wrong with a home made machine, until you get the parts all home, put it together, and it's dead, and have to try and talk NewEgg or MWAVE into giving you an RMA, and at that point you have to pay for the shipping to get back to them, and then back to you for the new part. All of my previous machines before I worked at Dell were home made rigs.

Alienware - Way too expensive for what it is. Really bad technicial support. Go to alienware.com and build the top of the line AMD and P4 systems, then go to newegg and just get the parts, and the price comparison is rediculous. At least the other big brands are competitive with prices. If you get an Alienware, you have too much money for your own good. Fee based tech support.

Compaq: Actually pretty decent machines, as long as you take off their O/S, and put your own on, and don't plan on upgrading. I have an AMD K7 700mhz Compaq I've been running for 4 years and the only thing I did was upgrade the ram. Decent tech support, and customer service, but it's fee based tech support.

HP: Good machine, with a bad factory image of Windows, bad tech support, and bad driver updates to fix the bad image of Windows. It's a shame they bought out Compaq. Fee based tech support.

eMachines: Good machine if you need a "basic" computer to do homework on, and to get on the internet with. Can be slow even if it's a high speed machine. The good thing about eMachines, if they have a buy back program, where you can bring the machine in, and they'll trade it for a new one for mostly like $100-$300.

IBM: Good machines. Decent tech support for like a year, then you have to pay for tech support.

But, that's just my opinion. Not my opinion just b/c I work at Dell, but b/c I've owned them all, and that's just part of my experience with each machine. A lot of them died on me, and some of the companies were good about replacing the parts, and then others said no since the computers were under 30 days. I don't need tech support but I could call each one just to test the tech's they have working for them, and some of the companies like HP and Compaq wanted to charge me for their tech's to help me put back on the restore disc which is just a factory image that was on it at first. As being a Dell support guy, I support anything you throw at me, and it's lifetime of the machine.

If it persudes you any, I bought my mom a Dell before I even started working for Dell, and it was just from my personal experience with others. -->