Dell Support Services

Originally Posted by Law

I was thinking more of the "My PC won't boot up to send the e-mail!" problem.

Ah I see... I have a Skype-in landline that pretends I'm based in Manchester. Don't mind giving it out to folks, just don't want to post it on a public forum

It's hardwired to my office desk & home phone, and diverts to my personal mobile & my office mobile if I don't pick up. Office PC, home PC & laptop all have Skype installed, hence my reluctance to get sales/useless phone calls at 3am.

[northwind]

I just get my brother to do it

In my experience, if the computer lasts for one month without anything going wrong, it will last for ages.
I think those long warranties are a rib. I just got a new laptop from Dell and didn't get the long warranties.

I'm on my second Dell laptop, had my first one for 4 years never had a single thing go wrong (apart from the virus it caught which I can't really blame Dell for, but I will blame Norton for).

I downgraded the support on my new one to 1 yr collect & return.

I've bought 2 dell pc's. Both have had the lowest form of warranties because well there's only so much taht can go wrong with a pc. Software wise, I can sort it (jsut reinstall everything as I back stuff up anyway) or if something internal 'goes' it's cheaper to actually buy the part and fit it yourself than pay for the 3 year warranty.

Dells online ordering system is ace though. If you fancy going out for a system, FIND A PROMOTIONAL CODE. I used the 10% off promotional code which I found on the web and THEN found the mcdonalds employee's webpage which gives a further 7% off.

And at the time it was Free delivery, free upgrade to 19" tft monitor. I got a GOOD computer at a really low price.

[northwind]

When buying from Dell, haggle. No, really, it works- choose your system from the website, the phone staff are useless for technical stuff, then phone them up and order the same thing. They'll give you a price, say thanks, I've got to speak to Evesham and Mesh but that's not a bad price.

They'll then drop the price to try and get you to buy there and then. Refuse, and they'll very likely give you a reference number to take the system at that price, and their own phone number to complete the sale so they get the commission.

THEN, phone back, do it again, and at the end say "Ah, well, X offered me it at X price, I'll phone them back." "I can do you that price too" "X did the hard work though, only fair that she gets the sale" "OK, I'll take £25 off.

This just shouldn't work... But it saved me over £100 and got me a free sound card upgrade to boot- on top of a price that was already better by far than the competition and had a free upgrade to a 19" monitor and better processor.

Dont buy dell.

Get a toshiba! I have one, some of my freinds have them too. Those that have had Dell laptops have never been greatly impressed.

Matt

[northwind]

Yeah, but price for price you can't compare Dell with Tosh- they make far better kit, but you pay for it.

Originally Posted by northwind

I'd invalidated much of mine after 2 days anyway by replacing bits. And you're unlikely to want to leave most Dells standard for 3 years, I'll tell you that...

Can you leave anything alone? that paint job wasnt restricted just to the bike was it

Ive not had a problem with Dell either at home which was a loooong time ago or business really.

For prices they are hard to beat since they are soo big, 1 year should be enough as long as you treat the laptop ok, if something like a hard drive goes you can easily get another from a pc website.

[northwind]

Originally Posted by falc

Can you leave anything alone?

Short answer, no But especially with Dell's daftly undersized hard drives and the poor video cards they put in the more budget systems, chopping bits around can give you real benefits- and they charge far over the odds for upgrades. It would have cost more to go from 60 to 120gb on my harddrive than it did to get a whole seperate 250gb sata 2 drive, that's just obviously milking the prices.