[Welly Wu]

I will never ever buy a Dell computer for the rest of my life with my own hard earned money. We use Dells at New Jersey Institute of Technology and their stuff always fails and the support from Dell is horrible. I have had Dell Optiplex, Latitude, XPS, and Precision computers suddenly die left and right on campus and the only recourse was to either send it to the Computer Maintenance Facility for repairs or send it back to Dell for repairs or a refurbished replacement. Dell support is the worst and it seems that they hire incompetent fools to answer the telephone. If your Dell is out of warranty, then you are out of luck. Purchasing an extended warranty after the standard warranty expired does not result in the resolution of the problem if you called in an issue during the time gap either. Dell Inspiron and XPS notebook PCs are built like crap and they are highly prone to hardware failures. Dell Latitude notebook PCs are expensive, but they are durable and they will withstand a considerable amount of shock along with wear and tear over its lifetime. Dell Precision workstations are junk. They break down most often and they need the highest level of support to fix them. I see many Dell Precision desktop workstations that are in the Computer Maintenance Facility all of the time. Dell Precision mobile workstations are rugged and reliable though, but they are very expensive.
 
For those of you that are considering the purchase of a new computer, I urge you to avoid buying Dell at all costs unless your school or work requires you to use one.
 
ASUS, Panasonic, and Toshiba along with Lenovo build the most reliable and dependable computers on the market for many different types of customers in my research and experience.

 

[Welly Wu]

A friend of mine bought a new Dell XPS 15 and the forward hinge cracked on him. He has to pay for return shipping via UPS to get the notebook PC either repaired or he will be sent a refurbished model as a replacement. He just received it on January 20th, 2011 and it already broke on him. Dell makes garbage products. He had to fight with customer service for 43 minutes to get an authorization number to ship it back. He is a pediatric physician in residence so he needs his new laptop to work and he does not have a lot of free time to waste.
 
I have a Dell Optiplex desktop PC and a Dell D830 notebook PC right now. They belong to two different professors at NJIT. After hours of troubleshooting with Dell support over the telephone, we determined that the motherboard died on both computers and they need to be replaced at a cost to the professors. NJIT will not pay to repair them even if they utilize the CMF service on campus because they have to buy the motherboards out of pocket.
 
I go back to work tomorrow and I am looking at at least another dozen Dell computers that are either dead or malfunctioning badly. We spend a fortune to buy these Dell computers on campus and they keep breaking down on us left and right.
 
My job keeps me busier than my course. I know more about how to repair Dell computers than C++ programming, Databases, or operating systems right now.

 

[ArmAndHammer]

I thinking building your own desktop is the best way to go. It is super easy and you get so much more for the money.
 
Laptop, I own a Lenovo and so far it has been really top notch. I have owned Dell's (desktop and laptop) too without issue so I can't really say anything bad about them.

 

[revolink24]

I thinking building your own desktop is the best way to go. It is super easy and you get so much more for the money.
 
Laptop, I own a Lenovo and so far it has been really top notch. I have owned Dell's (desktop and laptop) too without issue so I can't really say anything bad about them.

I agree. Home built desktops and Lenovos (especially Thinkpads) are awesome.

 

[Welly Wu]

I cannot build a desktop PC for personal usage because I need a notebook PC for NJIT. I have to work with Dell computers on campus because they are our sole computer vendor. Avoid them at all costs.

 

[balderon]

It is not my intent to be a Dell fanboy but I wanted to share my experience with Dell products. I am employed by a Fortune 500 company and I have not experienced the problems you have described. All of our desktop, laptop, and high-end (multi-cpu/core) servers are Dell and the failure rate is very low. I cannot speak for the entire enterprise but I've seen an occasional hard-drive or CPU power supply failure of the 150+ computers in my department. I don't know the age of the systems at NJIT but typically our desktop and laptop computers are replaced after 3-4 years, although we do have some computers that are much older and continue to be reliable. We have had 100% up time on the same servers over the last 6 years. In regards to the quality of Dell service, my company decided to have on-site service techs with a guaranteed response time of 3 hours. Of course the service techs are Dell qualified but not employed by Dell. Maybe there is a good reason for that!
 
I agree that the best return on your dollar is to build your own.

 

[zotjen]

You will hear horror stories regarding every computer manufacturer. None of them are perfect. Your school just seems to be unlucky regarding Dell. I've had a Dell for almost two years and have no problems with it. I have made some significant upgrades though (replacing the video card, adding a dedicated sound card, etc.). My brother had a Dell for over five years and it was still working fine when he decided to replace it. As far as building your own PC, the biggest advantage is that you get to choose your parts and customize it the way you want. There is no guarantee though that you won't have issues as parts can fail just as easily as they can on a pre-built PC. I've also heard of compatability issues where certain brands of components don't always play nice with certain motherboards.  

 

[fatcat28037]

I have three Dells in the house right now, a Laptop, a Desktop and a Netbook, They're all trouble free. I've had Dells at home for over ten years and aside from one failed HD I've had zero problems.

 

[dirkpitt45]

Dell's not that bad... I used a cheapo dell inspiron desktop for 3 years before I had enough money to build a pc. Worked great the entire time.
 
Almost all computer issues are user caused; and I too was a desktop support technician. Things don't just break, occasionally hdd's fail, file transfers are corrupted, outlook does dumb things, but most problems stem from users using software on the pc. Dell has no control over what people do to them, it's not their problem. The computers at NJIT aren't the user's, they're paid for by the institution (I assume). So the users don't care, its not theirs, it costs them nothing, and they have no incentive to take care of it. It was the same thing where I worked, except on a much larger scale. To them, it's a computer, if it breaks someone else gets to deal with it and they'll have it back in a few days; it's not their problem. Which is kinda the whole issue with the IT industry; something is always someone else's problem.
 
Though it sounds slightly different at NJIT, with the professor's having to pay for the motherboards. Which brings up another point, why are you troubleshooting with some Dell representative anyways? They're on a phone possibly thousands of kilometers away, of course they're gonna seem semi-useless; they don't have the pc in front of them. And of course they're gonna tell you the motherboard is dead, it's the most expensive part usually. You should switch out the ram, switch out the hdd, boot into a linux cd or some other bootable disc, run mem test, run a stinger, ect. I don't know how long you've worked there, but for me I had a general checklist of sorts (after a few months) to go through depending on the problem. We also never called the manufacturer (hp), if it was a hardware problem and under warranty then we just shipped out and let them deal with it. Out of warranty, then they (user) got a loaner laptop until a new or refurbished one was sent their way.  
 
Though I generally feel bad for the phone support people, it's hard to do. I also did that for a few months before switching to onsite/offsite desktop support. 
 
Not to mention there's probably wayy more Dell computers out there than other brands, so of course you're gonna see more of them in disarray. I don't think it's fair to slander an entire company on your experiences in a corporate environment. 

 

[Welly Wu]

Yeah, I am being hard on Dell. After working with them for a period of time, I just noticed that they tend to break and I am the one that has to fix the problem because it is my job. There is a big difference between their consumer and business portfolios. I rarely get a broken Dell Latitude or mobile Precision for repair. Their desktops and workstations are crap though. They are the ones that break down most frequently.
 
I still would not consider buying a Dell computer. Their customer and technical support are awful.
 
The biggest problem that I have with Dell is their reliability and durability. The same is true for Hewlett Packard. This is why I refuse to buy their products.
 
I can say for certain that I am glad that I bought my ASUS N61JV-X2 notebook PC. With the exception of Microsoft Windows 7 restart and shutdown problems that have yet to be resolved with the upcoming Service Pack 1 release, I have had no problems with my notebook PC.

 

[Welly Wu]

I do not have up to date tools or spare parts to do my former job as a Help Desk and Support Technician at New Jersey Institute of Technology.
 
The Computer Maintenance Facility has those tools and spare parts. However, they hire both undergraduate and graduate students that have no formal training or hold industry recognized credentials to do their job as Help Desk and Support Technicians. So, they wind up screwing up already faulty computers because they work without much supervision. Then, I would get e-mail messages from faculty and staff complaining that their "repaired" computers are broken or in worse condition than before they sent it to CMF.
 
I got sick and tired of this charade so I just stopped showing up to my job last week. I was only getting paid $9.50 USD per hour which is well below the industry average for Help Desk and Support Technicians. I got no benefits package. They made me work in excess of 20.00 hours per week which is not permissible given the fact that I was a Federal Work Study student.
 
This job is hard because you have to decipher what is going on with the person that is using the computer before you analyze the problems with the computer itself.
 
I will stand by my previous statements that Dell should be avoided at all costs. There are just too many quality control problems and their support options are terrible.
 
I have a friend of mine who bought a brand new Dell XPS 17 with all of the top of the line components. In less than one week, it overheated to the point that the circuitry was destroyed. Dell refuses to take it back and give her a full refund and they refuse to send her a refurbished unit as a replacement. She bought the optional 4 year onsite support contract and they still refuse to do anything more than take it in for further testing and repairs. Now, she is stuck with a big paperweight that overheats within 5 minutes to the point that it shuts itself down.
 
This is not atypical of Dell Computer Corporation. They engineer and manufacture crap nowadays. However, they are the second largest PC vendor in the industry so they can get away with it.

 

[MCC]

From my work as an intern at an IT consulting company I can assure you that HP is not any better. We sold millions a year in HP products to our customers and their business support was still impossible to work with. Non-willingness to honor the terms of the warranty, dropping off a part at a client without installing it despite assurances they would, etc. It's simply impossible to get through to them.
 
Everyone always tried to find ways out of calling/dealing with HP and the poor interns usually lost. 

 

[winma]

Quote:

From my work as an intern at an IT consulting company I can assure you that HP is not any better. We sold millions a year in HP products to our customers and their business support was still impossible to work with. Non-willingness to honor the terms of the warranty, dropping off a part at a client without installing it despite assurances they would, etc. It's simply impossible to get through to them.
 
Everyone always tried to find ways out of calling/dealing with HP and the poor interns usually lost. 

I have had bad experiences with hp also. 
Bought 2 laptops (DV2000, DV6000) and they crashed after some months of use. The problem: Overheating on the GPU, due to bad design. 
 
Now i use Gateway laptops, and i've been happy. 

 

[Welly Wu]

This is why I avoid Dell and Hewlett Packard like the plague. I know how bad their products really are and their support is worse.
 
I am happy that I started my thread in search for my current ASUS N61JV-X2 notebook PC because it has given me zero problems whatsoever. Now, I just wish that Microsoft would roll out their Service Pack 1 to fix my shutdown and restart problems along with Windows Explorer issues. Then, I will be golden. These fixes are sure to come in the near future.
 
I am running Skype, Microsoft Outlook 2010, Google Chrome, Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2010, VMWare Workstation 7.1.3, and Windows Internet Explorer 8 with 3.7 GB of SDRAM that is still freely available. I have zero hardware problems and most of my software applications have been stress tested to ensure maximum compatibility and performance. I am fully backed up with all my critical data through Microsoft Windows Backup, Acronis True Image Home 2011 Plus Pack, and Mozy Home Unlimited. Things are going smoothly.
 
I thought that my laptop would give out on me by now. ASUS makes rock solid products that are reliable, durable, and dependable. I highly recommend ASUS to friends and family members.

 

[Nebby]

Just voicing my experience as well...In the enterprise environment I've worked in, Dell machines are quite decent. There have been issues in the past (GX280, anyone?) but overall their failure rate isn't particularly high. One important point to mention is that standard Dell support is terrible. That first tier support tech will run you through a gauntlet of checklist questions before you're passed on to the next tier, and that's if you're lucky. If you're at Gold or Platinum it's a much better experience. At my workplace we're certified through Dell to order our own parts directly through their parts direct program, which saves a lot of hassle as well.
 
 

It is not my intent to be a Dell fanboy but I wanted to share my experience with Dell products. I am employed by a Fortune 500 company and I have not experienced the problems you have described. All of our desktop, laptop, and high-end (multi-cpu/core) servers are Dell and the failure rate is very low. I cannot speak for the entire enterprise but I've seen an occasional hard-drive or CPU power supply failure of the 150+ computers in my department. I don't know the age of the systems at NJIT but typically our desktop and laptop computers are replaced after 3-4 years, although we do have some computers that are much older and continue to be reliable. We have had 100% up time on the same servers over the last 6 years. In regards to the quality of Dell service, my company decided to have on-site service techs with a guaranteed response time of 3 hours. Of course the service techs are Dell qualified but not employed by Dell. Maybe there is a good reason for that!
 
I agree that the best return on your dollar is to build your own.