Advice needed - buying a new PC

[Calico_Jack73]

For example a Power Supply unit (PSU) on a friends Dell went bad. He had to buy a special Dell only PSU because they use the non-universal special Dell only kind. This special PSU, (which really isn't special at all, it just has some of the pins on the plugs moved around to match the pins of a Dell motherboard), cost him $100 plus S+H, where as a normal PSU of the same type probably would have been $20 plus S+H. And on top of that, when he was trying to just replace this simple part the Dell people were trying to pitch sales to him! It's not a huge deal but just saying.

I also had to replace my PSU on my Dell. Not because it went bad but because I got a AGP card that needed more power. I found out about the propietary PSU but the guy at Microcenter helped me out. I bought a little tool called a "Nibbler" which I used to cut out part of the sheet metal which would have covered the socket in the generic PSU. It worked like a charm and is still working.

Can't say I ever ran into a problem with pins on the motherboard. There is an adapter that will make an ATX PSU work on a Dell motherboard. You can find info here: Adapter for Dell Power Supply. This problem was also with older Dells, the newer ones don't have this problem.

Don't listen when people say that Dell memory is proprietary. I upgraded my system with memory I bought from Crucial and had no problem at all.

 

[Merkuri]

There is an adapter that will make an ATX PSU work on a Dell motherboard. You can find info here: Adapter for Dell Power Supply.

Damn, I wish I knew about that back when I had my dell PC. Probably would've saved me $50.

 

[azhrei_fje]

It sounds like you plan to keep the machine for awhile. I don't.

I buy the cheapest laptop I can get that will boot a live CD of Kubuntu and I use for a year or two, then buy another one.

I always have fairly recent hardware to use and a spare laptop in a crunch. And I get a kick out of returning the Windows DVDs and asking for my money back from the retailer. That reduces the price of the unit even more.

Since I am self-employed I can write-off my taxes any computer purchases. I particularly like the $500 special bundles. I pay $700 (deduct that on my taxes) then file the rebate paperwork. So the unit cost $500 minus the tax break amount of about $200. Then I donate the monitor and printer that I'm never going to use anyway and take another tax break (charitable contribution). I can get a nice machine for about $100 or so.

 

[Graybeard]

HI,

I would not recommend Dell mostly due to customer service issues. I used to sell computers at a large office supply store. A lot of customers would come in looking for replacement parts for their Dell and we would (unfortunately) have to tell them to contact Dell. They often would tell us they tried and had lots of difficulties. I have also read many complaints about Dell's customer service on the internet.

As others have suggested, try a local shop that has been around for awhile. Check with the local BBB to see if there are any complaints filed against them before you do any business with them though. Just because a shop has been around a long time doesn't mean they are any good. I know one of my local computer shops has been in business for about 20 years but any local computer tech will tell you that they are not a good shop to deal with.

Talk to any computer repair people in your area (Geek Squad, etc.). They will tell you what brands/shops they recommend. Some of them even do computer repair on their own time (against company policy usually).

If you really want to buy a name brand, try an HP. They are easy to upgrade and parts cane be purchased anywhere. Their customer service is better than other name brands (but still not as good as IBM or Apple).

Just my 2 cents worth.

Graybeard

 

[Calico_Jack73]

If you really want to buy a name brand, try an HP.

HP does NOT include an OS CD with your new machine. If you want to rebuild your system then you've got to burn your own recovery DVD (and to go with a single DVD you have to use a Dual Layer DVD). That's right... I said DVD because the recovery includes all of the Trialware that HP installed on your system at delivery and it won't fit on a single CD. If you plan on wiping out your system and rebuilding it with a free OS like one of the various Linux builds then this isn't a problem... but if you want to use the Windows license that comes with your machine then this is a problem if you ever need/want to rebuild your machine. At least Dell always gave me a clean Windows OS Install CD and a SEPARATE CD with all of the drivers and trialware.

 

[Thanee]

Don't these prebuild systems typically have recovery CDs (or DVDs) these days?

Or at least a recovery partition on the hard drive?

Bye
Thanee

 

[Merkuri]

Don't these prebuild systems typically have recovery CDs (or DVDs) these days?

Or at least a recovery partition on the hard drive?

Actually, I think the trend is that they won't give you any physical CDs or DVDs anymore. They'll either have a recovery partition on the hard drive (which I think is risky - what happens if the hard drive gets ruined?) or they'll give you the software already on the drive to burn your own recovery DVDs. This was probably done to save money on physical disks.

 

[Graybeard]

Very few (if any) will give you recovery discs anymore. They expect the user to create them after they get the machine home and set up. In my experience, the average computer user doesn't know about this and runs into trouble when their hard drive dies and they are stuck buying the recovery discs from the manufacturer. You are right about HP not giving you the Windows CD/DVD though. I have an HP desktop and a Gateway laptop. Neither came with Windows discs. Luckily I made the recovery discs for my desktop when I set it up. After nearly 6 years, the hard drive died. Fortunately, I had my important files (pictures, music, documents) backed up on an external hard drive. It was easy enough to reinstall everything. After that, I uninstalled a lot of the crap that came with the system just like I did years ago when I first bought it.

My previous desktop was a custom built one. A friend of mine owned his own shop. It cost a lot more than a pre-built unit but it had the components I wanted and when something wasn't working right, I brought it back to him for repair. Unfortunately, he couldn't compete on price with the large manufacturers and went out of business. The average user was more interested in a low price than quality.

 

[Thanee]

Actually, I think the trend is that they won't give you any physical CDs or DVDs anymore. They'll either have a recovery partition on the hard drive (which I think is risky - what happens if the hard drive gets ruined?) ...

Yep, that's really silly, unless you ...

... or they'll give you the software already on the drive to burn your own recovery DVDs.

... can burn it on a DVD at least to make your own.

This was probably done to save money on physical disks.

It's not like these things cost much, but yeah...

Quite possible, the only PC I ever bought with a preinstalled OS was a notebook.

Bye
Thanee

 

[drothgery]

I had three Dell desktops (purchased in 1995, 2000, and 2003), and never had any problems with any of them. The Dell laptop I got in late 2006 had a video card that fried early this year, had oddball problems since it got back to mostly working state after two trips to the repair depot, and at this point I think I need a reinstall to see if it's salvageable. Since I'm getting a new laptop for work, I've given up and ordered a new desktop.