<p>Are dells all that bad? Ive had my Dimension 8200 for almost 3 years, upgraded it a little and it still purrs like when i got it. I really see no problems with dells and in fact find that their quality is quite good.</p>
<p>Yeah I <3 Dells, Alienware is what i've had trouble with. Anyway, the price of the XPS Gen 2 rose recently. I thought prices should lower with time...sigh</p>
<p>Dells are fine, especially with price breaks. I've got a Dell, and in terms of hardware, it is great. The customer service, although often based in India, helped me everytime I had a problem, even with the obscure question of power supply interfaces on a specific out of production model that wasn't specified in the system's general and technical documentations. I wouldn't buy another one, I would build the pc from scratch, but if I were to buy from a manufacturer, Dell would be a strong contender (of course, I would compare all of the major manufacturers). Perhaps my only complaint about the system is that the motherboard settings are all locked, but you'll get that with most major manufacturers.</p>
<p>My daughter just finished her freshman year of college. Last day of classes was June 10, and she had two final papers due that day. Good thing she turned them in early, because her Dell laptop crashed on June 8. She lost everything. We were on the road to Chicago to pick her up when she called to let us know the computer had died. We got home on Sunday, June 12, placed a call to Dell, and went through an over-the-phone diagnostic that confirmed the hard drive was the problem. The laptop was 1 year, two weeks old. Two days later, a Dell repairman showed up at our house, spent five minutes replacing the hard drive, and went on his way. Daughter is up and running again (and at no charge). The repair was speedy, but I am a bit leery of Dells because this is the second Dell we've owned that has had a short-lived hard drive.</p>
<p>i simply replaced mine when i bought my new computer, im sure it saved me the hassle of hard drive failure, because it did happen before. other than that, ive never had any problems.</p>
<p>Hard drives fail commonly, as they are based on mechanical components. They are the most likely components in a PC to fail. It is not Dell's fault, it is just coincidence. That is why it is important to backup all data on any pc.</p>
<p>true true, just that there are certain hard drives more prone to fail than others. ive found that maxtor is one of the better ones, whereas western digital is mediocre.</p>
<p>It also depends on how you treat the computer. Hard drives are one of the most delicate components. Their life can be shortened not only by dropping but by even simply putting down the laptop on the desk casually. That 1 or 2 inches of drop can shorten its life.</p>
<p>Dell doesnt tend to use the best drives in their computers though which is why they are more apt to fail. Hence red06 escaping hte problem by immediately relacing the harddrive.</p>
<p>Hmmm, you're right that it might have been bad luck. One failed hard drive was in a Dell laptop, the other was in a Dell desktop. We have a third Dell, another desktop, that was faulty right out of the box (would not boot up). They wanted to send a repairman, but I told them I didn't want a brand new computer to be repaired and they sent a new one that worked fine.</p>