Subject: Re: [Shop-talk] New PC (was Dead PC)

From: Scott <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 09:11:41 -0400

Our office uses refurb Dells exclusively.

If you go that route, I cannot recommend enough that you buy the highest 
level of warranty they'll sell you--the one where a tech comes to you 
that day to fix whatever breaks. Do NOT get the 'depot' warranty where 
you ship the computer back to Dell each time it breaks (and it 
will--often), unless you also have a spare machine to use for the two 
weeks it'll be gone each time.

Dealing with Dells and Dell itself about the computers has made a 
lifetime Lenovo customer out of me. And I was a huge believer in refurb 
equipment and the idea that all p.c.s are created equal, no matter the 
name on the front.

On 8/20/2012 7:39 AM, Tim wrote:
> We've owned two dells. One new tower some years ago. It crapped out 
> less than a month after the warranty expired**. I also bought a 
> refurbed dell laptop off of evilbay for my oldest to use in college. 
> This one turned out to be almost too slow to be usable.
>
> **I have heard of this from more than just my experience.
>
> Hating dell computers
> tim
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 10:41 PM, Jim Stone wrote:
>
>> Well, based on what I have learned here and through my online 
>> research, I
>> don't think it will be worth the expense and effort to replace my 
>> motherboard.
>> However, I really don't want to spend much money on a new one right 
>> now, so I
>> am thinking about getting a used or refurbished one.  I'd like to 
>> keep it
>> under $200.  Ideally, I would like something at least as fast as what I
>> currently have (HP Pavilion 5150T, Intel Dual Core processor E5300, 
>> 4GB DR3 -
>> 1066MHZ SDRAM, 640GB SATA HD).  Also ideally, I would like to be able 
>> to just
>> move my current hard drive over to the new PC and have two internal hard
>> drives.  (I know I can get a SATA case, but I did say "ideally".) 
>> And, while
>> I am wishing, it would be nice to be able to move my memory cards 
>> over to the
>> new PC to increase it's power for free.  I would also like it to run 
>> Windows
>> 7, although I could probably be talked out of that if necessary.  (I 
>> may be
>> wrong about this, but I don't think I can transfer my current copy 
>> over.  I
>> bought my HP right before Win7 was released, and it came with an 
>> automatic
>> upgrade once the system was out.  As I recall, there was something in 
>> the
>> license that said it couldn't be transferred to another machine.  
>> But, I could
>> be wrong about that.)
>>
>> So, my first question is: does anyone have any recommendations for a 
>> good,
>> reputable place to buy a refurbished PC?  Beyond that, any 
>> recommendations on
>> a specific PC?  Following Wayne's advice, I have been looking at Dell
>> Precision 390's.  They seem to be at the upper end of my price range, 
>> but
>> something like this might work:
>>
>> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110935816819&fromMakeTrack 
>>
>> =true&ssPageName=VIP:watchlink:top:en
>>
>> Any thoughts on this one?
>>
>> http://joy-systems.store.buy.com/p/dell-optiplex-gx620-sff-3-0ghz-2048mb-ram- 
>>
>> 500gb-hdd-dvd-win-7-home/234733906.html?listingid=229951034
_______________________________________________

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Archive: http://www.team.net/archive

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From: Wayne <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 09:47:38 -0400

Sorry to hear about your bad experience. I have 7 of the Dell 390s at 
work, 2 at home, and another 2 I've bought and set up for family 
members, 2 lower-end Power Edge servers (SC430s), and a couple giga-bit 
switches.

The 390s were all bought used, after a lightning strike fried almost 
every piece of equipment in our office. I called up Dell tech support, 
got a live American person in short order, and got useful tech support, 
and in one case requested an operating system CD for an out of warranty 
machine, and they not only sent it, but it showed up the next day free 
of charge Fed-Ex.

I've heard some of the low-end Dell Vostro branded PCs have a bad 
reputation for reliability, but you get what'ca pay for. Or in the case 
of used ones a lot more. In my experience, they stand behind their high 
end products very well.
   -w

On 8/20/2012 7:39 AM, Tim wrote:
> We've owned two dells. One new tower some years ago. It crapped out less
> than a month after the warranty expired**. I also bought a refurbed dell
> laptop off of evilbay for my oldest to use in college. This one turned

[email-masked]

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From: "Karl Vacek" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 10:05:31 -0500

Amen on both avoiding Dell and kudos to Lenovo.  Dell USED to be great, but
they've cheapened beyond acceptability in random areas, plus having moved
their support to India.  Unfortunately, HP cheapened their stuff beyond
acceptability long ago too, and like Dell, so much is proprietary.

I was given a year-old Lenovo ThinkPad a few years ago - it's a well-built
unit, and once I maxed out the RAM to 4 GB, put in a fast 500GB HDD, and
Win7 Pro, it still flies.  Unlike Wayne, I really like Win7, though I
skipped over Vista.  I've installed it on quite a few clients' older XP
machines, most with RAM upgrades (though as noted DDR2 is expensive) and a
new HDD for insurance, and even with minimal RAM (1-2 GB) it runs much
faster with none of XP's blue screens of death or "what the heck is it
doing" stalls.

Karl

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott
Subject: Re: [Shop-talk] New PC (was Dead PC)

If you go that route, I cannot recommend enough that you buy the highest
level of warranty they'll sell you--the one where a tech comes to you that
day to fix whatever breaks. Do NOT get the 'depot' warranty where you ship
the computer back to Dell each time it breaks (and it will--often), unless
you also have a spare machine to use for the two weeks it'll be gone each
time.

Dealing with Dells and Dell itself about the computers has made a lifetime
Lenovo customer out of me. And I was a huge believer in refurb equipment and
the idea that all p.c.s are created equal, no matter the name on the front.
_______________________________________________

[email-masked]

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From: "Peter J. Thomas" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 14:21:20 -0400

> acceptability long ago too, and like Dell, so much is proprietary.
Reality is all of the computer manufactures are really just assemblers.  
Only real difference between them is the case and support (Lenovo and HP 
have the best support from recent research on laptops), possibly a 
proprietary power supply though 3rd party parts can be found.  None 
actually make the power supply, motherboard, processors, memory, 
hardrives, etc. themselves; the just farm it out to OEM manufactures.  
In the effort to hit the bullet points and compete on price, they tend 
to use the lowest cost parts, like power supplies and memory.  For this 
reason I never buy a system, but rather assemble it myself from parts 
I've selected.  Costs more up front but in the long haul is cheaper and 
better.  When I want to upgrade, I just buy a new 
motherboard/processor/memory (occassionally a new PSU) and reuse all the 
old components.  If a part fails, just replace with off the self 
standardized parts. After an upgrade, the older replaced parts migrate 
to the kids computers.

Peter T.

[email-masked]

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From: Jeff Scarbrough <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:11:17 -0400

On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 11:05 AM, Karl Vacek <[email-masked]> wrote:
> plus having moved
> their support to India.

Not all of it.  Maybe it goes along with the high-end or Government
business support, but my support tech is in Florida.
_______________________________________________

[email-masked]

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From: Paul Parkanzky <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 12:27:00 -0700

I'm friends with the IT manager at my previous employer.  He always said that
If you buy a Dell to get one of their business machines, because the support
on that side is great while the consumer-side support is terrible.

We went from XP to Windows 7 and I considered it a huge upgrade.  There are a
lot of little features in Win7 that I used and liked that aren't in XP (The
snipping tool was very handy for the work I do).

At my new employer, they're transitioning from Dell to HP and I got an HP
laptop when I started.  It has a couple gizmos my Dell didn't have but seems
comparable enough to me.

They're also still on XP, which I like much less.  They're rolling Win7 out
over the next couple quarters, thankfully.

-Paul

[email-masked]

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From: Wayne <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 20:59:47 -0400

Wow, surprised to hear so much animosity towards Dell. Sorry if I gave 
bad advice; but I've only had good experience with them. Guess I need to 
give Win 7 more of a test drive (oh shoot, 8 is out now or soon,) It was 
doggy slow when I used it, but that was on a little HP netbook and 
another laptop, neither of which were high end to begin with. I do still 
like Win XP, and have boxes running it that stay up for months between 
reboots. Killing the unneeded services and other tweaks make it run 
excellently for me. Tho' I do use Linux to backup and load it... hmm.
   -w

[email-masked]

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From: Mark J Bradakis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 19:05:13 -0600

Just for your info, the Team.Net mail server is a Dell PowerEdge SC1430, 
running
Fedora 15.  Hopefully it will keep on running for many years.

mjb.

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