computer crapped again

[nu2-72]

I will be off for awhile until I can get the situation resolved. Purchased a new Dell last week and it has shut down twice. Boxed it up and sent it back today so I am off as of today. I have a few deals going and will get with those people asap if I have not done so already. Thanks.

[cdowns]

don't know how many others have had dell computers but i had one for a short time and what a POS kept crashing and their costomer service and tech line were about the rudest most arrogent a$$holes i've delt with in a long long time so i went with gateway WHAT A DIFFERENCE !!!!
didn't mean to hijack his thread but just couldn't pass up a chance to BASH DELL to hell

[Locutus]

I had a computer repair shop here in Victoria. The bulk of my repair service was HP/Compaq and Dell. HP support is worse than dell, 6.5 hours on the phone just to get to talk to the first person. I will stick with the personal built computer until I can no longer buy parts.


Mike


PS those 399 Dell computers that seem to be a great deal are so low because of rebates. Dell has been finding every way possible to avoid paying them. Many people have been screwed and there maybe a class action lawsuit coming.

[rickspickuppart]

I own 4 hp computers and ever since they merged w/ compaq I never have had to wait more than a few minutes to talk to a real person, and when one of my PC's had a mother board go up in smoke (not thier fault I drug the cable for the subwoofer across the surge protector and it let out a little smoke) they sent out a pre paid box and sent it back w/ a new board for free. I don't have any complaints with HP

[67Fleetsidedream]

I have Dell. It has its problems just like any other computer. I have also talked to Dell customer service, it was very quick and precise. Personally I don't care if they are blowing me kisses over the phone or telling me what a ass I am. I just want my problem fixed. And that is exactly what they helped me do.
Go Dell. Gateway is good to.

[Hotrod70C10]

Don't ever buy a dell if you are planning on upgrading. I bought a dell pentium 4 motherboard, processor, and 512k of ram for $100 from a friend of mine. I had to end up using dell's power supply, they rig their own plugs for the motherboard and the power/reset switch is on it's own little board of its own. It took quite a bit of work to fit it in the new aluminum case that I had but this was the finished product:

[67Fleetsidedream]

Hey that's looks good...Good Idea

[FRENCHBLUE72]

Hotrod nice computer!!!! I have a gateway and am happy as hell with it !!!! Had a compaq what a piece of crap!!!

[Hotrod70C10]

Thanks guys, since that pic I cleaned up all the cables. And in advance I will answer this question, no... i do not have / want neon in or on my truck! lol

[nu2-72]

Have my old system back up and running for now. I sent it back because it crashed twice on me. I sent an email to Dell as the system is only two weeks old and they are to reply in 6 to 12 hours. It took 3 days. I called after the second crash and they could not help me. They could not access the files on my account because their computers were down. Not a very good testimonial. I will try Gateway. I can buy them thru the company anyway. Tried Dell because I had heard good things. This is an HP right now. About 6 years old and now beginning to fail and get very slow.

[Lobo'74]

I have a Dell and its about as good as a PC can be. I did have a hard drive fail but they had a new one to me in a day, and even came to the house to install it.

IMHO, Bill Gates and microsoft computers are about as welcome as a Ford in my house. I prefer Mac's. I am going to order a new iMac this week and stay off the Dell....not because its a Dell, but because its DOS based Microsoft tweaked operating system is a poor imitation of the Mac OS.

Again, just my opinion. Shoot, some folks even like Fords. No accounting for taste.

[A.P.]

I have a generic brand of computer that I bought off a friend and it gave me all kinds of problems. First the hard drive died, he replaced it. Than the Windows Millennium keep crashing on me, my friend changed it to windows 98 and it too ran like crap. So than my friend installed Windows XP it worked better but it still ran like crap. What I ended up doing was formating my hard drive, installed Windows XP and installed Mcafee antivirus and firewall. My computer is now working great.

[miket]

Well I am the odd guy out I guess...


I have had nothing but Dell's and have been impressed with them...sold Panasonic Toughbooks myself for the police cars, used Toshiba Tecras and I have to say the Dell PC's and laptops have been the best...their support at times can be a little trying but so far I have been happy.


hotrodC70: I was really interested in doing that to my Dell PC but figured it would be a nightmare due to certainproprietary pieces...what did that cost you to set up?

[Hotrod70C10]

I'll list everything so you know what all it has then a total price.

Case : Powmax aluminum case
Motherboard : Dell demension board
Processor : Pentium 4 1.7 ghz
Memory : 2 x 256mb pc 133 sticks
Hard Drive : maxtor 40 gb 5400 rpm
floppy : generic
Video card : Nvidia geforce 4 mx440 128 mb w tv out
Sound card : Sound blaster 5.1
Network card : Standard ethernet card
Monitor : kds 17" crt monitor

That cost me just over $500 after tax and shipping cost.
I did have a keyboard and mouse but, that would have only bumped up the price $15 or so.
Oh... I don't have a modem in it because I used the network card to setup a home network and share the cable connection.

Miket, I wouldn't recomend swapping cases with the dell motherboard. It's just a pain to get the power switch to work on the new case. I decided not to even mess with it and put the original dell case switch on the back of the new case. I decided to do that after fighting with dell's tech department about giving me a diagram of how their power supply was setup.
oh btw, I slapped this all together about 6 or 7 months ago.

[Locutus]

Lobo don't be naive. Windows did not copy the Mac. Both Apple and Microsoft "borrowed" the idea from the Xerox PARC. Xerox invented the windowing system that is so popular today, but thier management thought computers would never become mainstream so it was tabled and forgotton. The truth still remains with most systems it is not the OS that causes the problems it is the poor software people run on them. It is so difficult and so time consuming to program for Mac that hardly anyone does it. There is not the quanitity of software out there that is available for the PC. Because of this quantity, there is so much variance in quality of software available for the PC. This is why you see the problems you see with Windows. If you choose good quality software your windows machine will be as stable as any Mac. In some cases you have hardware issues that cause the system to fail and almost always they blame the OS. When Mac's have the same kind of hardware problems the OS does strange things on the Mac as well. If you want to use a Mac that is kewl, just don't down a PC cause it is not a Mac. It is more jealously than fact.


Mike

[Shane]

Here is a brief synopsis of my first experience with Dell and their customer support. Needless to say, I won't buy another one.

Bought a new Dell about 4 months ago
Hard drive went out within a month of recieving it
Dell sent a new one
Dell then invoiced me for it
Numerous hours on telephone trying to figure out WHY I was invoiced for warranteed part
Dell said send OLD hard drive back to them and they would recover the lost information (pics, Word & Excell docs, etc)
That was 2 months ago ... still have not recieved anything from Dell

[COBALT]

I'm a Linux man.

Right now I have two Dell boxes:

1. Dell Inspiron 3800 (I think?) PIII laptop w/ 512 Mb ram running Linux RedHat 8. I do all of my personal development on it, plus whatever writing I feel like doing. I've got both a Wireless and Ethernet PCMCIA card working for it. When it's plugged in to my network at home it's my Samba file server as well.

2. Dell Dimension 8200 PIV desktop w/ 512 Mb ram running Windows XP for the wife and for gaming. I've added a slave IDE 40 Gb disk for MP3's and pics, and swapped out the 64 Mb NVidia MX card (OEM device) with a brand new 128 Mb NVidia 4600 GeForce 4 AGP card. I don't know what you guys are talking about. Upgrading is a piece of cake. Just have to be careful. Drivers are the key.

Other than that I've got the RedHat 8 Linux development box at work, and the Sun Blaze box (Solaris 2.8) which I do most of my dvelopment on now. The IBM Windows XP box they forced on me is only good for email, instant messaging, and the company calendar.

One of these days one of these PC companies will get serious about offering Linux on ther desktops and laptops.

[Locutus]

Right now I have 3 linux machines. 2 server for DNS, hosting, email, etc and the other one is for a workstation. I also have 4 windows machines. You can't operate in the business world with just linux or just mac. You have got to be compatible with the 80% of the world that uses PC's


Mike

[miket]

cobalt,

I hope we meet some time in the near future....would really like to pick your brain a bit.

[COBALT]

Um...ok. Just remember this quote:

"You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friends' noses"

[miket]

no worries...no noses!

[1969 GMC]

ugh don't even get me started on Macs. My first computer was one. I hated it. The way I look at things, if you want to pay wayyy too much money for a computer that has poor software support, then the fact that iMacs are pretty probably matters to you. My 2 year old Compaq has been an overall good machine, all I have added is a 256 stick of RAM and a 10/100 card for when we had DSL. I would like to build a machine myself to save money, but not having any is my stumbling block.

[Hotrod70C10]

Cobalt, upgrading isn't an issue for dell computers. You run into problems if you want to upgrade the motherboard itself though. If a person wants to do that, they have to purchase a new case and powersupply along with the new motherboard they are going to use.

[Locutus]

The powersupply is also not an issue on all Dell computers. Some of them use a standard PS that you can buy at CompUSA or any other number of computer parts stores. Some Dell motherboards also use the standard ATX style mounts for the motherboards. This is also the same with HP/Compaq's. So for anyone model to upgrade the case you have to play it by ear.


Mike

[dtlilly]

I have had my Compaq for over a year now, and have not had any trouble with it. About 6 months ago I called customer service for a loading problem, I got right through to them, and they said it was probably a problem with my roadrunner service. I called roadrunner and the problem was indeed their problem.

My new problem is that the w32.blaster worm infected my system and started spitting out viruses using my ip address. My computer was turned off, but still sending out viruses. Now my computer wont even turn on, and the IT man at work said he would charge me $250 to look at the problem. What a rip-off, I'll just use the system at work