For a laptop they are OK. I would recommend them over a ACER. But if I was to get one I get a Lenevo or Toshiba first. For a desktop I would never get a Dell.

Make sure you do a clean install of Windows if you get one. Dell installs so much crapware it is painful.

If I were in the market I would probably get a Dell, despite the fact that I’ve worked for Dell repairing their laptops and desktops. I never had too much of a problem with the laptops.

I have a lot of experience with Dell’s, and I would not recommend it.

I’ve had a few Dells, and I’ve always had good experiences with them. It’s not that there aren’t any problems, so much as there aren’t many problems that you don’t have with all other manufacturers.

Dell are very bad.

They have stupid things like dell driver download manager, and loads of stupid extras from where they are trying to copy apple in being a seperate system.

I some times repair computers for extra money, but I wont touch a dell because they are just more trouble than they are worth.

I could look past these things if needed, but what really cements dell as a bad brand for me is how they treat their customers. Once your 2 year guarantee is over, they dont care about you, they dont want to know about you and dont want to hear from you at all.

Also, their prices dont sit well with me.

ASUS all the way is my recommendation.

No. I would recommend that you cast off the yolk of Microsoft oppression and purchase a Mac.

I have a Dell right now (it’s about a year old) and have had no problems so far except that one of my shift keys fell off. But, it was still under warranty and they replaced the entire keyboard for free.
I think you can get a computer with pretty good specs for pretty cheap when you go with Dell. They’re not the highest quality out there, but good enough for the leisurely user.

No. I don’t recommend dell. “You get what you pay for” definitely applies!

After a few years my dell was SO slow. It had the lowest quality screen and components of anything I’ve worked on/ owned. Example: after a while, I had to use something to “prop” the ethernet cord into the plug b/c the plug “got loose” somehow and wouldn’t hold the ethernet plug in anymore.

Oh, and listen to @YoBob regardless of what the nay-sayers might say, you give it a few months and I promise you will think “damn, this just makes sense, why would you do it any other way!”

Bottom line, if you are ok with spending minimal to get “just enough to scrape by” go for it. If you care, don’t!

@mrrich724

Regarding the “way of the Mac”, any platform regardless of OS will give you the basics like being able to do email, browse the web, and do basic office functions. However, to me the big differentiating factor seems to be the approach to usability. Since it’s inception the PC industry has been focused on the question “What can it do?”. However, from the beginning Apple seems to have focused much more on the question of “How do you use it?”. For me, it makes a tremendous difference.

It is important to note that I have been a professional software engineer for the past 20 years (since the early days of the PC) and have devoted more than a bit of thought to the whole Windows conundrum. IMHO, as hard as Microsoft has tried to delay the inevitable, it has finally come to pass. The operating system one uses is now all but irrelevant. Alas, the next battleground will be which “cloud” applications service to you choose to subscribe to.

I currently have 3 Dell computers in my house, and they all work fine.

My opinion of Dell has varied over the years between “meh”, “Bleh!”, and “I would rather have Syphilis!”. They are not that great on reliability, and are sometimes harder to work on. I still recall their use of non-standard power supplies that lead to many people frying their motherboards :p

Personally, I would go with a Toshiba laptop. They are more reliable than Apple, less expensive than Dell, and just plain better overall.

@YoBob I agree that casting off the Microsoft yoke is a good thing, but you seem to forget that not all PCs run Windoze. You can get the good parts of OS X with a Linux rig for far cheaper. Don’t forget that both Linux and OS X are UNIX-based OSs, and if the Aqua interface is so important then you can use Mac4lin. Also bear in mind that the newer versions of many distros are designed to be n00b-friendly and simple; you don’t have to be a wizard to install and/or run Linux like you did ten years ago; you merely have to be intelligent enough to know your name, what time zone you are in, and what language you speak. After that, it isn’t really any harder than OS X.
As for the cloud, I think we have a long way to go before that can be done trouble-free, and there will always be people like me who want our info kept locally instead of somewhere where anyone can get to it. That doesn’t even get into the possibilities of crashes like T-Mobile had that can wipe out (or at least lose access to) the data of millions of users.

I have a dell latitude lap top . I have had it for 4 years. It has been dropped. It has ridden in the saddle bag of my motorcycle on several road trips. One of the trips my saddle bag caught on fire with the comp. in it. The lid is scarred and I had to replace the power supply, but it still works. Using it right now. I would recommend Dell. My next laptop will be the same.

@jerv – I very much concur regarding the current state of Linux distros. However, the reality is that the average consumer really wants a turn key solution and although there are some excellent ones out they still require a level of geekiness that most consumers just don’t want to deal with.

As for the cloud, I also agree that there is a long way to go. However, I still believe that it will be the next battleground for market share and we are just in the opening rounds (so choose wisely, for your choices equate to a vote for the shape of the future). I too like to own my data. Alas, I fear it is going to be like trying to stop a tsunami with an umbrella.

@YoBob I envision a day in the not-too-distant future when carmakers will go the Apple route and ditch steering wheels and pedals in favor of a green button on the dashboard that says “Go”. After all, learning to drive is such a hassle that many people don’t bother :p
As for the effects of having people that don’t want to bother learning, look at the rise of identity theft and all of the other issues the internet has caused that could be solved with just a little tech savvy or common sense, but that is a whole other rant.

@Russell_D_SpacePoet I have to admit, that is impressive.

@jerv It was a used laptop when I got it on top of all the other things.

Whatever you get, run it on Linux.

If I were asked for a recommendation of a vendor to supply a large number of workstations for a business then I might recommend Dell. I have worked on many Dells over the years and have not experienced any major issues. All but one of these Dell machines have run Linux (the other one was a “clean-up” job of course) and all were desktops.

I would not recommend Dell to anyone buying a single computer for their own use unless I was confident that they would never need to open the case- i.e. that Dell’s warranty would take care of any issues until it was time to replace the machine. Since I almost never get asked for hardware recommendations by non-hackers, this is unlikely to come up.

@FPSMadPaul given your username I would not recommend Dell, but rather Alienware or another purveyor of dedicated gaming laptops.

@koanhead Dell bought out Alienwware :/