Dell special offers

[Jon12345]

I am thinking of buying a Dell. They seem to be having special offers all the time. When I went yesterday, the package I wanted was £612. Now it is £640. The changes are as a result of the change in the special offers (e.g. free hard drive upgrades, free delivery etc).

Do these offers change daily or month by month?

Regards,

Jon

[matt_hobson]

they change quite regularly, think its every month, but then most companies do it, have a look at a place like Scan - they do daily deals on their components.

What do you want the PC for? Why Dell by the way?

[Darkmatter]

Dell a pretty good for deals, i bought a laptop from them last year. After mentioning there double memory offer which i got, the guy i spoke to asked if id like the other offers too. WHAT!!??!! i thought. I ended up with free double memory, free 64mb usb drive, huge leather case and a floppy drive for free. Ok not great but hey saved a few quid on extras
Be ruthless and squeeze all the deals from dell, cant hurt just ask, if they want your business, what are they going to do for you to get it.

[matt_hobson]

agreed, we have a couple of Dell machines at home, but after making one myself now, it would take a DAMN good deal for me to buy one made again...

[Jon12345]

How good are their monitors? I get a basic 17" TFT with the deal but can upgrade to their Ultrasharp model for an extra £100. Should I go for it?

Also, their memory seems expensive. The model I am choosing is a 3.06GHz pentium. Should I buy the memory elsewhere? It comes complete with 2 x 128 ram chips.

[ed^chigliak]

I don't like Dell or the way they complicate and constantly fiddle the pricing with so called special offers. How do you know the price is good if you do not know exactly what is inside the case. As soon as you deviate from the default spec on any of their systems the prices go through the roof. Further more a Dell PC is not build form 100% generic kit so upgrading can be a problem at a later date. The final nail in the coffin for me was the junk mail they send me despite phoning them on 4 seperate occassions asking to be removed from their mailing list. As a consequency I won't buy Dell ever.

Ed^

[Applecrusher]

if your gonna play games your gonna need heaps mor memry than that.. id buy elsewere...

[Jon12345]

Perhaps its best if I post my spec. Maybe I will get some good recommendations!

What I am looking for is:

Pentium 2.6 - 3.0 (somewhere in that range)
80-120gig HD
512-1024 RAM
Motherboards built in graphics is fine
Motherboards sound is fine
Needs to be networked so built in motherboard NIC would be good
15" TFT is fine or no monitor
OS not required as I already have it. Otherwise Win XP home edition.
Keyboard and mouse optional

The PC is to be used for number crunching on an automated process so it is unlikely to get much user attention. But I need TFT screen as space is tight.

Any suggestions??

Regards,

Jon

[nichomach]

Perhaps its best if I post my spec. Maybe I will get some good recommendations!

What I am looking for is:

Pentium 2.6 - 3.0 (somewhere in that range)
80-120gig HD
512-1024 RAM
Motherboards built in graphics is fine
Motherboards sound is fine
Needs to be networked so built in motherboard NIC would be good
15" TFT is fine or no monitor
OS not required as I already have it. Otherwise Win XP home edition.
Keyboard and mouse optional

The PC is to be used for number crunching on an automated process so it is unlikely to get much user attention. But I need TFT screen as space is tight.

Any suggestions??

Regards,

Jon

If you're using built-in graphics there's no need for the Ultrasharp TFT - that supports DVI, which you won't have . Buy it with the minimum RAM that they'll ship, then go to Crucial UK and use the memory selector to pick yourself out a couple of 512MB modules. Dell memory isn't as bad as it was but it's still waaaaaaaaaay too much. Some of the Dimensions (I assume that's what we're looking at) are shipping with SATA drives now. Worth checking.

[matt_hobson]

to be honest mate if there the sort of things that you want i would either:

a) Go for a dell
b) Make my own - i would definately do this one now. I made my own, and as long as you are very careful it is not that hard at all, and would be much cheaper

[Jon12345]

I am now thinking about getting something like a Shuttle bare bones sytem and building it from there. Apparently they have quiet ones which is important to me. Anyone got one of these?

[ed^chigliak]

A shuttle system would be ideal for your needs. I don't have one myself but they are very popular so you should have no problems getting all the advice you need.

[ed^chigliak]

A shuttle system would be completely unrelated to the title of this thread "Dell special offers". I would copy paste your spec to a new thread with a fresh title.

I think the a very quiet almost silent PC is an interesting build angle to have and it is easier than ever to find products designed for this purpose.

http://www.quietpc.com/uk/
http://www.whispertec.com/ (Shuttle Sound and Vibration Damping Kit)

Ed^