Un-Balanced Systems still for sale

[Zak33]

You'd think, in the year 2005 we'd haveseen the back of this, but OOHHHH no.

I have just had the pleasure of upgrading a PC less than 1 year old.

Why? Cos it wont play Medal of Honour at anywhere near useable settings. At all. Why did he buy this PC then? Because it sounded good on the spec, to an innocent clueless person.

Ready: This first bit makes me drool.
P4 3.06 Hyper Threading CPU.

Now even NOW that CPU is worth a lot of dough, isn't it? Its not simply a £30 bargain cpu...but its a power house frankly.

XP Home..fine
256mb ram....hmm....not really enough for gaming but acceptable for XP in its standard form.
1mb built in graphics card, upgradeable to 8mb in BIOS.

Why..oh WHY. I KNOW its an economy, but IMAGINE if it was simply a Geforce 5200 or Rad 9200 SE.

2 spare PCI slots, (the third is modem-filled) and no agp slot.

Why? Why? This is NOT fair to the owner. He now has to buy from a select choice of PCI cards and frankly needs more memory to get it to run properly in Medal of Honour or even Q3....or even Q2 to be honest. The Simms wont run on the mighty built in power-house-gpu.

It wasnt cheap. I wont name and shame the black cased manufacturer, I'll let you guess (in silence) but even now, it makes me nash my teeth.

How on earth do they expect repeat business? Perhaps they don't

[Apex]

mmm Dell.........

It's about box shifting m8 and am sorry to say that the great unwashed could not care less about the in's and outs, they see the big numbers and drool.

[daverobev]

Yes, I agree, in some ways. But...well ok I guess XP home means its not likely to be for business.

Its kinda like a thread I was reading over on a Mac site about the Mac Mini. Now the MM has a built in Radeon 9200. And some people were saying, oh but it won't play games.

Out of all the PCs Dell sell, how many do you think are for decentish gaming?

For MOST THINGS all that needs is a half gig stick of RAM, for about £50 (or if its dual channel, two 256Mb ones, for about the same price). Okay so the graphics is using built in RAM...but I used for a year or so a Dell Optiplex GX270, which has shared gfx RAM and is fine for...programming, and all the rest, in W2K. So mine has 512Mb in. £50.

DELL are out to make money. Putting in an AGP slot means:

1) Probably, cheaper for them, hence they can sell cheaper
2) Possibly, if someone does buy to play games, they will return to the PC market to buy another machine sooner than if they had an AGP slot.

I would say that, considering the percentage of computers that get used to game on, its not THAT unreasonable. But then I would know what I'm buying before I bought it (this car has a diesel engine??? my god! Why didn't anyone tell me!! Okay thats probably not a good example as the CPU not the GPU is the engine but...).

These cheap boxes (like the Mac Mini) are for surfing, emailing and printing - that is the market segment they are chasing. Not the gaming sector. Most, and I do understand most does not mean all, gamers know AGP is necessary for gfx upgrades.

And furthermore, you CAN stick a Radeon 9200 or GeForce FX 5200 in. And it will not be THAT much worse than in an AGP slot - 15% I think from past research? Even better get a Radeon 9000 PCI off eBay. *edit* like this one: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...154416411&rd=1

[Rcb]

PC World or Dell.

[Twigman]

um you sure he bought a home pc?
that spec sounds fine for office machines...
Dell do home and now gmaing pcs...just a different section.
Im sorry but even computer illeterate people should be able to work out Office or Home computer on the dell site...

[Gunbuster]

Sorry mis-read a post.

[iMc]

Yeh my mates Packard Bell is a bit of a bugger. Want to upgrade the gfx card but need more power... so we need to upgrade the power supply but the case is specially designed for a small one not a standard one, the small one isnt a mATX psu either, its errr, something else. Packard only jobby I think.

Standards are there for a reason manufacturers!

As for unbalanced systems, I seem to remember Time selling some really crazy things...

[Gunbuster]

I eventually got through to my next door neighbour (retired) after a couple of years and instead of buying another flippin Compaq he got a Medion from Aldi. It seems to be several times more reliable than his old system, even with him using it the same. The only problems he's had is spyware and that was fixed in a jiffy.

I just don't know why the public not only buy PB and Compaq once, but time and time again. Are they all masochists? it would certainly explain things like Big Brother and The Sun

[Kumagoro]

A friend of mine asked for my advice on buying a pc and i recommend some compaines
i said dont get a dell... what did he do.... he got a dell.

He aint called bungalow boon for nothing.

[Twigman]

I would reccommend Dell to people.

[speedy_s]

I would reccommend Dell to people.

same here

[Kumagoro]

I wouldnt recommend dell for the reasons zak gave and them using there special
shape bits meaning you have to buy there replacements.

[nvening]

Oh my god, i have to lecture people to try and get them to not get a dell (im sitting here on my dell) if they want a dell, get a mesh!

[schmunk]

We've just thrown away my wife's Dell Celery 333. It's been ultra-reliable and, taking it apart to throw it away, it was the best made (and yes, most non-standard) case I've ever seen - and this is a several-year-old case.

For 90% of computer users (which includes roughly 0% of people posting here) I would recommend a Dell.

[Allen]

I would recommend a Dell to anyone who is not computer savvy and/or doesn't want to play games. Most people on here would probably be classed into the above 2 catagories (apologies for those who aren't) so why would one of us buy a pre-built system anyway, from Dell or not?

[shiato storm]

whats utterly squashing with dell is they have 'we recommend windows xp pro' all over their websites and adverts, but when you come to look at the systems they have on offer do any of them come with it? NoooOOOO! so you end up selecting it in the configuration process and get charged an arm and a leg for it...(along with many other necessaties that come with any other normal PC!)
actually a lot of computer companies seem to stock with xp home and then charge loads for pro version.
I have to look for a computer for a cousin and I'm currently looking at Mesh as they seem to represent fairly good value for money. big Hdd, good memory, cpu, mobo, and some have the 9800pro(!), as well as tft's all around...miles better than dell (which isn't hard)

...and I believe their call centre is in this country too