Why the hell do I want a Dell?

[glu]

Dell's business line notebooks have a decent reputation, no? I have dealt with their customer service (business line) in the past and was happy with how they treated me. The notebooks come with a three year warranty included- that's not bad either. I did a search on the latitude D630 and most reviews were very positive. It's considered a rugged notebook- with a good quality build. It also comes with Windows XP Sp2, which is hard to find standard on a notebook these days.


$1313 w/o tax... not bad?

Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 (2.00GHz) 4M L2 Cache, 800MHz Dual Core
XP Home Edition, SP2, with media
14.1 inch Wide Screen WXGA LCD
MEMORY 2.0GB, DDR2-667 SDRAM
120GB Hard Drive, 9.5MM, 7200RPM
8X DVD+/-RW w/Roxio and Cyberlink Power DVD
128MB NVIDIA® Quadro NVS 135M
WI-FI WIRELESS CARD Dell Wireless™ 1390 802.11g Mini Card



Anyone have a business line Dell? How is it with live? My desktop Dell is running on 6 years and I haven't had a single issue with it, but notebooks are a different story I suppose. What do you think?

Oh, and don't tell me to



I have considered paying $700+ more to get a macbook pro, so keep the answers strictly Dell.

[noisetonepause]

[sqook]

Anyone have a business line Dell? How is it with live? My desktop Dell is running on 6 years and I haven't had a single issue with it, but notebooks are a different story I suppose. What do you think?

I used to work for two companies with corporate dell accounts. We seemed to get a fair amount of, *ahem*, lemons from them when ordering new machines. Their laptops have always had the reputation for cheap build quality (heh, I remember my old boss' laptop could literally be bent by twisting it in your hands), but that may have improved in the last few years.

If you want a decent PC laptop, go for IBM. If you want to spend as little money as possible, don't expect too much in return.

[glu]

Lenovo/IBM looks good. What is the Intel® Turbo Memory hard drive cache going to do for Live? 1GB on the T61 is an extra $50... would their be any benefit to having it yet?

[capo-wear-i]

Everything after the Latitude D600 is pretty solid (D610,D620,D630).

D810 working fine here - very solid (if slightly heavy) 15.4" machine. A D830 would be on my shortlist for a new Core2 Duo machine.

One thing :

Double check the PCMCIA Card & Firewire chipset is Texus instruments before you buy. Pretty much bad news if it's a Ricoh or some other chipset. The D800 & D810 series (and D600/ D610) are definitely TI, but Dell have a habit of changing things between models.

I Can't quite figure it out from their driver download website if the new ones for the D*30 series are TI, and it's not mentioned on any spec sheets...

[pabloaugustus]

Lenovo/IBM looks good. What is the Intel® Turbo Memory hard drive cache going to do for Live? 1GB on the T61 is an extra $50... would their be any benefit to having it yet?

The Lenovo Thinkpads are nice machines, although they aren't quite as solid as the IBM Thinkpads that built the great reputation they have. I think for $50 it would be worth it for the turbo cache. Theoretically, you should save a few seconds from boot time and loading frequently used apps. Check this review of the thinkpad with an analysis of cache performance. http://www.laptopmag.com/Review/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T61.htm

I usually recommend that people get the extended warranty with their laptop, as you can't easily swap failed hardware components like with a desktop. That said, my lenovo Z60 has been running for over two years troublefree.

My #1 pet peeve of PC laptops is the stupid little 4 pin 1394 port that you have to use instead of a 6 pin firewire. The connection isn't very secure, if I just bump the cable barely my MOTU traveler disconnects.

Good luck! I'd recommend checking out audio specific laptop builds as well and comparing them to top end business laptops like the thinkpad. Do not buy a dell.

[substance_g]

I have a D6xx (610, I think) which I use for work (it has the Live6 demo version on it, my purchased version runs on my Mac at home). From reliability point of view have had no problems at all with the Dell (runs XP), it runs quite solidly and is a good workhorse. However, the previous Dell laptop I had from 2003 to 2006 was a nightmare. Had to have the motherboard and the hard disk replaced. So, I don't know if Dell laptops have recently improved their quality control, or whether it's just random chance. From the feeling among colleagues, I think it's the former.

As it's just the demo Live6 on there, can't really say about the performance except that it runs ok, and that you'll still need an external soundcard to get decent performance/latency.

Edit: It's a 610.

[djadonis206]

My girlfriend has a dell provided by her job - the build quality is nice and sturdy - from my understanding business comps are built to last much longer then consumer pc's

anywayz - hers is nice...my Vaio feels really flimsy compared to her computer - but my vaio's screen is second to none (no one)

peace




A

[capo-wear-i]

I worked on a huge Dell Laptop roll-out at work (1500+ latitude machines) , and that totally changed my mind about Dell in terms of build quality and doa's etc..
The few DOA's that we did have Dell were very good at replacing with a minimum of fuss. The ancient 5 yr old latitudes that we were replacing were very shoddy in comparison with the newer ones - I think that experience has tainted a lot of people's perception.

[zsazsa]

Well, a friend of mine just bought a dell desktop. The videocard was dead in 2 weeks and the replacement was DOA.
Also heard horror stories from the same friend who works in IT that Dell provides too many DOA. Still he bought one himself.

They have a good price/performance quality. And as long as they arrive in working order they should be fine.

I am just not a fan of their business model and wouldn't chose them for that matter.

[Daim]

i honestly think every dell laptop is better for audio applications than a macbook pro

[pabloaugustus]

I worked on a huge Dell Laptop roll-out at work (1500+ latitude machines) , and that totally changed my mind about Dell in terms of build quality and doa's etc..
The few DOA's that we did have Dell were very good at replacing with a minimum of fuss. The ancient 5 yr old latitudes that we were replacing were very shoddy in comparison with the newer ones - I think that experience has tainted a lot of people's perception.

As the OP and others noted, Dell's business lines are of a significantly higher quality than the consumer lines (e.g. inspiron laptops, dimension desktops). The support that business clients receive is also quite good. Dell may very well be a much improved company since the last time I handled a large dell roll-out, but I think you should be feeling quite lucky before you buy any of their consumer level comps. HD failure is the #1 problem I've seen with dells, and not just DOA, but typically within a month of purchase.

capoeiri, I'd be interested to get an update and see how those latitudes hold out over a 6month period. With 1500 units your company should be a pretty representative example of how they perform over time.

[bytheriver]

I dont know about business lines, but I bought an XPS model from a reseller on ebay, including dells XPS 2 year support package.

Machine arrived with a funky gfx card, I think it was swapped over for the original customer and then given to a reseller since the fault only showed up when you tried to use direct3d APIs. Anyhow, you kinda expect these things when you go the ebay route so I wasn't to supprised.


Anyhow, thats not the point, the point is dells support were extremely good. A few emails after getting in touch and I had a very smart chap call round, fix it on my living room table, then team up with me to get murdered by windows vista chess a few times for testing.

And thats including having the warrenty and owner information swapped over to my name from the previous owners.

The build is very good, it has some very neat design features to. I totaly love it.

[nuperspective]

D620 - working fine here.

and they dont come loaded with a load of shite freeware. the of the best reasons to buy a business laptop.

[deckme(N)tal]

I bought this acer laptop....i think is one of the best deals for a laptop right now, i payed it 1199 euros..check it
http://global.acer.com/products/notebook/as5920g.htm