2 Dells are Dimension 8200 from 2002. I keep them on 24 hrs a day and have had no problems and nothing has been repaired. In 2004 I purchased 2 Dimensions 8400 at the outlet store. Both refurbished . One no problems and one needed the hard drive replaced which was done at my house within 48 hours under standard warranty. I am pleased with the bang for the buck and especially the dependability
So what's wrong with the HD? Was it dead shortly after arrival? I just bought an XPS 400 at the outlet.
HD had problems after about 10 months and replacement has been fine. I will buy more Dells in the future . They stand behind refurbished as they would a new model. Would like to get and XPS myself but no need at this point. I know it is smokin.
The only thing proprietary about Dells these days is the mobo (+ maybe the PSU if you consider that it has no power switch while most others do.) And the mobo is not really "all that proprietary"... mostly just physical dimensions. The mobos are made by Foxconn, a very large Taiwan maker, and made to the specs of Intel CPU and Intel chipset. Consumers get a good bang for the buck for this small proprietary concern. So if another part fails, it's no fault of Dell's. Same could have happened with any brand.
just went to Dell outlet store to check out the XPS 400 and could not believe the deal View Details DDBA4CVY Select $679.00 XPS 400 Pentium D - 2800 Genuine Windows XP Media Center 2005 250 GB EIDE Hard Drive (7200RPM) 1 GB ram DVD-ROM;DVD/RW 256MB nVidia Geforce 7300LE TurboCache 56 NO, I DO NOT WORK FOR DELL. JUST LIKE THE PRODUCT
Mine is $600 with 2G ram. The only thing I worry about it the heat and noise. Pentium D will be oboselte soon, the new Intel Core cpu is pretty cool.
Hey Cool, you got a great deal with 2gig ram....that is what i am talking about. Also, did you hear that Intel will be dropping prices up to 60% to get back market share from AMD and Dell is doing same so win win for consumer Geeks like myself
BTW, although I love my Dell here's a few things in addition to what I said above: 1. Avoid the Seagate 160GB SATA hard drive if you can, it's a loud sucker. I don't know why Dell would use such a loud drive in an otherwise quite system. I thought some Maxtors were loud but this one takes the cake. I ended up buying a quieter drive and using the Seagate drive as a data drive. 2. If you want kick ass processing power you'll have to go with the HP since they do offer AMD chips. Hopefully Dell will come around and offer them soon. But the case is great, it's super quiet, and the price was right (New, under $600 shipped, bought 10/2005, 1GB Ram, 160GB SATA, X600 ATI 256mb, Pentium 2.8GHz dual core, BTX case)
I bought a 3.5" 7200rpm 160GB Samsung SpinPoint hard drive after researching drives at www.silentpcreview.com. They've since updated their model line, you can check out the new drive review here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article258-page1.html Anyway, I can't wait until flash drives totally replace hard drives in the future. Instant boot up, instant access, and totally quiet.