Yeah, maybe. My Dell had two issues: power supply failure, and there was overheating so I had to reapply thermal paste and reattach the heat sink. Once I did that the system started operating normally again. This was easy to do/fix, but not something that should be done within the first 3 years of ownership. - 2 power supplies failed on desktops - I had a laptop with the PCMCIA port failing - I had another laptop with heat issues To Dell's credit, they sent me replacements with no questions asked immediately.
I've had ZERO problems with my Dell T3400 bought from the Dell Business Outlet a number of years ago. Intel E8200 processor at 2.66 GHz with 6mb of cache and 4 gigs of RAM. And with the NVS-290 graphics cards, I'm able to run 4 displays. Windows XP Pro too. If you are only going to need nothing more than 2 monitors, you might want to check out the XPS-8300 on the Dell Home Outlet site. You can get the latest Intel i7-2600 processor that is smoking fast and sports the Sandy Bridge 3.4 GHz processor for $739-$850 (the Xeon processors that are in the Dell T3500 Precision's are usually running at 2.4 GHz, and sometimes you can find one at 2.8) The XPS-8300's on the Home Outlet site also come with gobs of RAM. Anywhere from 4 to 12 gigs on a 1333MHz bus.
Yes, running XP. On wife's rig, using only about 1.2G on W7. Some setups will use more RAM than others. I try to run "lean".
Dell Small Business and use the Ships Fast for prebuilt free overnight shipping. I ordered one Sunday morning and it was here Tuesday morning 9am Fed Ex. If you don't have a business name, just enter your name on that line. Easy.
Check buy.com... they even shipped to Kazakhstan for me, so it's definitely reliable. My computer came in 8 days.
Can't vouch for Dell laptops... 80% are made in Taiwan or China by 5 makers and rebadged... at one time, Dell's were made by Wistron... don't know about now. However, I've had a Precision M4300 for nearly 4 years.. gets used daily... still ticking like a Timex. It's possible your thermal paste issue was an error in application. Of course that shouldn't happen, but it's hardly a reason to be generally down on Dell. Shit happens, sometimes. People make mistakes.
Buy a Dell Precision T3500 and reinstall W7 immediately... that is if you can do without Dell's troubleshooting software. Suggest not buying one with W3503 or W3505 CPU... those are dual-cores. W3530 quad-core, or better, for my money.
i forgot about this. i had several dell desktop die due to power supply failure. **note: this was several years ago. many manufactures go through a cycle where they would sell crap for a year or so only to get reformed later, then back to crap, etc.