Dell Dimension 8100 Series Desktop PC - The last PC you'll ever buy?
Written: Apr 11 '01 (Updated Aug 30 '01)
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Pros: Blazing Speed, Exceptional Graphics, Solid Quality - Won't fall obsolete any time soon...
Cons: Problems with the Sound Card, a bit pricey, Dell Support
The Bottom Line: Bottom Line: This is a powerhouse of a PC with great performance. Sound and Support could be better, but it's blazing speed will overshadow some other issues.
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| jag2112's Full Review: Dell Dimension 8100 Series |
Ok, we all know that the way things change in the PC market, this won't be the last PC you'll ever buy. But it should last a VERY long time (and I'm talking years, not months).
But let's get to the specifics.
The system I bought was:
Pentium IV 1.4
512 Megs of P800 Memory
64Meg Graphics Card
60 GIG Hard Drive
Santa Cruz/Turtle Beach Sound Card
DVD Player
CD-RW
IEEE Card
Dell 19" Monitor
THX Certified Speakers
MS-Office Professional
HP 932c printer
Epson 1240U Scanner
Ok, so now that you see what I bought, let's get to it.
Set up was a snap. The color coding that Dell established is mindless. Anyone could set this thing up.
Speaker set up was another issue. With different options available, you had to make a choice before plugging them into the PC. But more on the sound problems later.
The included cables seem to be a little short. I have a standard corner computer desk and I found that most of the cables were stretched to their limit in my set up. That's inexcusable in my book. Lengthen the bloody cables Dell and don't tell me about signal degradation :)
Speed: I've been using a number of different level P1's, P2's and P3's during the past few years. This P4 clearly blows them all away (enough with your talk of Benchmarks - Pop in F-1 2000 Championship Season and show me any other machine that run this game as well).
And speaking of which, graphically this machine shines - thanks to the new 64Meg (actually 63 meg) graphics card. It's unreal. The best gaming experience I've ever seen.
The hard drive is rather fast, but a tad bit loud at times. Speaking of loud (no, I'm not at the problem with the sound card yet) the cooling fan is also annoyingly loud.
OS - Win ME. This is my first experience with Win ME (being an old Win NT and 95 user). So far, I'm not finding much wrong with it. Yes, it is a memory hog and yes there are the every present compatibility problems with older software, but you can't judge a PC on it's OS. If you don't like Win ME, downgrade.
Keyboard/Mouse: Both are sturdy, quiet and clearly quality items.
Sound: Ok - here it is. The setup I purchased was to allow Dolby Digital Surround capabilities. Not only for DVD playback, but for Game play as well. When you set up the PC/speakers to do so, you can not control the volume of ANY sound output through the PC. You have to manually change the volume on the speakers. This is ridiculous and neither 3 calls to Dell support or contacting Santa Cruz could resolve the problem (Yes, even the new driver for the sound card didn't help). I finally gave up trying, set the speakers to an analog output and settled for the sub-par sound.
And speaking of the 'legendary' Dell support, it isn't (At least in my experience).
Two support specialists had no clue how to answer my questions. One actually suggesting wiping the contents of my hard drive and 'starting over' to see if that would resolve the sound card issue. Right. Nice answer. As with any support, it depends who answers the phone. I guess I got the bottom of the barrel each time.
All in all, I'm still very happy with my purchase. This is a solid PC that will last a long time (has to since I spent a fortune on it).
Yes, it's pricey, but you truly get what you pay for. Just avoid the overkill on the speaker/sound card set up.
Enjoy.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 3000
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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Epinions.com ID:
jag2112
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Member: John
Location: Clinton, NJ
Reviews written: 304
Trusted by: 309 members
About Me:
The writer stares with glassy eyes...
Defies the empty page...
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