One year later -- The wheels are falling off
Written: Jul 29 '01
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Pros: Easy entry into case, well documented manuals and help sheets, loaded with options
Cons: Problem ridden, cheap parts, limited drive bays on case, terrible service and support
The Bottom Line: Lack of system reliability and Dell's inability to help or resolve problems quickly ruined my experience with my first and last Dell system.
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| jared_ellars's Full Review: Dell Dimension XPS T800r |
Well this July marks my first year of use on my Dell system. Initially I was very happy with the system, but soon after opening the box I began to experience problems. Though these problems are erratic and come and go, Dell will not replace or come out and repair the devices. I have had problems with DVD, modem and now the monitor. But first let’s start with the good news.
The first thing that I noticed when I setup the system was the really good documentation that Dell provides with their systems. There is a setup poster with colorful illustrations showing how to hook your system up, which is very helpful for new comers to computers. Dell even provides a holder for the system documentation.
The computer features are good though could be better in places. The tower case is appealing, and very easy to open up. Once you remove the one thumbscrew and then slide the side panel off, you have easy access to the components inside. Inside the case, the interior was nice and neat, with easy access to the DIMMs slots, though the processor is hidden under a fan vent. Ventilation of the case is a marginally fair, with only the CPU fan was well as the power pack fan serving as the cooling sources, which is a bare minimum.
The case has several open slots in the back, allowing the user to add several addition cards to the system. The case is extremely limited on the amount of drive bays that you have for your cd/dvd roms, ect. The case features only two 5.25" bays and two 3.5" bays.
Dell also includes a Software Recovery Disk which will restore your software incase you have a Windows failure. This feature is nice for beginners, but advanced users like me will find this feature to be very limiting which trying to custom configure Windows for a special purpose.
Now to the bad
I have four hardware problems with my Dell systems. Two are caused (in my opinion) by cheap hardware, one I'm still not sure about, and the last is a complete component failure.
First I will talk about the cheap hardware. My DVD and modem fall into this category of hardware. Both of these devices work, but not to the level that they should. The DVD will play movies without any troubles, but if you try to use it for any other type of media, such as data disc or game discs, the drive slows to a crawl. With my CD-RW drive, I can load this one game in about 20 seconds, but with the DVD drive, which has the same speed-reading, it will take well over 2 minutes. It gets real bad with you try to read a disc created by my CD-RW. The modem is another device that just does not work the way it should. The modem in very good at only connecting at 24K rather then 44K, which I can get only if I run a special script that will have the modem redial if the connect is not higher than 42K. I have taken a USR modem and installed it on the system and it works great and gets the high connection speeds.
The other problem that I have is the system has weak graphics ability. I have never been able to get the frame rates that other cards that have the same GeForce 256 graphics chipset. The rates that I get are not terrible, around 30-40 fps, but they should be higher.
The last hardware problem I have is with my monitor. The things began to go dark on me as the day progressed and got to the point where I cannot hardly see anything on the screen even with the contract and brightness both at their highest level. The beginning of the day they are fine, but after a couple of hours the picture becomes gradually darker, until the monitor components begin to overheat, causing the monitor to shutdown. My new replacement took over a week to be delivered to me.
The last problem I have with Dell is there so called "Award winning support". First of all, you can not get through to them unless you want to spend hour or more on hold, then you are likely to get a person who can hardly speak English. And on top of that, they always give me the feeling that they are trying to get rid of me by telling me things to try and if they don't work, then call us back. Their web support is no better as well.
So in conclusion, would I recommend this or any other Dell system to anyone? Will I ever buy another Dell product again? My answer to both of these or defiantly NO!.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 2010
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 701-800
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
jared_ellars
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Location: Des Moines, Iowa
Reviews written: 61
Trusted by: 7 members
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