Dell has the building of desktop PC's down to a fine art.May 12 '04 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Dell Desktops are among the finest values ever offered for PC's, and among the most stable. They should be considered seriously by anyone in need of a PC.
This is a review of Dell desktop PC's, it is intended to help people who wish to order a PC from Dell. The review is broken into several parts, the first being Dell background, discussing briefly some Dell background, then exploring some myths, discussion will then focus on the desktop (the Dell Dimension) PC product line. Finally a discussion about YOUR (the consumers) purchasing strategy, to help get the best value from Dell. My hope is this review will be helpful to anyone interested in a Dell PC, or understanding Dell PC's. Dell background ... Dell has been refining it's business for 20 years. Starting from a one person business, to being the largest assembler of PC's in the world. Dell is aggressive, and always strives to provide the best value to customers. This shows in virtually all it's products and services, especially in desktop products which are part of the bread and butter Dell's business. The success of Dell is due to a confluence of factors, but without doubt first and foremost is customer satisfaction, and a very significant (but not the only factor) is value to the customer. Thus Dell systems are competitively priced. Dell has also taken pains to offer it's products directly, via phone and internet, rather than through traditional retail (for the most part). Dell often offers free shipping, the Dell home site will often not collect sales tax, there is also a serious and helpful strategy of complete customer satisfaction for the first 30 days. The period after you receive your Dell for the first 30 days is treated very specially by Dell, the goal is to do just about whatever they have to make you happy. If they cannot, they'll pick up your PC and refund all but initial shipping costs. The satisfaction period helps Dell compete with brick and mortar (real) stores, in that you have a satisfaction guarantee, and it is meaningful. With a simple call, you can get rid of a PC which isn't right for your needs or which you feel for any reason doesn't meet your desires. There are many advantages to this for Dell and for customers. My experience is with the low end through the high mid end of the Dell desktop line for the past 3 years. Consumer (normal people) Dell desktop PC's are Dimension PC's. The models currently range from 2400, 4600, 8300 and XPS. I lack direct experience with XPS and will only touch on it briefly to fill in it's place with respect to the others. Dell Myths explored ... First, are the myths... there are many myths out there about Dell. The first, and biggest myth, and the most incorrect is that Dell uses inferior parts, or substandard parts. This is not true, there was a time, years ago, when for some components there may have been some validity to this claim, it is untrue now. 2nd Myth .. Dell uses non-standard motherboards... this is true and not true at the same time. Dell uses Intel motherboards, and Intel processors. However for many Dell PC's the power supply connections to the motherboard are non-standard. Also the connections between the motherboard and the PC case may be non-standard. This means you cannot swap another motherboard (generally) into a Dell PC case, you can also not use a Dell motherboard in another PC case unless you have a special Dell compatible power supply. Aside from the power connectors and case connectors, Dell uses vanilla Intel motherboards made by Intel for Dell. Usually people who look, can discern which OEM board Dell is using for a particular PC. It really doesn't matter, Dell motherboards are very solid, who knows better than Intel what Intel chips want? 3rd Myth it's cheaper to build it, make it, yourself. This used to be true, it no longer is. Dell does hundreds of millions of dollars a year in business, and works on very low markups, do you think as an individual Hitachi, Toshiba, LG, Intel will give you volume pricing on the order of someone ordering millions of units? There was a time when the markup on PC's was so high, that yes, components cost less than the PC and you could build it yourself. However a modern PC, assembled by Dell is a bit more similar to a car, the sum of the pieces is often worth more than the whole. There are other intrinsic, which will be discussed later in the Desktop section. However generally, it is hard to beat the price of a basic Dell PC even assembling it yourself. As often Dell provides 1 year on site next day service, and 24/7 800 technical support, it is hard for even a 14 year old to match all the value of a Dell. Final myth... Dell uses cheap disk drives, video cards, whatever. Untrue, untrue, untrue. Dell uses standard disks, standard video cards, standard just about everything. You can pull out a Dell IDE drive and plug in anybody else’s IDE drive and it'll work. The only "special" concerns are regarding the motherboard and the power supply to it, all else is industry standard. Now that the myths are taken care of, lets discuss the build quality. Dell generally builds to order, you specify from a menu which parts you want included, and Dell will build a system to suit your order. Every new system is custom made for every order. Components come in from all over, but final assembly is done in the US and shipped to your door generally within days of the order. All current Dell Dimension desktops can be opened without tools, the Dimension 8300 permits adding / removal of PCI and AGP cards without tools as well. Generally adding and removing components for each PC desktop style is slightly different, but Dell always has an online manual which describes in detail with pictures the process. Users should not fear a need should it arise after purchase to swap or upgrade a component. Dell provides Windows XP for all current shipping desktops. You can get XP home or XP pro. Microsoft XP is BIOS locked to the Dell systems, this means you do NOT need to activate or even enter serial numbers when installing XP. Discussion of Dimension desktops.... The Dell desktops are the Dimension line, the current models are the Dimension 2400, Dimension 4600, Dimension 8300, and Dimension XPS. Each will be discussed in turn, along with the authors experience with them (except for the XPS which this author has no direct experience with, but can make a bit of an educated guess about). Dimension 2400 - This is the introductory level Desktop, it uses integrated video, integrated audio, and has relatively poor performance compared to other Dimension desktops. It's primary advantage is very low price, and very good stability. In the Celeron version with 128MB this unit can be purchased for as little as $350 on a good sale with free shipping. My purchase was for 2 of these units for $479 each, this included a 2.0Ghz Celeron, 128MB RAM, 40GB 7200RPM hard drive (2MB cache), DVD/CD reader/burners (YES I paid $100 extra to get DVD burners), keyboard, mouse, Windows XP (home), floppy drive, Roxio burning software, 17" CRT monitor, speakers and all cables. These systems are used by 4 year old twin boys, who are rough with them. To date one particular system has had a failure of a monitor (dropped, how I'm not sure). I called Dell after 3PM the day it fell, and a replacement arrived before 10AM the NEXT day. We packed up the old unit in the box where the replacement CRT arrived and Dell paid to have it shipped back. Cost to us $0. Dell was informed as to what happened, and still replaced it for free. 2nd issue, bologna inserted in lieu of a CD, not sure what my son was thinking, but unfortunately it wasn't discovered for a while... when it was the DVD burner wasn't working, we tried to clean it, but it never worked again. Dell also replaced next day, and instructed us to throw out the old drive. Dell provided the replacements as a 1 year service contract is provided on all new Dell systems shipped out by the small business site (more on why I used this part of the online store later in the strategy section). However, Dell stands behind what they sell, and it is very comforting to know this. Thus far, aside from dropping a monitor, or putting bologna inside a DVD burner we have had NO crashes of either Dimension 2400. They run ALL the children’s software (mostly Knowledge Adventure / Reader Rabbit stuff) without a glitch. Now onto discussion of the Dell Dimension 4600. This desktop, is the middle of the line. It can come with any of several motherboards. If sold with a video card, you get a higher end motherboard, if some without a video card a lower end card is enclosed. On a good sale, a 2.4Ghz 800Mhz FSB Dell Dimension 4600 with AGP video card, Microsoft XP Pro, Microsoft Office Business, Roxio CD burner, CD/DVD reader, floppy drive, keyboard, mouse, and no monitor, speakers and all cables can be purchased for about $479 with free shipping. Returning the relatively useless 256MB of ram (during the first 30 days) lowers the cost of $419 and permits you to install 512MB or 1GB of more appropriate memory. We have had 1 crash unexplained with this PC. Like the 2400's it's rock solid and almost totally silent in operation. Dimension 8300 - The Dell Dimension 8300 is a bit unique, first it is a motherboard which uses an atx power supply, which for Dell is unusual. It also shares motherboards with the PowerEdge 400sc server and the Dell Precision 400 workstation. The dimension 8300 consists of an Intel motherboard which is based on the high end 875 chipset. This means optional ECC is available (unlike the other units). I will not discuss the many features of the 875 chipset here, but will mention that in my experience the Dells which we have (we bought 2) which are based on this motherboard do amazingly well, even when equipped with the same CPU's and memory the 8300 motherboard assures smoother and faster overall performance. We have 2 of these units, and they are the real champs in our family for performance. However as nothing really crashes, it's a tie as to stability, all our systems are stable. All the Dell Dimension systems we have are quiet. Finally the Dell Dimension XPS - This is a gaming system, it is the fastest system Dell can make, and it is meant for gamers. Generally my belief is hard core gamers are in a unique situation of not really caring about cost so much vs. performance, thus much of the Dell strategy really doesn't work for them. While a Dell is a safe bet for a gamer, my advice to those with a hard core gamer is get out of their way and let them get what they want. Older gamers will appreciate the stability of the XPS, and it may have value to them. Generally however this is the only model I cannot be an avid fan for (gamers like to overclock and push limits, Dells do NOT overclock well or often at all). This brings up a final comment about the entire Dimension line, and really about all Dell PC's and servers. Often younger users will purchase a lower speed product (such as a P4 2.4c CPU) and overclock it by 20-50%. Dell systems are really designed to prevent this, and to run where they are rock solid stable. This is one reason why they are quiet (less heat produced, thus the variable speed fans move more slowly) and refusal to overclock reduces both heat dissipation, both on the various chips on the board and on the power supply which must work harder to drive a higher load. If you really want to run a 2.4ghz P4 2.4c at 3.2Ghz, do NOT buy a Dell, at best you can push the FSB up via softFSB applications, there is no ability to adjust memory timings, or to adjust voltages. If you don't understand what was just written, don't worry, it means you're in great shape to be a Dell customer :-) Finally, strategy for purchasing.... Dell prices change often, and Dell mixes stuff around a bit. Occasionally two concurrent specials will overlap briefly allowing super deals. Websites which follow this, are www.techbargains.com, www.hotdeals.net, and www.dslreports.com the users find hot deals forum. Following this for a month prior to purchase will provide a prospective Dell purchaser sufficient understanding of the various offers that they will be able to snap up a good one when it comes along without much concern about having paid too much. The Dell store is segregated into the home and the small business sites. You should check both out. The home site usually charges a non-refundable $100 to ship, while the business side usually ships free. The home side exempts many users in various states from sales tax due to Dell, but the business side always collects sales tax. Thus value must be considered of the value of no sales tax (if available) vs. the value of sales tax with free shipping at a savings of about $100. Dell tends to charge the least for "showcase" systems, these are featured systems in Dell lingo. Adding anything to them, usually lowers the overall value of the offer. For example Dell routinely charges $110 for a DVD burner which can burn CD's and DVD -RW/-R. Yet Newegg.com can sell you a much better black bezeled DVD CD burner which does +-RW/+-R for $85 with free shipping. It's easy to install it onto the Dell. Thus generally additions to the Dell systems tend to be more expensive acquired from Dell than from elsewhere (this goes for memory and most components). Also if you want to put in a killer video card into say an 8300, you'll find that purchase of a PowerEdge 400sc from the business side can be much less expensive and offer the same motherboard, warranty, and what not (this as the Dimension 8300 and PowerEdge 400sc share many components in common, including motherboard, but the 400sc does not come with a video card, thus it's price tends to be lower than a Dimension 8300). To order from the Dell small business website, just replicate your name as your company name. Dell does not really care. It is always a good idea to configure the same systems on the home side and the small business side of the Dell site. My experience is usually the small business side is about 10% less expensive than the home site. However your experience may not be the same, take a look :-) This concludes Dell desktops 101 :-) You've graduated, congrats!  |
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