A really good buy.
Written: Mar 30 '03
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Pros: Inexpensive, easy to install, fast, good initial support
Cons: Poor graphics from on-board Intel AGP chip for 17" LCD monitors.
The Bottom Line: Buy it. Get 256Mb memory and a better graphics card if your monitor is larger than 17".
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| nograe's Full Review: Dell Dimension 2350 (D235RL) PC Desktop |
I bought this as a step up from my AMD450 generic computer and have been pleasantly surprised. I decided to go as cheap as possible: 1.8Ghz Celeron processor, no monitor (I have an NEC LCD 1700M+), but upgrade to 256MB ram and Windows XP Pro. Package price was $510 which included a free upgrade to a 60gig drive, free upgrade to CDRW, and a $50 rebate (not included in price.) Shipping was $99! so total delivered price was $609. What a deal! I resisted going for bigger, better, faster options that could have doubled or trippled the price, reasoning that I'll upgrade in 2 years and today's hot machine will be tomorrows dog. Overall, I think this is the best strategy for computers. System performance is really good! I run Seti@Home in the background and it runs about 7 times faster than my old AMD 450Mhz system! To me, this machine is very, very fast. Everything is delivered in one box, including computer, keyboard and speakers. I don't know how the speakers sound since I'm using a nice pare of Yamaha speakers from my old system. The keyboard is budget-priced but i REALLY like it: nice and quiet, good key action, not too big and bulky. Dell includes some software with the computer: Wordperfect office suite, Easy CD burner for making music CDs, 6 months free AOL or Earthlink (worth $107 to me, making this deal all the better), encyclopedia Britannica, and a few things I'll never use. I already have software from my old computer (mostly bought in eBay) so that wasn't a factor. Dell is supposed to install everything, but I found that some of the included modem software (Fax program, answering-machine program and stuff) wasn't installed, but it was on one of the about 12 CD's containing copies of all software supplied. And the fax software works! I sent myself a fax last night and when I returned home, it was waiting on the computer (I let mine run all the time.) Now I'm sorry I didn't choose the upgrade to a data-fax-voice modem (no voice on mine) for a few dollars so I could use the answering machine mode.
ONE PROBLEM: The onboard Intel graphics adapter is not capable of driving a 17" LCD 1280x1024 monitor! My monitor looked really bad--fuzzy, unpleasant to look at. I had set the display to the correct resolution, but the adapter is not really capable of displaying at that resolution and had to do some interpolation of pixels, resulting in very poor image quality. Fortunately, I had an nVidia Geforce2 MMX400 PCI graphics card on my old system, which installed and ran without problem on the new Dell. Now my monitor looks great again. The Intel graphics adapter would probably be OK for a 15" monitor, but no more. ALSO, I find that this computer is considerably noisier than the old one, mostly due to the CPU fan which is larger and runs faster in order to cool these hot-running P4 processors. I might look into switching the cpu to a P4 1.8A chip which runs cooler, and adding a much larger heat sink and a fan that runs slower to provide a quieter machine, but that is not an urgent issue.
SO: overall I'm really happy with the Dell, and I'm glad I went "cheap."
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 609
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Celeron
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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nograe
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Reviews written: 4
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