DELL Inspiron 1501

I have a Dell Dimension 3100 with P4 3.0GHz HT processor, 1gb ramm 250gb hard drive and I love it. It's the first PC I have ever had that has never let me down. It's reasonably quick and nice to use. My son wants a new PC, he'll be getting a Dell.
My compaq laptop has been pretty good but has just died. It was a little slow to get going too.

 

Glad you guys are getting along with yer puters. My relationships have always been love/hate based. / :angry: Dell has won many awards for their laptop products but as of late I have decided to forego purchasing their desktop products because of Dell's proclivity towards proprietary parts. i.s. Can’t buy your own PSU if it burns out and you have to either wait for theirs to show up or pay more. <_< Reminds me of the 60's and early 90's when some manufactures like Packard Bell, went that same route but are all out of biz now. I'd still buy their laptops though.

Wildkow

 

A couple of years ago I bought a Dell Dimension. About a week after the warranty ended, the hard drive died. I thought I could just go down to Ye Old Electronics Shoppe, buy a new hard drive, swap it out, and I'd be good to go. I was an idiot. When I tried to install it, that's when I found out all about Dell's proprietary crap. And I'd vote for George W. Bush before I'd buy another Dell hard drive, so I spent WEEKS trying to do a work-around. Finally, I gave up, bought an HP, and have enjoyed it ever since. And hey, it even has an extra hard drive (the one I bought for the Dell).

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Wildkow @ Sep 3 2007, 01:27 PM) [snapback]506338[/snapback]</div>

Wildkow,

http://www.PCpowerAndCooling.com makes great PSUs that fit Dell's PCs (as well as standard ones). No problem here with Dell Laptops or Desktops.

JeffD

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Stev0 @ Sep 3 2007, 01:35 PM) [snapback]506343[/snapback]</div>

There is nothing proprietary about the hard drives in Dell computers. They use standard hard drives in all of their machines. Of course you do have to be sure to buy a compatible drive for your PC. I recently upgraded the hard drives in both my son's desktop and my laptop with no problems.

JeffD

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hycamguy07 @ Sep 3 2007, 11:54 AM) [snapback]506325[/snapback]</div>

Check out the Hibernate option-- It will shave even more time off your start-up on your Inspiron laptop. B)

Personally I've always used IBM Thinkpads up until Lenovo took over.. But then again all these big computer vendors like Dell, IBM/Lenovo, Compaq/HP, etc. all outsource their laptop production from the same Taiwanese OEM manufacturers (Compal, Quanta and Wistron) and put their name badges on it, so for a given feature-set/price range, these laptops are all pretty much the same.

I set my Thinkpad T41 to go into Hibernate mode when I close the lid. When I open the laptop to wake it up again, it takes all of 15 seconds. You should be able to do this on your Inspiron too.

I got my next laptop on order, this time it's going to be an Apple Macbook with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4gHz-- Best of both worlds, it will run both Apple OSX and Microsoft Windows natively, no emulation. Can't wait!

 

i've been happy with my inspiron e1405 for well over a year now. the optical drive wasn't quite right when it arrived, so they sent a new one. and not a problem since. all my research data is backed up on the department server for peace of mind anyway.

this would be our 2nd dell laptop with only the one problem i mentioned above. we had a desktop, no problems there either, but decided to sell it to buy the second laptop.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(JustLurkin @ Sep 3 2007, 11:41 AM) [snapback]506379[/snapback]</div>

It's not just the manufacturing that is outsourced, the design is too, which is why the Taiwanese manufacturers are called ODMs (Original Design Manufacturer) today and not OEMs. Someone building laptops for Apple is an OEM because Apple did the original design, but for Dell they would be an ODM because all Dell did was spec the laptop.