[alex]

Hows about the term Rip off Dell?

No? you're about to.

Time for a Dell bash.

Do you really want to buy from Dell? have a read....

I've just been nosying at dells site at monitors (to be fair they are superb) and, for the hell of it, decided to spec their top-end pc the xps 710.

Read on.

To buy an E6400 core2 cpu would cost you about £150.00, to buy an E6600 core2 cpu would cost you about £200.00, a £50.00 increase.

Dell are asking £105.75 for the upgrade.

to buy ddr 5300 (667mhz) ram can cost you as little as £40.00 per gb, so thats £160.00 for 4gb.

Dell are asking for £199.75 for an upgrade of 2gb over the base amount of 2gb.

2x 250gb drives can cost you as little as £45.00 each, so thats £90.00 for 500gb.
2x 320gb drives can cost you as little as £55.00 each, so thats £110.00 for 640gb
an increase of £20.00 for an extra 140gb

Dell are asking £70.50 for that same 140gb increase.

A typical dvd-rw or dvd-rom drive can cost you around £20 for a decent one or upto £30 for a very good,fast one (pioneer dvd111). So if you were to get a rewriter AND a combined cd-writer/dvd-reader it would cost approx £50, ok lets say £60 to be on the fair side.

Dell are suppling the dvd-rw in the base price but asking....wait for it.....£94.01 for the cd-writer/dvd-reader. GIVE.ME.A.BREAK.

The upgrade price on the graphics card isn't unfair at all, but its very telling that you have to go all the way from a dual-7900gs upto an 8800gtx, at a cost of £188.00 on their site. So to upgrade at all will cost you near £200.00. Funny they don't offer the 8800gts or the 7950gt isn't it.

i've used all the items above simply because they're available on the xps i've specced, so its a direct comparison

You could say "Well they have to fit it don't they" well, yeah, but they'd have to fit the original component as well wouldn't they.

Seriously, don't EVER buy from Rip Off Dell, or ROD for short, infact, thats what i'm going to be calling them from now on. Rod. Funnily enough, it kinda suits.

:D

[crimsonc]

I feel I have to defend Dell here a little bit.

I purchased the Dell Inspiron 1300 last September for Uni, the wide-screen standard model with the extra life battery.

The hard drive completely died about three months later and I had to get a replacement, obviously losing all my Uni work in the process. Had they not replaced it the next morning I wouldn't be here defending them but they were quick, it was free and my 'downtime' was minimal.

I know I lost work because of this but Laptop Hard drives break, it's not something you can predict and I can hardly blame them for it. If thousands of people were having the same problems it might be a different story.

Regarding pricing issues, I can't argue with that, it's a fact! But I can only go on my personal experiences.

[alex]

Hi Crimson, glad to hear the warranty replacement was painless. I didn't comment on that because i've never purchased anything from them, because of what i've put in my initial comments. I wouldn't want to comment on anything i've no personal experience of as it wouldn't be fair....

....I still think they're blinkin' daylight robbers though