Does Dell make its own motherboards?

chosen to buy in some Dell PCs for the office. One reason might be that I
am, as you say, an idiot. The other reason might be that the Dells do the
job I need for the office, and they cost 20% less to buy in ready-built
than the price at which I can buy the parts.

20%? Yes, that probably sounds about right. We've only built one custom PC
at work (a dual Athlon XP system) and we've had no end of problems with it -
it's always got the top off :-) The Dell PCs & servers just sit there and
work 24/7.

Rob.

20% for not being able to support them *properly* when the machine goes
down is worth it is it?

Dell kit is incredibly reliable mainly because you don't mess around with
it. The only Dell hardware we've had fail is a CD-ROM and video output from
one laptop. Compared to the Compaq iPAQ that litereraly blew up, the custom
built Gigabyte system that decided to stop working with WD hard disk and
won't run through the KVM, the 3 Toshiba laptops that have developed several
faults etc...

If one of the Dell base units failed, we wouldn't bother trying to fix it.
We'd simply buy a new base unit for ~£200. £200 doesn't buy you a lot of
"fixing" time and you'll have a nice new higher-spec box anyway.

Rob.

I can build and have a system up and running in about half a day.

And what about time spent purchasing the components and did that include the
operating system and software?? What about those times when you got an
awkward new motherboard which didn't work with a component?

And don't get me started if one of the components was DOA! Getting the
supermarket suppliers like Dabs & Insight to replace them is a nightmare...

Rob.

As you say though getting an engineer out can sometimes be
problematic. I've been finding their call center problematic at times.

Dell's customer care did go down hill last year, about the same time they
outsourced to India... I believe there have been so many complaints that
this is under review. We had one particularly hilarious support job where we
just wanted a missing CD-ROM for a laptop (it was missing on delivery). The
probably spent more time on the support call than the £1 CD-ROM.

But compared to Gigabyte support...

Rob.

"But I have 3 year on-site warranty" you say

For what Dell charge? You must be joking! :-)

We don't bother with the 3 year on-site warranty except for the servers -
one year RTB is fine. For desktops and even laptops it just doesn't make
financial sense. For the occasional system that might fail, then just buy
another one. 2 x new systems in a 50 user site compared to 50 x 3 year
warranty - you do the math :-)

Rob.

I have the impression (correct me if I am wrong) that the component
qulaity and the build quality of a Dell is pretty decent. Sure it is

The build quality is probably unmatched. Laptops are a bit less reliable but
then again, they always are...

Rob.

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 10:04:54 GMT, "Rob Nicholson"
wrote:

chosen to buy in some Dell PCs for the office. One reason might be that I
am, as you say, an idiot. The other reason might be that the Dells do the
job I need for the office, and they cost 20% less to buy in ready-built
than the price at which I can buy the parts.

20%? Yes, that probably sounds about right. We've only built one custom PC
at work (a dual Athlon XP system) and we've had no end of problems with it -
it's always got the top off :-) The Dell PCs & servers just sit there and
work 24/7.

This is the thing with Dell compareed to many self builds. Dell go for
reasonable quality components that are not pushing too hard but are
stable. They have checked for compatibility so you known there most
likley won't be odd conflicts (at least at the driver release you
get).

How many people self build a server with a hot swap SCSI array and hot
swap redundant power supplies? Thats the sort of area where Dell is
good..
--
Gamma gamma gamma chameleon
You come and glow, you come and glow.
Kick out the cats before you reply

.... does that translate into "no one ever got fired for buying an IBM"
)))))))))

Do they still make Thinkpads themselves? I know they've just sold the entire
PC arm to a company in China.

Rob.

I ask because your suggestion/experience of Dell has no reflection on
what it's like in the UK (Britain)

Eh? Software purchased with a Dell PC (i.e. Windows XP Professional & Office
2003) is always cheaper than purchased separately, unless you have a huge
license agreement.

Rob.

On Wed, 05 Jan 2005 10:14:46 GMT, "Rob Nicholson"
wrote:

"But I have 3 year on-site warranty" you say

For what Dell charge? You must be joking! :-)

We don't bother with the 3 year on-site warranty except for the servers -
one year RTB is fine. For desktops and even laptops it just doesn't make
financial sense. For the occasional system that might fail, then just buy
another one. 2 x new systems in a 50 user site compared to 50 x 3 year
warranty - you do the math :-)

I think it was around 250-500 or so for the 3 yrs 4hr response on my
friend's companies Dell server. Thats SFA compared to the loss of
earnings due to downtime if they had to do a self rebuild.

When he swapped all his PCs to dell I told him to keep back a couple
of the old clonkeys as swappables, just incase :-)
--
Gamma gamma gamma chameleon
You come and glow, you come and glow.
Kick out the cats before you reply