Experience with a Dell Vostro?

Drew16 · #1 11-19-2007, 10:09 PM

looking at picking up one of these soon. I have zero experience with dell and havent even looked at buying a PC in about 8 years (been using Macs). Gonna get a fairly inexpensive one maily for internets and cards.

havent nailed down the specifics yet, open to suggestion there too. Thanks for the help.

Ganjasaurus Rex · #2 11-20-2007, 12:52 AM

I have about 15 of them in my lab. I hate Dell, but they own the education market and it's too much of a pain to fill out paperwork to buy elsewhere. Fwiw, 2 of them died in less than a year.

LuckyTxGuy · #3 11-20-2007, 01:48 AM

Vostro is just a new line to take over the old Inspiron line on the business side. I've owned several Inspiron laptops and desktops. I've ordered many of the new Vostros (laptops and desktops) for my customers. Honestly, all the Vostros are, is an Inspiron with a new outer case, again this is true of both laptops and desktops. Seriously, they are pretty much the same computers with a new fancy name

I differ from Ganja in the fact that I like Dell. I own and work on other brands of computers for customers but for price, quality and custom computers, Dell is hard to beat.

Also, Ganja mentioned a couple Vostros dying but, I order from Dell on a weekly basis and I wasn't aware that Vostros were available for more than a few months? Also, as a computer & tech support guy I'm curious what "die" means?

Ganjasaurus Rex · #4 11-20-2007, 02:22 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Also, Ganja mentioned a couple Vostros dying but, I order from Dell on a weekly basis and I wasn't aware that Vostros were available for more than a few months? Also, as a computer & tech support guy I'm curious what "die" means?

[/ QUOTE ]
I was including our Inspirons in my tally. I was told they had the same guts.

What i mean by "die" is that they suddenly stopped working. One of them just quit in the middle of an experiment and we had to remove the hard drive to get the data off it. The other would not turn on one morning. Dell told us we could return them and get them fixed, but to be honest, the paperwork involved in that at the university level is just too painful to deal with. So i just bought two new ones. If it were my money, i suppose i would have done the paperwork...lol

I guess i shouldn't be too hard on Dell. After all, we beat these computers to death by running non-stop experiments 16 hours/day.

LuckyTxGuy · #5 11-21-2007, 01:36 AM

I hear ya Ganja, it sounds like ya'll are really using the computers more than the average Joe....however, they are meant to be used, so they still shouldn't fail. And I agree that the Vostros are just Inspirons with new cases.

I have nothing against HP/Compaq. I own/have owned several and I work on them for customers also. The reason that I rarely buy them for customers or even encourage them is that the only way to get a great deal on one is to wait for one of the big box retailers put one on a super weekend sale. Most of the time decent deals can be had in store, but either way you don't get to customize it. With Dell I can spec out a computer anyway I want and it's almost always as cheap or cheaper than buying an HP/Compaq in a brick and mortar store. As for ordering direct from HP/Compaq...it's a not feasible. The prices are usually so high it's silly, BUT I don't fault them too much for this. They sell most of their computers through retailers like Best Buy etc. They can't turn around and undercut those guys by selling the same thing $200 cheaper on their own website. I understand why they have to raise their price up like that.

Anyway, on average I think Dell is the way to go for most people if price and customization are big factors in the purchase process. But again, to each his own and I'm certainly not bashing HP.