im thinking about getting a dell inspirion laptop.

anyone had experience with them?
pro/cons?

Got a Latitude (it's older series) and love it

im lookin at the 9400 inspirion 2.16ghz.
hopefully this would prove to be a good machine for a few years to come.

Ive had several Dell Latitude machines over the years and never ever had a problem with any of them. Got a D610 now.

Dell laptops are brilliant, I may be slightly biased as I'm a DCSE. (I dont sell them, just repair them)

Theres not another brand of laptop i would purchase.. Dell have brilliant after sales service, Next Buisness day onsite repairs .. I'd suggest spending the extra $500 or so for the 3 year complete cover warranty as it covers accidents (like dropping, for 3 years) aswell as theft and its NBD onsite repair/replacement.

I'm responding to this on an inspiron 9100.

it's a 3.2ghz p4
256mb radeon 9800 gfx card
80gb hard-drive
dvd burner
inbuilt subwoofer in the battery
15.4" widescreen.
54mbps 802.11 a/b/g wlan
inbuilt bletooth

and what can i say...it benchmarks fairly well.

90something fps on cs:source
110 on cs 1.6 and cs:cz

so i can highly recommend. i bought this in september of 2004...no dramas at all...easily as fast as my mates dell desktop (which is a year of two old now to be fair..but still)

the pricing on dell laptops seem to be fairly excessive when you compare them to other brands sold at other outlets.

should i dare look to buy from dickies or bing lee?

ideally i want a laptop p4, at least 1024 ram, decent graphics card etc
mainly will be used for games, music, videos and art/graphics etc

where else and what other brands should i go for?
i imagine id have to spend at least ~$2700?

my work machine is a latitude d505
much better than the toshibas i've had
the only other i would buy is a thinkpad

i bought mine over in england and it ended up being a helluve a lot cheaper than buying it over here.

i can very highly recommend grays auctions.

http://www.graysonline.com.au/category.asp?PARENT_ID=3

they have some very cheap, GOOD, NEW computers going.

my mate got a dell inspiron 6100 with 1gb ram, 128mb graphics, dvd burner all the good stuff...cost him $1200 delivered i think.

very very good deals!

Zac

wat do people think about alienware laptops?
i know they are expensive, but they seem to be very good systems, and better value than the dell equivalents...

well i got a laptop. not a dell tho

i heard alot of bad things about dells and their after sales service and warranty repairs.
just turned me off.

i went an hp 17" widescreen laptop. duo 1.6ghz, 100gig hard drive, 1024ram, 256 nvidia gfx card, dvd burner, bluetooth, wireless etc etc for $2450. pretty nice i must say. also got free carry case and went for the 3 year warranty.

Nice buy but now sure what you heard about Dell warranty

In fact Dell are renowned for having fantastic warranty service, one of their major selling points.

You sucker, You decided not to buy a Dell because you heard some bad things.. Yet went with HP? How could you not have heard bad things about them? You cant have asked anyone thats ever had to deal with the HP??
HP have without a doubt, the worst after sales service in the buisness.

We used to repair HP/Compaq laptops, but (thankfully) the company canned the contract as dealing with their people was painful, to say the least.. Being a Tech, having to call the regular public number for job details and being on hold for a minimum of 15 minutes is fun .. and then you've got to figure out exactly what they are saying, as English is far from their first language.

I hope you never have to deal with their call centers.

I will say though, HP's server support is brilliant. You always get an australian male, that speaks english well.. More than i can say for their desktop/laptop support.

Dont believe it? read here (First result in google for "HP Horrible Service"): http://www.granneman.com/personal/journals...rvice/index.htm

i run a compaq but it wasent my first choice

if i was to get another i wouldent buy anything than Toshiba.

lol there is always one. dell desktops might be good, but form the sounds of it, their laptops aint much chop after a year or two...

I'll be interested to see how well your HP laptop is running (If, at all) two years from now.

I've got a HP dv4000, had it for about a year now.
The mobo had to get replaced as occasionally it would blue screen when putting in a CD, then got more and more frequent, to the point where it wouldn't boot.
Getting the mobo changed took 2 calls to HP customer service, both times to a call centre somewhere in India or there abouts.
The first time the lady talked me thru a windows installation which JUST happened to work at the time I was on the phone. It blue screened a short time later.
The second time, the guy on the phone tried to get me to do a few diagnostics in bios, etc. I ended up being firm, telling him I know what I'm doing already! and it's just not working. Anything he told me to try, I told him I already tried it.
After that though, the customer service was great. Theres an authorised HP service joint near my house, and HP just sent down a new mobo, and ram for em to try. Had it fixed within 2 days.
I did get the extended warranty on mine thought, plus insurance for the next 4 years incase something else goes wrong.

sounds good to me. on site warranty is champion.

and btw i only intend to have this laptop for around 2-3 years if that

Up the IBM's !

Not good for gaming but there on-site support is getting better and better !

Dell are NOT the very best laptops out there, but they are absolutely solid, well rounded machines. Its all we use here at home, and all i recommend to customers who ask me about purchasing laptops, for one reason.

After sales support. This simply cannot be more important, and dell have it nailed.

When a power block failed on a new laptop, dell happily overnight expressed it to my door, with a new powerblock, new power cord, and a voucher detailing the claim and all "case file numbers"...so if the power problems persisted even with the new parts, we could simply drop it into a tech center and not worry about the details.

When a hard drive failed in an old tower machine, they replaced it free of charge. I later got the HD working again, but they didnt take it back.

Plenty of online updates for firmware, even for older models.

So yes, after-sales-support, is the main selling point for me.

IF your a bit of a techhead and are confident you could fix any issues that come up yourself, i'd go something with a bit more grunt.

I have a Mitac, I never have to get after service help as my uncle is an authorised dealer so he does it all for me.

Only problem I've had is when I spilt 2l of vodka on it and when I rooted the registry up

Umm, how does that help the dude decide ?

Maybe if you told him if you ever had any problems with it ? The good and the bad ?

Price vs features etc etc.

I said the only problems I had were problems I created - well, maybe not so explicitly.

It does everything I need it to, which is alot. I don't game on it so I don't know if it runs games well.

Battery lasts 3-4hrs.

I have been using the Dell Inspiron 9300 for the last 2 years, every day with any problems, i have alot of crap hanging of the notebook, such as Keyboard, Bluetooth mouse, head piece and hard disk, and it's been stable day in, day out.

Go for it, when i update soon, it will be another Dell.

My father bought a Dell laptop (not sure what model) and had problems with it.. so he phoned service... he was patched through to India.. but he stayed with the guy who answered.. was on the phone for over 2 hourts while he re-installed windows.... didnt cost him a cent!

ahhh Dell, gez that brings back memories....
seriously though, yes for the money they're quite good machines, but just like i tell anyone - never buy the entry level, always buy extra vendor warranty and refrain from being stupid with it. Things like direct sunlight, extreme temperatures, vibrations, rough transport and liquids entirely have to do with the end user and no matter how expensive or good the machine was, it won't count for much when you void your warranty (and believe me, nearly 7 years of this field and the amount of out-of-warranty work i've done for different vendors i could easily have bought a fezza)
food for thought at least