dell is all ive owned. 1st one was very expensive and lasted only 5 yrs. replaced it this yr with a 380 precision workstation and really like it. relatives have had packard bell, hp, compaq, gateway and now they all own dells. ive had very few problems with my 1st dell. this one nothing yet. i dislike dell's sales immensely. parts use to be proprietary as with my 1st dell so i had to replace it. upgrade through them while parts exist, otherwise it's get a new one. the apple laptop, ive had no problems with at all. dells r expensive for what little you get compared to other brands.

 

The only issue Ive seen with cheaper entry level PCs is that they use proprietary Mobos. My gateway use an intel board and etc, but the 2 Packard Bell Pcs i had before that used proprietary components, which made it almost damn near impossible to upgrade anything.

 

My Primary IDE channel is shot. I had 2 hard drives hooked up...all of a sudden i kept getting primary IDE errors. I then checked the IDE cable and it's still fine...i reversed everything and put CD drive in primary and HD's in secondary and the CD drives stopped working. I even made sure all jumper configurations were correct...still the same problem....i came to the conclusion...hardware failure.

 

so blame the motherboard manufacturer... not dell

 

Dell selects the configuration to their Mobos and has them made to fit their cases only.

Therefore it falls into Dells lap when one fails

 

I have some northgate computer I got from Staples like 3 years back. Wors just fine for me.

 

I've worked on several dell systems that were using off the shelf Intel motherboards. Not saying that one wasn't something dell had custom done but it's possible either way.

 

Ive had:
Emachine - Personally, i thought it was an overall, shitty machine.
Hp(current) - I like it, but i dont think it was worth the price.

All i know about dell is that my sister has had three, count them three, dell labtops shit out on her. Im not saying it was the labtop, because there is a chance it was my dumb-shit sister.

 

Laptop

 

I notice alot of people for some reason say laBtop