Pimpbot

Anybody have experience with the Dell XPS range? Our old Dell Dimension which we've had for close to 4 years, was getting a little long in the tooth, plus, the missus got me a Logitech Momo stearing wheel for xmas, so I've been acting like a kid again playing some old racing games. We ordered the XPS 400 with a few upgrades from the standard version that Dell offers, as hopefully with this, I can buy some new games that might actually work.

USBound

I haven't personally had a dell since the Xps P90 (long time ago) however we use them at work and they are good machines with a decent call service (ie - its english).

The units themselves are well designed and do what they say they do.

you should be fine.

User Name

In the past year we have bought two new Dell machines for the office, with XP professional on both Dell machines (and a year or so ago, a Sony upgraded with XP professional), one of the Dells has 2 Gbytes of RAM, and both have a huge hard drive. The slightly older Sony machine seems to be more reliable than either Dell, it is very rare for the Sony to need a reboot. One of the two Dells has had to be rebooted many times, and seems to want to "install" when logging into some websites. Can't say that I am unhappy with the Dell machines, but the Sony has turned out to be more reliable. One thing I have discovered, is that the Dell and Sony machines are incompatible with respect to R/W CDs. It seems the Sony has a different algorithm from the Dell, but the Dell R/W algorithm works fine (I guess we need to get the Sony formatted R/W CDs). It seems Sony is repeating the Betamax v. VHS war all over again, but this time with R/W CDs. This is a pain, because sometimes I would like to back up a directory onto CD and take it home, but now have to bother with two different types of R/W CDs, I can't just ask someone to back-up a directory from the Sony machine, it involves messing around with different R/W CDs, we actually went for a few months thinking there was a problem with the Sony machine since the Dells worked fine with the R/W CDs, but we simply forgot that there are different R/W CDs. We have a massive 160 Gbyte back up external hard drive, but sometimes I would like to take a CD home for permanent reference.

One annoying issue with our newish Dells, they came with a lot of preloaded software preloaded on the hard-drive and for a while you have "free" use of the software, but after a while you have to sign up to carry on using the software and for a while it got annoying to keep on uninstalling unwanted software from the two Dell machines.

Also, the Dell computers didn't seem to work well with a new high performance Dell printer. To wit, I will never again buy a Dell printer - Dell computers are great, but the Dell printer we have has been very annoying. The Dell printer is so fast (probably powered by a very fast processor), but seem to have a lot of hiccups. We also bought a new HP laser printer and though it is only half as fast as the new Dell printer, the HP is more reliable and so wins hands-down for hassle free printing. I have thought about throwing the Dell printer out on many occassions, but after connecting it the Sony, it worked fine! It was a pain when connected to the Dell! We have a small network and can print to the Dell via the Sony, and so long as we print via the Sony, the Dell printer seems OK with that! Go figure!

But bottom line: I would go for a new Dell computer. They are so cheap they are almost disposable machines and/or can be replaced with new Dells at very little cost. But I am going to buy MS Word 2003 on a CD, the preloaded version on the hard-drive is fine, but if you need to fix something with a restore disc, well, you get the picture. I just rather have CDs handy for missing fonts, etc.

Roadster280

IMHO, Dell products are well worth their (not very much) money. Just don't expect to be able to upgrade it too far, or the components to be high spec. It's the computer version of Amstrad. In other words, they are OK, but ultimately, disposable. In any case, today's fantastic super duper thing is less powerful than a calculator in three years. So enjoy.

Ray

Had Dells since 1997 hardly any problems ...
Dell printer were rebadged Lexmarks and crap ...maybe not now ..
HP printer much better...

Pimpbot

This is the spec. We upgraded a few things from the standard and some things we just kept as is.

XPS 400
Pentium® D Processor 820 with Dual Core Technology (2.80GHz, 800FSB), Genuine Windows® XP Media Center 2005 Edition Qty: 1
XPS 400 Pentium® D Processor 820 with Dual Core Technology (2.80GHz, 800FSB)
SZ820H

Memory 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz- 2DIMMs
1GB52

Keyboard Dell USB Keyboard
EK

Monitors FEATURED UPGRADE!! 19 inch E193FP Analog Flat Panel
E193FU

Video Cards 256MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) nVidia GeForce 6800
NV68

Hard Drives 80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
80S

Operating System Genuine Windows® XP Media Center 2005 Edition
WMCE

Mouse Dell Optical USB Mouse
OM

Network Interface Integrated 10/100/1000 Ethernet
IN

Adobe Software Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 6.0
AAREAD


CD or DVD Drive Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 48x CD-RW Drive
DVDCDR

Sound Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
IS


Speakers Dell A525 30 Watt 2.1 Stereo Speakers with Subwoofer
A525
Office Software (not included in Windows XP) Microsoft Office Basic - Includes Word, Excel and Outlook email
BASICC
Anti-Virus/Security Suite (Pre-installed) McAfee SecurityCenter with VirusScan, Firewall, Spyware Removal, 15-months
MCAFE1Y

fatbrit

HDD is a bit small. You'll have to burn movies to DVD or you'll be out of space all the time. Rest looks fine, though.

Pimpbot

That was one of the things we were not bothered about. We only have 40g on the one we have now and have never been close to filling it. I have thousands of pictures that I just burnt onto disks for storage.

fatbrit

Sensible move then. Better to spend on those bits that need the extra oomph.

CaliforniaBride

We have 4 Dells in the house and they are excellent. And the call service we have is definitely outsourced and absolutely brill!! Hubby was raving for days about how well they helped him. Don't see how making them English, or American for that matter, would improve them.

NeilW

I have the Dell Dimension 4700 with a very similar spec to yours for about 5 months and the only problem I've had so far is that I've filled the 80 gb hard drive. You shouldn't have any trouble running the newer games on it - I get some lag with anti-aliasing on but your graphics card should handle that better, need to upgrade mine.

Bob

Nice spec...hard drive is small, but fast, will fill up quick though, games these days take a huge chunk, doom 3 was a good 5gb etc.

software, most of that is shite though, ditch it when it expires, get AntiVir or Avast for antivirus, and Open Office v2 to replace M/S Office unless you already have a copy.

Duncan Roberts

If you are thinking of holding on to it for a while I would go with more RAM. 2GB would give you a good base for a while plus it will give you more options should you wish to add more in the future. It does depend on what you want to do with it though.

dunroving

Well, actually .... I was reading a Time magazine article on the topic recently, and this is no longer true. Apparently, the chip makers have been unable to increase speed/function of chips anywhere near as fast in the past 2 years or so as they were over the preceding 10 years (during which, as you say, cutting-edge technology became dull as ditchwater within 30 days).

I'd also vote in favor of Dell. Inepxensive, good tech support, and do the job. I work on a Dell campus and almost never hear of people having computer problems. I bought a Gateway laptop almost 3 years ago and though it works fine, I wished I had bought a Dell.

Pimpbot

We did upgrade from the base 512mb to the 1g. We could have gone to 4g, but we can always buy it in the future if the need arises. I doubt I'll be rushing out to buy many new games each week, as I'm mainly interested in racing games and the game I always wanted, but my computers would never run, was Grand Prix 4. I had all the Microprose GP series up to 3, but 4 is just so much better. It's also taken on a life of it's own with people designing new tracks and cars to play with.