Slashdot Mirror
Dell XPS 'Gaming' PC Review
cojsl writes "[H]ard|OCP has an entertaining review of a Dell XPS 400 'Gaming PC'." From the article: "If the Dimension XPS400 is any indication, Dell considers computer gamers a joke. Harsh, yes. But we think it's accurate. The system itself is a decent gaming platform and the hardware was well built. It was put together decently with parts that can pull the weight required to play today's graphically intensive games. But we couldn't even install one of the most popular games on the market, Sims 2, and trying to play other popular games would lock up the system and gaming sessions, when they would run, would get interrupted. The pre-installed programs that Dell chose to include on its computer were almost certainly the cause of all these problems, and unloading these programs from the boot-up routine fixed the problems."
Although I agree with your post, it should be noted that Dell still provides OEM Windows XP install discs with their Small Business lines of machines (Latitudes, Optiplexes, Precisions). I'm not sure about consumer models bought from the Small Business section, but I know for sure on the lines mentioned above. These CD's are free of charge (or rather you don't pay less by asking them not send them), and they only include Windows (none of the preinstalled junk) -- I've used them myself. Also, up until this past summer, the consumer lines in the Home section were offered with OEM Windows install CD's as well. Unfortunately around June, Dell switched to restore partitions.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Step 1) Make your backup installation CD
Step 2) Format your hard drive and install from scratch
The backup CD, at least for me, is a full XP Pro installation CD without all the bundled software that comes on the pre-installed hard drive or the system recovery CD.
And by the way, if you email support, they will send you an XP disc and a drivers disc (for your model) in the mail for free. It took about 3 days.
Personally, I just wiped out the hard drive and installed Suse 10.
The Dell software doesnt necessarily have to actually be taking up a noticeable amount of CPU time to screw things up - it could be intercepting system calls or something - a server here was having major problems until someone tried uninstalling the Dell OpenManagement stuff on it, and since then it's been running a lot better (not perfect, but definitely better.. heh)
which is totally what she said
I have an XPS Generation 2. Its 2 years old roughly. I'd place it Jan-Feb 04. Its a fairly good machine. The only problem I have had was my vid card fan, a 9800XT died on me, and was running idle at 77 degrees C, and the one time I caught it before it finally crapped out it was running 111 degrees C. I call Dell Support and got a woman with a very foreign accent, which made it difficult to understand and I had to repeat things, the other problem was I could not communicate my e-mail reliably, spelling it out to a computer would have been easier then the way the woman on the phone was interupting my letters. I tell the woman on the phone the problem with the card, how I tried to reseat it and check the power plug on the card. She reqs a new one(actually refurbished by my guess in the packaging but whatever it works). I get a few days ago, insert it works fine. All this time I got probably 2-3 calls above this to my cell phone which was definitely good communication, again the only problem was the lack of speaking English that wasn't in an American accent that I am used to. The only problem I had was they sent me an invoice, basically the price of the card in case I didn't send it back. The scary part is they aren't even charging the current market price, nor the price from 2 years ago, but some other weird price that comes to $600. So thats my Dell horror story with an XPS. The funny thing with 9800XT, is Dell put their oem bios on it, and it disabled the overdrive feature, pretty much the only reason to get an XT. Then you had to go to the support forums to find the flashrom for it.
The only thing I think they could improve on is dust covers and easier access to the screens for the fans. removing all the drives to just clean the front grill is a pain. I did receive a few disks with plenty of software, and one definitely with windows on it. They have their own recovery software, its annoying, and I wish I had a WinXP Pro disk, or a WinXP Home disk for that matter. I blame Microsoft for that problem though, simply because they should be pushing it on people. When someone wants a computer fixed or whatever, I cant do it because if I have to reformat, or reinstall, it 10x easier instead of making another visit.
I will say one thing, getting a Dell is a big waste of money, you can build one for much cheaper and it be better suited for you. The Reason I got mine though is the 4-5 year warranty
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
As a Dell onsite tech, I can tell you the very reason that they stopped sending out the Windows and Drivers Cd's. MOST OF THE IDIOTS LOST THEM. You don't know how many times I've replaced hard drives to find that the customer didn't have the cd's, but KNOWS that they received them. Dell got tired of sending out multiple copies to customers who just don't know how to keep track of their own software. You can receive a copy from tech support if ask. Also, drives that they replace do not ship with the restore partition and thus are sent with the cd's if the customer doesn't have them.
Dell sells both business and consumer models. In the desktop line the Optiplexes are the business versions and Dimensions are the consumer. They share almost all the internal parts but have different skins.
The big difference is in the software. The consumer versions come preloaded with a bunch of crappy demos and spyware-lite. The business versions have no extra pre-loaded software--just what is ordered. In addition, the business versions usually come with Gold service--a 800 number answered in the US by an English-speaking rep. Typically, the calls are answered in less than 5 minutes.
If you're looking at Dells, check out the small business store for the bloat-ware free versions.
Typically, the business versions are $50 to $100 more (depending on the system) than the consumer.
Desktop
Dimension=consumer
Optiplex=business
Lapto
Inspiron=consumer
Latitude
I also think the review was a bit harsh. They already didn't like Dell for the lack of complete choice in parts and the "big evil brand". They started out by complaining about paying taxes...if they buy their systems from any vendor in Texas they should be paying taxes...hardly Dell's fault.
I'll agree with you whole-heartedly on HP drivers and general annoyance at unwanted extra apps.
However the Wireless Connection Managers are a totally different story. XP's Wireless ZeroConf service is horrifically unstable. It'll drop connections at random, and everyone once in a while, will claim it's connected but not actually *do* anything. While I'm saavy enough to fire up services.msc and restart the service on machines that don't come with a third party connection manager, most users are not.
For people like that, having a third party connection manager that actually works and doesn't mysteriously refuse to connect is far better for the average user than just having to resort to rebooting at random intervals to maintain connectivity.