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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."
Why should their gaming PC's work any better than their business PC's?
I think Dell makes a good case here for why vendors should be forced to package clean OS discs and why Microsoft is helping these fools cause headaches by making it difficult to reinstall the OS. The first thing that should happen with these machines is that the existing installation ought to be wiped and replaced with an absolutely clean version of the OS, no software, just the OS. Critical updates ought to be packaged on discs as well.
But instead you get "backup CDs" (not even provided in the case of this Dell!) which bring you back to the OEM's idea of a starting point. That's probably fine for most desktops, but on laptops you never know which uninstall is about to break the touchpad or cause the monitor to stop working.
I keep Win2K around, with all its slow bootup times and lousy hardware support, just because I am able to reinstall when I need to. And, it's just so good that I hardly ever need to. XP? It may be technically better, but unless I have the ability to reinstall it on my own machines at my whim, it's useless.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
I wouldn't help you either. Is it just me or does the reviewer seem to have a chip on his shoulder the whole way through?
I like this kind of "whole experience" review, but I think things like taking "two clicks" to get to the relevant system on the website is being way too pedantic.
__Updated Thrice Daily Adult Videos
Would you still be happy with your purchase of a new car if the dealer sold it to you with a Club on the steering wheel? How about a new car with square wheels? Both wouldn't be driveable in their original purchase state. That's essentially what Dell is doing to its customers. They have to go out of their way to fix Dell's screwups before they can fully utilize the product they've purchased.
...that so many people have turned to consoles, when you can't even install brand new games on a brand new Dell PC without lockups and crashes?
Does anyone really want to be on the phone with India on Christmas morning trying to get a Sims game working for their kid? Do yourself a favor and just get them a Gamecube with Smash Bros and RE:4.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Which is to say, all of the hardware which Dell purchased from OTHER VENDORS worked perfectly; but the very exact service that they're being payed to provide -- namely the proper configuration and testing of that hardware setup with the software they install by default, as well as technical support -- ended up being practically of no value. Sad.
It's a nice machine but it took forever to clean up. These guys weren't exaggerating when they said it's bogged down with bloatware. No, I really don't want to sign up for AOL, use your personal firewall, browse the MusicMatch online store, purchase Quickbooks for a low low price, participate in your survey, buy a year's subscription of virus definitions, mow Michael Dell's lawn, tell Peter Norton my life story, yadda yadda yadda, ad nauseam. Really, I don't. No, I mean really. Really, goddamn it!
It's pretty amazing that other software was prevented from installing correctly and performance was degraded to a considerable extent. The story implied that about 80MB of RAM was consumed by the bloatware, but the computer has 1GB RAM. Assumedly it's not chewing all the CPU, so what exactly is it doing that breaks The Sims, for example?
The thing about it is that these machines are built to appeal to people who do not know how to reinstall the OS. While calling them power users may be a bit of a stretch, all of the PC gamers I know are generally computer literate enough to snap the parts together to build a PC, read on-screen directions to install an OS, etc. These same gamers also all build their own machines, because they know what's important to have to get a good gaming rig.
This machine is aimed at people who don't buy games because they don't know if their computer "has enough gigahertz of hard drive", the sort of people who if you did build a computer for them, would get all pissy that you put a GeForce 4 in the machine, and insist on that "voodoo 5" thing they heard about (yes, this happened to me, no I never did manage to convince them that the GeForce was better).
These people can not reinstall an OS. They want to use their PC like a game console- the PC says "gaming" so they should be able to go and buy a game, and it should work. If this machine cannot do that for those people, then it's a poor product.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
I never did understand this.
Why do people spend $3k on a computer to play the Sims ?
Can't you just by a $100 playstation to do this ?
This is not sarcasm or any other kind of flamebait, but why is gaming on PC's so important ?
Can't you get a $500 PC for random computer work and then a $100 playstation (or random game system) for games ?
Just a question.
So why buy a Dell? If you're going to wipe the drive and do an install from scratch you're losing any benefit from their install. If you're after a system for gaming wouldn't you want to build it yourself? Is it just the ~50 bucks saved?
I've never owned or used a Dell so I don't know what the draw is other than the obvious of buying in bulk.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
That bloatware crap on there is there for a very big reason, money. In the cut throat margin of the PC business, that bloatware crap gives money back to Dell to make some money off the system.
I like cheese.
He says this to complain"
"For example, our CD/DVD Autorun was disabled - or more accurately, "broken" - by Corel Photo Downloader. [...] After we clicked on "no thanks," the computer wouldn't go through the normal autorun process - we installed the games by clicking on My Computer"
Yes, and Dell did you a favor, albeit by accident.
You don't want Autorun enabled. If the Sony incident taught you nothing else, it should have taught you "AUTORUN==BAD".
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
This is one of the reasons why I build my own machines.
People here and there write that "oh, you're a dinosaur, building your own machines...who has time for that? It's 2005, buy a system from Dell or Gateway and it will be cheaper".
WRONG. Everyone that writes and says their time is too valuable to build a machine (which let's face it, it takes only a couple of hours to assemble the parts) doesn't look at playing a game as wasting their valuable time. But how much time is lost trying to unload all the CRAP that Dell/Gateway/Compaq or whatever loads into the machine because they have special deals with all these companies? They even give you the system disk that is suppose to have Windows on it so you can reload it, yet even THAT loads on all the crap again and you're right back where you started.
It's BS. I'd rather just spend the money to buy Windows and load it and that's it. Then I load what I want on it. My sister-in-law just bought a Dell laptop and I looked at her processes and she had 28 user processes running on her machine! And she was wondering why it was running slow even though it was brand new. Know how many user processes I have running on this machine? 4....just 4.
I'll build my own computers thank you.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
One of the worst offenders is freaking OEM's who feel the need to bundle their own wireless / 802.11x detection and attachment application. I mean, really. I love Linksys, but even they are guilty of providing this crap with their wireless add-in cards. But OEM laptops are the WORST. Whether it's intel's centrino or whoever, those apps are universally stupid. The Wireless zero configuration utility that's included with WinXPSP2 is excellent, stable, and integrated.
Just brings me to another problem - Provide me with a goddamn driver. I want a DLL file which interfaces the API given to the OS and applications with the commands make the hardware function. That's IT. I'm looking at you, HP. I don't want a freaking systray app for NVidia, my onboard audio's "control deck", my printer (for ink management?), my wireless card, and every other goddamn thing in the computer - I don't want to know about it, I just want it to work!
There are HP Drivers which are no joking 300MB downloads. What?!? 300MB? That's an OS, that's not a driver!
~Will
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