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."
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.
(for those too lazy to read the article:)
"My mouse pad is broken."
Without mincing words: We had significant quality of use issues with this computer.
First and most obviously, we started having problems with our optical mouse. Sometimes it would wildly fly across the screen, other times we had trouble controlling it. Those of you who have ever tried to use an optical mouse on a shiny surface know what I'm talking about.
The reason why (and I can't believe I'm typing this) was that the mouse pad that Dell provided was too shiny and reflective to be used with their own, branded, optical mouse.
It's no longer a tech support urban legend. We have a documented case of a computer mouse pad being "broken."
Basically the article says the hardware is OK, but the preinstalled stuff sucks.
I don't know why it is that vendors insist on preloading so much crap on their machines when they ship them but it drives me crazy.
:P
We buy Toshiba laptops at my place of work and whenever we get a new one in, its preloaded with the Toshiba default build.. and its pretty awful! When you first fire it up you have to run the gauntlet of about 5-10 pop up windows from apps all letting you know that they are there and running. Cast a glance down to the system tray and there are about 11 or 12 memory resident apps all sitting there taking their cut of the memory and CPU time - one was a Toshiba app that basically takes over the Microsoft power management suite with a far more complex and convoluted piece of software!
I don't understand it personally. Windows might grind the gears of plenty of people but these days its quite a sleek, easy to us OS - why must they insist on bundling all this crap on the machine which must surely confuse users, and give them so much more overhead in places that they don't even need it! Not to mention the quite obvious performance impact on the machine.
I still prefer to make my own PC's - most recent build was for my girlfriend - a really nice Biostar IDEQ barebones box based on an AMD Sempron/NForce3 250 combo! It goes like a rocket, and there is no clutter and crapola on it! Other than Windows
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
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.
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.
If the Dimension XPS400 is any indication, Dell considers computer gamers a joke.
Any gamer that goes to Dell for a computer IS a joke. It's like the audiophile that goes to Best Buy for all his HT needs. It's like grocery shopping at a 7-Eleven.. It's like calling Geek Squad for computer help. It's like going to McDonalds for a Caesar salad...
It's like buying a TV at a grocery store. It's like wine in a box. It's like Bourbon made in California.. or Scotch made in Canada. It's like calling Will and Grace smart TV.
It's like a house with wheels on it. It's like a hand-crank garage door opener. It's like glasses purchased at a book store. It's like going to Macy's for a PDA. It's like getting high on cigarettes.
It's like rocking out to Madonna or being entertained by Bio Dome. It's like getting fashion advice from Paris Hilton. It's like getting religious advice from Tom Cruise.
Well anyway.. I hope you get the point.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Clearly I'd like to avoid stretching this metaphor too far but perhaps a better comparison would be that the car salesman has sold you a car with a giant caravan made out of ads which is glued to the back bumper and connected to your cars workings through a giant but badly maintained skein of cables. At speeds of over 30 miles an hour various lights and systems in the caravan are activated making it sway and jump from side to side whilst shining bright lights into your mirrors and making annoying, loud, distracting noises. If you choose to disconnect the caravan and incorrectly disconnect the impossible maze of wiring other bits of your car will randomly stop working or reconfigure themselves as toasters or electric hair curlers. Any mechanics you approach to fix the problem can only get the car to work again by completely reconnecting the giant annoying caravan to your back bumper again.
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
Two reasons, price, support.
Because last November I bought a dual Xeon 3 ghz with 3 year warranty for the same money it would cost to buy just the CPUs and OS from some place like newegg. So I got for free; memory, video, motherboard, optical drive, hard drive, + 3 year warranty, and didn't have to spend a few hours assembling it myself.
If something goes wrong with it, I don't have to spend my time futzing with it, a guy shows up the next day with parts and fixes it. On one dell laptop when the power supply burned out, they shipped me a new one morning delivery, I had it before the batteries died. One coworker they sent a new laptop power supply when he just lost it, he had called to order a new one. You can't beat the support.
Now the wife's game machine is a homegrown because it doesn't cost me money when it's down, but for my production machines I always buy Dell.
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
Aside from the curiosity that they have someone listed as a "Grammatical (sic) and Spelling Editor -- whose duties evidently do not extend to punctuation (should be: manufacturers'), this passage translates as: "normally, we only review stuff we can get for free -- we paid for this one." I don't have a problem with the practice of reviewing Hardware from the retail perspective: indeed, for similar reasons and about the same time, Tom's Hardware has taken the same step. What's worrisome is the curious mix of the "Consumer Reports" style with an allusion to a failed negotiation with Dell's Marketing Department. Well, okay, maybe not an allusion: it is conceivable that nobody at [H]ard OCP tried to contact "the largest manufacturer in North America" for a "review copy" deal. It is conceivable, but not likely.
So at the start of the review, the editors tell us that Dell "won't play ball", and they probably spent around $3000 in taxes and restocking fees. The review that follows, of course, will not reflect these facts.
And the review that follows is a beauty: tearing into Dell for all those awful bundling practices they negotiate with third parties to bring the price down further, for not including a recovery diskette, then charging $11 for an OS CD, and having crappy customer support. Oh yeah, the system is unstable as Hell because, after running their "torture test" on the original setup -- with all the crap running., it crashed at the 24 hour mark. system restore.
Then, at the end of the article, the editor steps in with the reason for all this:
For those of you that missed it, the Review in question evaluates a system a couple notches up in the performance category (but, one assumes, since Gateway's marketing dept. played ball, the journalistic budget didn't factor in). But even hardware differences aside, methodologically the two cases aren't comparable. As far as bloatware goes, the Gateway shipped not only with McAfee's antivirus (which the Dell review repeatedly cites as a nuisance and a cause of instability), but also Norton and BigFix. The drivers were not 3 months out of date like at Dell, but 8 months (to which the reviewer says: "Big deal? Not really" and proudly states he installed the latest driver immediately -- instead of, like the Dell review, going to try out games he knew wouldn't work). The Gateway had tons of toolbars and installed bloat. What did the reviewer do?:
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.