I have mucked about with computers for well over 20 years now, having built a Nascom 1 in the early 1980s(anyone remember those?), all 3500 soldered joints of it, worked my way through Sinclair Z80s and 81s, BBC Bs, BBC Masters, Archimedes of various flavours, and have built and upgraded several PC systems from about 1995 onwards.
So why buy ready-made, and, worse, at that price (£1750)? Even the Dimensions cost less than half of that. Several good reasons. Bullet-proof build, reliability, W2000, three years back-to-base warranty and, a total surprise, silence.
I took on an online tutoring job in late Dec 2002, and my locally built 450MHz system was suffering from a curious dial-up fault
which I could not nail. For the tutoring job I needed two screens to hold all the windows, and although I persuaded my Tosh Satellite to talk to another screen, it had the maddening habit of handing control exclusively to the external screen on standby, which then necessitated unplugging the CRT, rebooting, and then re-establishing the two-screen mode. Every time. I can do without that sort of hassle.
I have also learned the hard way that building one's own system from scratch invites all sorts of subtle and sometimes untraceable incompatibilities, and I had to have something which was reliable. Dell never seems to figure in any of the PC journals' best buy lists, largely because of the cost, but informed opinion said that they had a good reputation.
I ordered the Dell (over the internet) specifying W2000 to try to avoid most of the XP legacy problems - I didn't relish the thought of buying a new laser printer, scanner, etc, just because the manufacturers had decided not to write the appropriate drivers. W2000 is not offered by Dell on anything less than a workstation, so to some extent my hand was forced there.
There was a minor hassle over payment, initially refused by my bank (I was told by a Dell employee) because the sum was 'out of character' compared to my usual buying habits (excuse me? I wonder how many people shell out two grand every week on a computer), but that was quickly cleared away and the Dell was built and arrived within a week of that phone call.
So what is it like? Brilliant. OK, a lot of folding paper, but worth every penny. There has, for example, been a lot of fuss in the PC press recently about noisy machines, and even in my homebuilt systems I have had to swap out fans to try to minimise the incessant whining. It gets wearing. I had no idea what the Dell would be like in this respect, but I wasn't prepared to spend a lot of cash on another home-build job with an insulated case and massive heat sink, with no guarantee of better reliablilty at the end of it all.
The Dell, however, is totally noiseless. In the dead of night, in the silence of my office (it's at the back of my garage in rural Devon) I simply cannot hear the thing, and that is with a 2.4GHz processor. To put this in context, I heard a very faint clicking the other day near the machine (it's on the floor under my desk), and thought that a fan in the Workstation was dying. It turned out to be the timer clock on my storage heater.
W2000 has yet to crash, 2.4Ghz is fast, the main 19inch flat screen is superb (better than my Iiyamas), and it drives a second screen as an extension of the desktop so that the mouse runs seamlessly across both. The only snag so far is that, however hard I try, I cannot get the two other machines to access it through the network. The Dell can see them and move files to and fro, but although the Dell exists on the others, files are blocked. It's a W2000 permissions issue, and I'll get there, eventually.
I have installed a second hard drive, which went in without a hitch, the machine found my HP LaserJet IIIP and installed it without pausing for breath, and the optical mouse works like a dream. It writes CDs very rapidly, and has a tiny 64Mb USB storage pen which I can use for backup. For business purposes it's a winner.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
This sounds like a great computer...bit on the expensive side but you get what you pay for. And totally silent? Wow!
Jaxle 16.04.2003 08:59
Excellent op - well written and I enjoyed reading! Sounds like a good piece of kit here, although very expensive but I suppose it's all worth it - sounds like the build quality is excellent. Cheers, Jaxle
stevie-boy 13.04.2003 20:56
This sounds like an excellent PC for work! I agree with what u say, it's only worth buying XP if you are planning on a total overhaul of equipment e.g. new printer and scanner! Steve
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