What is Dell computer's current reputation?

[a nameless entity]

It seems that I did a good thing by going offline a while back. For it appears that my trusty 14 year old Dell 8200 has finally died. I've tried this and that to coax it back to life, but this time it may well be that it has had a motherboard failure or hard drive failure. The symptoms suggested one or the other.

I had good luck with my old Dell's, this 8200 lasting 14 years, and the XPS 3300 I bought in '98 lasted about 10 years or more. But I am very aware that some time after 2002 Dell's reputation took a very well deserved major hit.

The question is, have they gotten any better since those days?

I just tried Consumer Report's website, but they have gotten very tight lipped these last few years, and share nothing online to non subscribers.

Please chime in with what you've heard, or recommendations on Dell's or any other brand that is a good buy. Thanks!

[Hook]

Well, we have only owned 1 PC before the current one we have now.

We had an HP Pavilion Pentium III that we got in the late fall of 1999.
We finally recycled it in late 2016 - it still ran great! (my wife made me do it)
It saw a heck of a lot of use between my family of 5 and our 8 grand children banging away on the poor old girl.

About 2 years back we got a new HP all-in-one, mainly because we trusted HP.
We love it!

[Nelsona]

In our company there is a service room where we have a DELL Optiplex whatever with Bios updated, and 700+ MB RAM. We are using it in programing different devices. After so many years passed, machine is in good state, running stable. Boss will not change it very soon, as long as we don't have headaches by working with it, regarding to W10 "threatening".

In my Opinion Dell, HP, Fujitsu Siemens (these passing through my hands) are really good Brands. The most impressive thing leaving me shocked was Fujitsu Siemens having an insane speed at reading USB storage media, and it was a PIV HT with simple DDR memory.

[Hermskii]

With nothing but my gut feeling, Dell stopped being publicly traded a few years back so they could manage their own timelines and not cut too many corners to feed the investors. I think it was the right thing to do.

Dell has a great name as far as I am concerned. How could they not? Their in TEXAS! Besides that and getting to the only bad things I can say about them, I would say that if you get a Dell these days, expect the power supply to crap out if you don't have the PC connected directly to a UPS at all times. They don't have the best history with hard drives either. Other than that, they are bullet proof.

I'm on a Dell Precision T3400 as we speak which has some sort of Quad Core processor in it. It was made back in 2007 and is still getting it done 10 years later. I replaced the original HDD, video card and RAM. Actually there was no HDD when I found it in a junk pile. Nor was their RAM in it. I needed a better video card it in so I bought one forever ago and put it in. This thing is solid but isn't made to support WIN 10 or even WIN 7 I'm pretty sure.

I'm a computer guy. I make things work. Oh and the onboard NIC is crap and so I have disabled it and installed one I had laying around.

Don't put too much money into a PC these days. Go buy a laptop for $250 and be done with it. Buy another one ever 2 - 5 years and you will always be set and in the top 1/2 of good computers out there!

The only thing I know for sure with my next PC is it will have a SSD for a HDD. Can't wait!

[a nameless entity]

Well as you're a computer guy, maybe I will burden you with the symptoms that warned me of eventual failure?

The first thing I noticed a few months ago was that the PC would shut itself OFF instead of going into hibernate after 3 hours. So I disabled hibernate. The problem seemed fixed.

Then a few weeks ago the PC would suddenly quit as if there had been a power cut and would reboot itself. Then the next day it took 3 tries to load the desktop, but was ok afterwards. The next day it was the same but kept quitting suddenly and auto rebooting. Even though I had set the bios for the PC to remain OFF after a power cut many years ago.

I decided to try cleaning the PC's internals, since I had not done so for a long time. There was a lot of dust in the heat sink/fan housing of the video card as usual, it seems to like to store dust in the spaces.
But then afterwards the PC wouldn't reboot at all, and all that would happen was the light on the cd drive would constantly flash as if the PC was trying to boot from there.
I had replaced the power supply years ago, and it had lots of extra wires that were extra long. Once before one of the wires caught on something when the case was closed, and then just moving the wires about fixed things and it ran ok afterwards. But not this time. Still no hdd activity.
Since the hdd seems to be dead, my last try will be to try a different power plug since there's always a chance the one currently connected might be damaged due to being strained when pulled on by closing the case.

But once that fails to fix things, as I expect it will, then I'll consider your advice to buy a cheap pc, but I might splurge on a ssd, since I don't trust the sata hard drives too much. They seem much more fail prone that the old pata's, to me.

Then, when I win the lotto, I'll get one of these:

http://www.ncix.com/detail/ncix-pc-impa ... merReviews

(Well, I can dream, can't I? )

[Hook]

Hermskii - see nameless's post above first as he has asked some questions.

=========

Well, as a rule of thumb, virtually all electronics gurus (Hermskii included) say (basically) to spend less and buy more often.
It keeps your electronics more up to date - etc.
As Hermskii says: "Go buy a laptop for $250 and be done with it. Buy another one ever 2 - 5 years and you will always be set and in the top 1/2 of good computers out there!"
Or, replace the word laptop above with PC. (either way)

If you want to spend more, yes, Dell still is one of the best, but as I said about my old HP, it outlasted most PCs that I have heard lasting long. (however it was getting very out of date)
The thing is, many with long lasting PCs have replaced parts over those years of use, to keep it going.
With our HP Pavilion I mentioned about, it was all original - nothing fixed or replaced.
HPs are known for being tough - a brand known as being used in many schools and institutions.
Let me tell ya, ours went through 17 years of big use as I stated in my above post. (all original - never fixed)
I only got rid of it because the boss (aka wife) ordered it recycled!
Also, again, we Love our newer HP all-in-one!

[Dr.Flay]

Dell is a mixed blessing.
They tend to make robust stable PCs for office use, but they also often use proprietary connectors or non-standard voltages, so you have no choice but to by any replacements or upgrades from Dell, at a higher price than the original manufacturer.
eg. expect to pay twice the price for an equivalent GFX card of HD.

A friend of mine was not impressed to discover Dell used a higher voltage in his girlfriends PC, when the replacement HD just fried and started to let out the blue smoke that runs all electronic equipment.

How standard a Dell is, is difficult to know until you need to fix them. Just as well they tend to run for years.

Personally I would look for a bargain deal on a Mobo, CPU and RAM, then price up the missing parts to compare what it will cost you.
Either that or look for a second-hand PC that was made within the last 5 years.
All those people that like the latest greatest, provide the second hand market with some very nice stuff.

[Hermskii]

Yeah, I did forget to mention about the proprietary part of Dell and that sucking somewhat. You do usually need to buy DELL branded replacement parts. They can be very finicky about which ram you use especially.

I would bet money your power supply is bad again. Dell has crappy power supplies. Usually the light on the front will blink orange/amber after you try to turn it on if the power supply crapped out. If the HDD was dead and it was the only problem, you would get a message saying it can't be detected or that it is damaged and needs to be repaired. Some sort of crap like that.

Do you get anything on screen when you turn it on? A dell Splash screen? BIOS words rolling by quickly? Error messages?
Anything?

[a nameless entity]

I was getting the splash screen before I cleaned the stupid PC.
At first the desktop would load and then suddenly quit with a reboot. The last time I tried to see if it would boot up it couldn't get too far past the Dell splash screen and would quit and start rebooting over and over again.
That's when I cleaned the PC and somehow made it worse?

Now the little light for the hdd doesn't seem to even flash. What I do get is a juddering sound from the cd drive, and the green diode for the cd drive flashes continuously as if it's trying to boot from a cd.

Actually, I replaced the power supply with a better one some years ago. My brother gave it to me for Xmas. I still have the original. I suppose as a next or last step I could try putting the original power supply back in.

My own research on new Dell's seems to indicate that even the video cards are now proprietary, as well as the mother boards. Screw that!
I know of a good company called NCIX that will build a PC for me with top grade parts. My brother liked them and recommended them to me a few years ago.
I may be calling them soon. I have some extra money saved up and if the dentist doesn't scoop it all again, I will be back in business.

[a nameless entity]

I know of a good company called NCIX that will build a PC for me with top grade parts. I may be calling them soon. I have some extra money saved up and if the dentist doesn't scoop it all again, I will be back in business.

I need to have a cap replaced

[Hermskii]

Good luck with that cap. I need one replaced too. It will likely cost me about $500 after insurance pays their part.

[a nameless entity]

Good luck with that cap. I need one replaced too. It will likely cost me about $500 after insurance pays their part.

$1378 total.

Plus $288 for the cleaning job.

They talk and talk about a national drug plan, and a dental plan, then shelve the idea because the air force needs new jets, the navy needs new boats, and the army needs new boots.

Not to mention every other thing that gets priority.

[Hermskii]

Ouch. Mine did cost $540 and is done now but they found another one that needs to be replaced. I grind my teeth in my sleep. SUX!

[a nameless entity]

I still have been mulling over possible ideas and fixes regarding getting my Dell 8200 going again. Lately I wondered if the battery might be low again. I recall that I saw a message regarding that once or twice, but when I moved the power cord to an "always on" slot on my power bar, the messages stopped. I wasn't too convinced that this might be the culprit until I saw this thread today:

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/ ... 318429760/

The battery is at least five years old, so it's worth a shot.

[Hermskii]

Get a new PC. Just do it. Spend no more than $300.00 USD.