Dude, You Got A Dell

For the past two years now I've been using a computer that I won in a poker tournament. It had a nice flat panel 17" monitor and the machine itself was an eMachines. All in all it was a very good computer considering it was free.

In recent times as I've been loading more and more software on to it I noticed it was beginning to slow a little. I was thinking of upgrading some things, but in the end it just didn't seem worth it. I decided to use some of my poker winnings to purchase a new machine.

After much research I decided to go for the Dell XPS 400. It has a 2.8GHz Pentium, a half terabyte HD, 2Gb RAM, GeForce 6800 and a really nice Creative 7.1 sound card.

My first impression of the machine is that it is dog ugly. The combination of white, silver and black just doesn't do it for me. For one off the top of the line Dell could have done a better job. The machine is also fairly noisy thanks to the graphics card fan and a noisy hard drive. Dell packaged the usual shit software with it, so I am now in the process of deleting the crap and re-installing real software on it.

The keyboard is without a doubt the most useless thing I have seen. It feels cheap and is way too small. I am going to have to buy another one very soon because the tiny keys are already pissing me off. I am also disappointed with the use of cheap looking green LEDs for various lights on the machine. Everyone knows that blue LEDs are the correct way to build a computer.

But those are the negatives. I've run some demos and done some tests and have found it to run blisteringly fast at 1600x1200x32bit. On my Samsung 204B 20" LCD it looks outstanding. It also sounds as good as it looks too. The 7.1 sound system sounds amazing even on my old Harman Kardon speakers.

So overall I think it was an excellent purchase. But probably what impressed me even more than the machine itself was the service. I read a lot of reviews that Dell had dropped the ball recently when it came to service. Now that may be true of their technical support, but when it comes to their sales they are unexpectedly brilliant.

Here is the timeline:

• Sunday: Spec'ed out the computer and placed the order.
• Sunday: Credit card declined. I had used it online that day to buy a mother's day gift, using it on a British web site. Fraud protection kicked in, card was locked out.
• Sunday 1754 EST: Called Dell to ask them to re-run the credit card.
• Tuesday 1643 EST: Machine arrived on my doorstep.

Now the web site told me it would take about 10 days to build my machine the way I wanted it, and then 3-5 business days to ship it to me. I had been expecting a couple of weeks to see my new machine and yet here I am typing on this children's keyboard they decided to send me with my great new machine.

So I've only been using the machine for a few hours, but so far I am very impressed with Dell and pleased at the decision to purchase. Time will now tell just how reliable the machine is going forward. But at this point, so far so good. If something interesting happens I will no doubt blog it for your viewing pleasure.