Just got my laptop - ordered on the 3 March got it on the 13th March... took 10 days instead of the rediculous 35 days they quoted after ordering it.
One complaint - dont' try to change the order address... it'll take over a week (so they told me when i tried to change the delivery address to my work address). I had to book a day off work to sit at home and wait for it.
Anytime between 08:00 and 18:00 - luckily it came at 10:00 so i could still go into work.

I have vista ultimate installed... not happy with it yet... I can't see any benefit yet. It just sucks all my resources up.

Could be a lot worse, you could have ordered a Vaio in Russia .... good old DHL ...

The royal pain that you have with pre-configured Windows is that you end up looking for drivers if you want to upgrade it. In my opinion, moving to XP Pro is an upgrade, and not just because you lose the embedded DRM rubbish (aka a serial chain of single points of failure) and the Vista "security" which amounts to "you moved the mouse, block/allow?"

However, I heard from Media Markt that MS had given in to the large XP demand from business, and if I recall correctly it must be possible to get restore CDs for your Dell that will turn it into an XP machine. Coming from Dell it means it ought to have all the relevant drivers pre-loaded, and I think you don't need to pay all that much for the disks as your Vista license is apparently also valid for XP Pro.

Sadly I have a bit more work with my Sony (it came just out of warranty when I bought it, but it's off a known source :-) - that is driver installation all the way. At least it gives me the chance to prevent the crapware from installing..

And then, there is always the possibility to install Ubuntu instead - I haven't used MS Office for over 2 years other than Outlook (blame my mobile for that - I use Thunderbird for email). If I only found time to set up a SyncML server.. I always have Ubuntu as second boot session (also a good rescue mechanism :-), and there is also a Swiss cut of it at ch/open (got a spare if you want an 'official' copy, I'm a member :-).

Oh, as for security: IMHO, Kaspersky is still the best antivirus checker, and I use an external USB harddisk with Acronis True Image Home for backup. I STRONGLY recommend that you plan what you install, build the whole machine and then take a full Acronis disk image. If you want to start from scratch it'll take < 1 hour with the Acronis boot disk vs. installing everything and its mother and serial number etc etc. Ditto with subsequent backups (I never bother with incrementals, I do it end of week and have set a shutdown program as post-backup command ).

Another one for safety: create an admin user, then downgrade your account to "limited" unless you need to install something. Stops a few uglies from burrowing where they'll make a mess - you can always temporarily flip the status if you need to install something new (doesn't always work from another account).

Anyway, good luck!

Greetings,

Tangential Story...

My GF bought a Dell XPS whatever - their first real gamer laptop. 13 months after purchase, the battery failed. Despite two online attempts to order a battery from Dell being accepted, Dell eventually admitted they could no longer supply batteries for a 13-month old model from their range !!!

GF bought a MacBook Pro - now very happy. Dell XPS in bin.

GF will never order from Dell again.

As a consequence of above purchase, when I was looking to build or buy a new PC this year, I looked at her Mac and discovered it's Unix underneath (I hated a few Macs I had to use in the office in around 95'-'97 so never looked at them since and didn't realise they were running Unix underneath). I love Unix - I'm a former sys admin who thinks Windows should never ever be used in a Production-critical environment.

Now I got me a shiny new 8-core Mac Pro - expensive for sure but no upgrades needed for next XX years and running that rather nice Leopard O/S :-)

So Dell's screw-up not only cost Dell sales, but also Microsoft.

Remember that butterfly effect theory :-)

Regards.

PitBull.

They are NOW "Unix underneath" (it's a BSD derivative because a control freak like Jobs would never be comfortable with the GPL) - that's what OSX is. The previous OS was, umm, less inspired (to put it diplomatically). However, little word of caution (which you have no doubt discovered by now) - it's rumoured not quite to be as open as you would expect from a Unix based system.

I am glad, though, that they are now viable alternatives to PC. I've been running OpenOffice for 2 years now, and there is now NeoOffice to use that nice interface to the max. It means I can send a beginner to an Apple shop and get them kitted out safely, and if it breaks they can go to the Mac shop instead of hassling me :-).

Just got my Dell delivered after the total joke that HP continue to be.
Pretty happy, took 5 working days from ordering to delivery, and the added toys are a lot better than HP.
All in all Dell continue to be my hardware supplier of choice for notebooks.

I've dealt with various suppliers, and I've come to the conclusion that quality of order handling and delivery is more a function of the talents (or lack thereof) of the local distributor and the carrier they use.

We mainly use Sony (blatantly because we require their presentational aspect as well) and the Swiss repair centre required a little bit of, um, 'coaching' to get things right.

I follow a 3 step process:
- first, we try to resolve matters with staff. No sense in breaking process if we can get a sensible solution where it should come from in the first place (and we can get things wrong too - try me on Monday morning when I'm not yet up to the required level of caffeine :-).
- next we'd escalate locally (i.e. inside the distributor chain)
- next (or if we run out of patience) we talk to the manufacturer who tend to land on the distributor like a ton of bricks (which is why we try and avoid it - we may need them next time :-).

You'll find that you're mostly dealing with human issues, and with a little bit of coaching you can get any organisation to perform reasonably well. And they appreciate not being treated like complete idiots, which helps the next time you need them :-).

Having said that, sometimes you *do* come across people with room temperature IQ, at which point you're left with few options. So we also have a supplier blacklist :-).

hmm i've ordered from dell online once before (a laptop for my Dad) ... it wasn't too troublesome. they processed my order quickly and their customer service was very on top of things (e.g. my order was missing some details but they were fast to contact me to get the missing information) !

My Dell laptop battery (when they eventually found the part number) arrived after 24 days after an advertised lead time of 3-5 days.

dave

I guess you must have left out your credit card details .

As per my previous post, it can go wrong at the best of places. Could you imagine the Swiss post losing track of a parcel? Well - they did in my case, and as it contained a laptop I told them to keep looking while I filled in the loss sheet. It took them half a day to trace what happened but they *did* find it.

I must say that that loss took me by surprise, but the way they unearthed where it was gave me the impression that they log everything that moves - and it obviously works, even with the occasional hiccup. It actually gave me more confidence in them than less, because in error recovery do you learn the true nature of a company.

For what it's worth, I ordered a laptop from Dell for work. No problems with ordering or delivery. I also had a Dell laptop from the states that broke. It was under our corporate service contract, and Dell Switzerland had someone over in 1 day to fix it.

I recently ordered a dell XPS 1530 on 29th Apr ... I have got a Delivery date of 09.Jun.08 ..

1.5 weeks hence the Online status is still Pre-production - Preparation ..

One day it briefly changed to Build and testing ... for abt an hr and then was back to Production Preparation ...

Emailed Dell and they told me that the online status can be wrong and the machine is in Production... delivery date is 09.Jun.2008 (the same)

Then the mail goes on to say that you can check the status online www.dell.ch/status ... which is again the same online status which is wrong ...
1 month and 10 days is a long wait for a laptop ... maybe I could have got a lil better config with the same money

It it wasnt for the Eng. Keyboard and OS that I needed ..
hmm ...
lifes a drag .. the wait is killing all the excitement

Tweeny

I had excellent results buying from Dell. My PC came in about
10 days no problem.

This PC has been really good, and I have no complaints.

Uhmm...
English keyboard - you mean US/UK English/QWERTY?
How do you get that from dell.ch?

I just out of curiosity tried out the customize system process at dell.ch. All kinds of keyboards seem to be available to choose, but all of them in Swiss French/German QWERTZ layout.

-- Tom

yes US/UK English/QWERTY Keyboard,

Actually ... you need to place an order separately.. its not available as an option online though they do provide it.(dell is probably the only laptop that you can get with a English keyboard in Switzerland)

So what I did was i configured it as I needed online ..with the German keyboard.. but did not place the order .. I then called the ph. no displayed on the top of the page and hooked up with a sales person .. got her email and sent her the configuration and requesting the following change to it

1-Eng. Keyboard,
2-Eng. OS installed
3-Hard Disk partition (they refused to do the partitioning though... saying it would not be possible)

So she sent me a quote for the above config (did not have to pay anything extra)
which I had to print , sign and send across by post and make the payment by bank transfer ( credit card/debit card, post invoice methods are also possible)

Thats how .. not really online

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...customers.html

I need another system supporting multiple monitors and I have had a hell of a time getting help from Dell. I called a couple of times always to be put on hold or to receive promises they will get back to me with an offer which they didn't do. All I need is a basic family or business PC system, no need for a workstation, but I need a system supporting at least 3 monitors . I also want XP rather than Vista.
I haven't kept track of the current technology other than reading that with PCI express cards, most off the shelf systems do not support multi monitors without some sort of adapter costing a bundle. With that in mind
I have no idea what graphic card(s) to choose and which PC line to begin with.
I have been told to go with the Precision T3400 and the dual Nvidia Quadro NVS 290 video cards option which will run 4 monitors up to 1900x1200, DVI. But Dell.ch only makes mention of a "dual Nvidia NVS 290" video card option, it's not called "Quadro" so will it run 4 monitors ?
Also since the budget I am willing to spend is between $500 and $1000(with one 17 'monitor included if possible) that Precision system will exceed that and I wonder if there isn't any cheaper config in the Vostro or Optiplex lines .

If anyone knows a better place to buy a desktop filling those requirements with none of the problems that come with ordering from Dell, please let me know.

for multiple monitor support, get two identical video cards with VGA and DVI each (or dual DVI) and XP/Vista will drive them without much hassle. You might be able to source the second video card from Dell or cheaper "elsewhere".

What about what I read , that PCI express doesn't support multi monitors without a special adaptor ? More precisely there is only one PCIe slot accepting a vid card in most system , to add another card you need an adaptor. http://realtimesoft.com/multimon/articles/pcie/

That article is rubbish.

The card in the slot handles the multiple monitors, not the slot itself.
If it has onboard video with only one socket, you'll need an extra card.

The sockets on some cards can drive 2 monitors (2 sockets = 4 screens then). I've seen this is work but never set it up.