Is Dell Reliable?

 Is Dell reliable and do they honor their warranties on computers and
monitors?

  On Thu, 5 May 2011, T W wrote:


But that's two unrelated questions.  If they are reliable, then who needs
to worry about warranty?

I've had this 1GHz Dell since December of 2003, and for much of that time,
it has been left on.  It was a hand me down, so maybe it was about 2 years
old when I got it.

What's "reliable"?  The hard drive was still running when I took it out to
put in a larger capacity drive.  The original DVDrom (read only) drive did
fail, well never completely it just generated endless error messages. But
that was okay, I wanted a DVDRW drive anyway and did so in the spring of
2007.  The video card started generated horizontal lines at some point
and while I thought it was the monitor, it was actually the card.  So I
replaced it in June 2008 with a video card I'd taken out of some computer
I found on the sidewalk.

The RAM is still fine, even upgraded it, first adding 128megs via a DIMM I
found on some other computer lying on the sidewalk, and then later I
changed that to a 256meg DIMM (giving the maximum 512megs) from some other
computer left on the sidewalk.

I'd say it's been pretty reliable.  I have opened it up a few times to
vacuum it out.  I know nothing about warranty, since I would never pursue
that unless it was actually new to me.

   Michael

 T W wrote:


Dell (like Compaq) has been known to put proprietary parts into their
computers to prevent customers from buying aftermarket replacement and
upgrade parts.  Don't know how they're doing on that aspect these
days...

 T W wrote:


Not that great. I have seen more warranty repairs with Dell laptops than with
other name brands.

 

So you repair computers for a living?