Dells or Compaqs?

[Seloce]

for a home system, as a majority of everyone here is saying, build it yourself. it is not hard to do anymore.

I repeat: it is not hard to do anymore.

it used to be a lot more complex, but so long as you get a halfway decent guide and follow it properly you'll be fine. do yourself a favor though. come up with some basic schematics you want to fall into (hardware wise) and post it here along with your spending limit. you'd be surprised at the amount of insight you can get from the people of this forum. they can save you a great deal of change or advice for or against a certain piece of hardware...saving you a lot of headache.

if you're looking at obtaining machines for a business purpose, most people get a prefab machine for the warranty. dell is a pretty good company to do business with (on a commercial level I mean, I've heard not as nice things about their consumer support). I'd suggest against compaq systems. their desktops really aren't that great quality.

in addition to the gripes that other people have posted here, my main problem with prefabs are obtaining proper drivers for it. I highly recommend that the first thin you do when you get a prefab system is format the sucker. in my opinion, this is never done correctly in the first place and these companies load faaar too much shit in their original installs. not only that, and correct me if I'm wrong, but all installs from the factory are just ghosted images of a single machine...which is NOT the way to do it.

</rant>

 

[echo2]

format

I agree with you on the isue of the facory format.
I've been trying to shit can as much as posible,the problem is that most of the files tie into each other and say if you delete this file you may not be able to run other programs that use this file.I am kind of new to progaming so I'm a little
gun shy.I have a compaq presario 1247 lap top,I got it with out the owners guild so it's been slow going but I've figured most of it out.Would you know of any site that I can get it or
dose any one have a copy that you can E mail me?

 

[n3tw0rkn3rd]

Compaqs along with other retail manufacturers ship with motherboards with no tweaking ability. (CPU-wise that is).

Not to mention that they put them in these cases that have virtually no accessibility, and are hell to upgrade. however dell does this too with their gx240's. personally I'd go with dell. (provided you don't want to build a computer), and yeah, gateway has better customer service, but their machines have more problems than dells.

 

[Deathwalker]

I got a Dell Inspiron 8200 and it's the best laptop I've ever had. Plus if anything does go wrong they have great support.

 

[Raween]

If you are building servers for a company with long time perspective and for high reliability, by any of them. They are both good. Do not build those yourselfs as that may get you more headache than you want.

If you don't want to biuld your own, by DELL. I've worked with both as servers, workstations and laptops and DELL has been the winner in the latter 2 and as good as Compaq for server purposes.
As mentioned by others, Compaqs service have been rather poor and sometimes they don't even know themselves what they have in their machines.
DELL has always used standard parts and hence are more easy to upgrade and has better fixes.

If you can, BUILD your own. It might not be the cheapest but sure as hell just as good and more adapted to yuor need.

 

[ikellen]

In my own opinion, both of those are crap, but if I had to choose one, Dude I'm getting a dell. Both are generic full-of-BS parts machines that cost way too much, but I have had better luck with Dell's than Compaqs.

 

[Ecniv]

I used to work for Dell, and I have had experiences with both, Dell makes a far superior computer By far. Compaq tends to take shortcust with hardware components.

 

[shan]

dude, you're gettin a dell!! Unless you build it yourself....A friend of mine bought a Compaq Laptop from Staples, and it's been nothing but trouble.....it's been in and out of the shop and least 10 times...he's got an appointment with a Staples District Manager on Monday, he's just probably gonna get an imac or something...he'll Never buy a compaq again..

 

[brahm]

Compaq vs. Dell

Man oh man there are a lot of people with opinions about this one. I have supported Compaq Computers four the last 4 years on a corporate level, and we switched as a corporation to Dell last year.

What can I say, Compaqs are definately built better than Dell when it comes to durability, but overall we have had fewer problems with Dells technically.

Compaq's tend to have more metal construction wheras Dell is all plastic.

I would not even bother with the Presario version of compaq. Go for the business models if you want a good Compaq (Deskpros, EVOs.) If you are looking at Dell I would look again at the business line of PCs, the Optiplex models of desktops and latitude laptops. Dell is coming out with a brand new model of laptop next year so I wouldn't invest in a lattitude just yet.

The key here is that if you go with a home version PC like a presario, you might as well get any brand of PC based on what feautures it has compared to the others (ie the one with the biggest disk space, ram, processor, video performance, etc...).

In my opinion they are all the same. If you build your own, beware. I have built PCs that kick-ass right off the shelf, and I have built PCs that didn't work at all due to hardware problems out of the box. even though motherboard parts and other PC components may be under warranty, it can be a real pain in the ass to get them fixed right a way, so make sure you deal with a component provider that is trustworthy and stands behind their products.

 

[sPlAtOiD]

Lo

I think building your own system is the way to go you can review every part on the internet for quility, price, and check out benchmarks on vid cards, ram ,procs and make informed decisions.Plus because of the market for cheap computers the computer makers are using inferior parts and Bad customer service.Dell use to be the best for quility and customer service but there cutting corners nowdays because of falling profits.Anyway enough about that.Later Pat S