Never buying another Dell....how about this for junior?

[PpPete]

My son's Dell desktop has a / some hardware issue(s) that prevent it installing Vista SP1, or Windows 7. I've had great support from Microsoft themselves - hours on phone and remote access but they have given up after two weeks. One engineer thought it was RAM or HDD, another thought more likely motherboard.

It's sort of useable as is, but crashes are too frequent for a kid in his GCSE year, even though he has backups of everything.

It's out of warranty so I'm going to take it in to my local specialist shop - but I'm thinking repair is probably going to cost more than a new cheap machine like this.

What does anyone think?

Any other base boxes of similar standard/better price? (existing Monitor, keyboard, mouse, are just fine)

Why not another Dell? Well, my wife has had 2 Dell laptops, both with "issues" And now this one.

Bizarrely the one Dell I bought from Tesco rather than Dell direct, has so far proved eminently reliable. But 3 out of 4 bad ones, and deffo not risking it again.

 

[CorsairC]

Did you remove all but the minmum hardwarefrom the machine then try it?

Did you test the ram and Check the temperatures of everything?

 

[PpPete]

Thanks CorsairC

Tried everything, including dancing seven times round the kwyboard under a full moon.

Now - any input on the question in my OP ?

 

[fossyant]

The Medion's are pretty good - Aldi sell them every so often.

 

[CorsairC]

If you think logically, a PC only has about 6 major components. A process of elimination would quickly eliminate whats NOT causing the problem. I thought your question was should you fix the PC or buy a new one. Not that you'd given up on it. Despite the topic title. My bad sorry.

Medion are ok have decent rep, but tend not to have the greatest spec for the price. I have no idea what the spec is from that link, what the motherboard is, graphics, card etc. Its a very generic description. I can't find any independent reviews on forums either. So its a complete unknown for me. If you were interested in building your own, I'd point you over to the OcUK forums.

 

[swee'pea99]

FWIW (not much) I had a Medion which I got second hand (and aged) off ebay, and it served me well for about five years. Never had a problem. Was probably 10 when it finally died.

 

[CorsairC]

All consumer pc's use the same components generally. It's whatever ram hard disc or CPU is good blue when they are built.

 

[hackbike 666]

I have a Dell Inspiron 910 and it's as good as gold but the most irritating thing is it doesn't run Championship Maager 97/98 without blue screening and buggering my game up at the end.
Also it doesn't run Call of Duty either so I mainly use it for browsing t'interweb.

 

[CorsairC]

Its a netbook what were you expecting? Can you play those games on other similar netbooks?

 

[hackbike 666]

Its a netbook what were you expecting? Can you play those games on other similar netbooks?

Yes.

 

[CorsairC]

Which ones? I'd have assumed Cod at least needs a basic 3D card and they generally don't have them. Never mind the none standard resolution.

 

[Dan B]

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/embedded/945gse/ seems to be a spec for which the words "basic 3d" could have been invented. YMMV

 

[thelurker]

had

 

[thelurker]

i've got 4 dell laptops colected over the last few years, all working perfectly, never had any issues with any of them, running a combo of XP, Vista and 7.

 

[CorsairC]

Some of the replies here couldn't be less helpful. This article suggests its the drivers that are at fault and the lack of TnL. But that it is possible with some fettling.

http://neoswrath.blogspot.com/2009/03/intel-gma-950-review.html

Of course if someone had tried this they would have mentioned it, or linked to it. If your buying a netbook and hope to play games you'd assume you'd buy one that has a better 3D card.

http://www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk/20080926939/hands-on-with-the-asus-n10-gaming-netbook