Can you go wrong with a Dell? Oh yes.
Written: Oct 06 '01 (Updated Aug 06 '02)
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Pros: Speedy performance, a proven winner, and 24 hour phone support if you need help.
Cons: Noisy fan, weak power supply, unreliable performance, proprietary parts that discourage upgrades
The Bottom Line: If you can, don't buy a Dell. This particular model is wrought with problems, which makes me hesitant to trust Dell's other products. Build your own computer instead.
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| williamkwok's Full Review: Dell Dimension XPS B1000 |
Back in September 2000, when I had enough money to buy a top of the line desktop computer system, I chose Dell because I had heard glowing reviews about their products from friends and online articles. Dell also had a nice monthly payment program that didn't hurt my pocketbook all at once. This was my second computer, a drastic upgrade over my 333mhz eMachine. I ended up giving the eMachine away since I had a new toy to play with, but I soon found out that not all expensive toys are worth buying. This is the only negative review for this particular Dell system so far, and I hope you'll find it very helpful if you are considering any Dell system. Keep in mind that this was my personal experience with this particular system. If you want to get to the meat of this review, read my section on the biggest flaws in the system. Hope you enjoy this review and rate it when you're done.
» What comes in the box?
When you order a Dell, you have the option of creating your own computer with some optional components. This is my XPS B1000r, from the options I chose:
1.0 Ghz Pentium 3 processor (Intel 82820 AGP chipset)
75 GB hard drive
DVD Drive
CDRW Drive
Nvidia Geforce 256 64mb Video Card
2 PC700 128mb sticks of Rambus RD RAM (total of 256mb)
5 Externally accessible bays: two 5.25-inch bays for diskette, tape, or optical drives; three 3.5-inch bays for diskette or tape drives
2 Internally accessible bays: two bays for 1-inch-high EIDE or SCSI hard-disk drives
200W Power Supply
IBM 75GB Hard Drive at 7200rpm
Soundblaster Live Value Soundcard
56K Modem
Keyboard
Logitech Mouse
Software (W98se, NAV, Drivers for hardware)
I bought a 17" monitor and Creative Labs DTT2500 speakers separately so I could save money.
» How did the system perform out of the box?
Setup was a breeze and the system hummed at a sweet 1.0 Ghz processor speed, the fastest possible at the time when I bought this. All the software for me to enjoy my computer was fairly easy to install, with detailed instructions and phone support just a dial away if I needed it. I could tell right away that the installments went a lot faster, as compared to the 333mhz computer I used to own. So, speedy performance was noticeable immediately.
Everything out of the box initially pleased me. The DVD rom and CDRW drives were adequate. The IBM 75GB hard drive was more space than I could ever need for storing all my CDs, software and other files. The Nvidia Geforce 256 video card was decent for my video gaming needs, and not bad for a first generation Geforce card. The Creative Labs Soundblaster Live Value soundcard was more than enough to handle my audio. The 256MB RDRAM was also adequate for running any application.
» How upgradeable is this computer?
Dells are notorious for their proprietary systems. They are rather limited in upgradeability. The system I bought from them was their flagship model at the time, and it only had room for 2 5 1/2" drives, which were already taken up by my DVD and CDRW drives. There was no room for expansions. Also, the 3 1/2 floppy drive that came with it was not interchangeable with other computers, meaning that if my floppy drive ever failed, I had to wait to get a new one from Dell, because a storebought model wouldn't fit. I rarely use the floppy drive, and it has never failed on me, but it is an annoying fact regardless.
» So what were the biggest flaws in this system?
1. When I booted the computer for the first time, I immediately noticed that the fan cooling the chip and heatsink were rather loud; I was able to hear it from over 35 feet away. This became very annoying when I was watching DVDs from my computer, especially during the silent talking scenes. I had to turn up my speaker volume to compensate for the fan noise. When I called Dell's customer support to request a quieter fan, they told me that unless it was broken, they wouldn't replace it. Afterwards, I opened up the case to take a look at why the fan was so loud to see if there was a way for me to fix the problem. What I saw was a plastic case that directed all the air at what looked like an aluminum heatsink, which was 2" wide by 3" long by 2 1/2" high. It was a huge heatsink and the air echoed within the plastic case, which explained the loud fan noise. I was disappointed with the poor design.
July 2002 Heatsink Fan Update: I called Dell's Tech support and complained again about the fan noise and this time, to my surprise, a replacement fan was sent to me (I should note as a miscellaneous side note that this fan was proprietary, as it would not work when I tested it on my other computer system). When I installed it on my Dell, I noticed that the replacement fan's design was changed from the original model I had, which blew air into the case. The replacement model blew air out of the case. The noise reduction was also substantial! My system was now whisper quiet with the system only a couple feet away. This simple act from tech support earned big points in my book and I've changed my original product rating of one star to two stars.
2. Power supply: I primarily bought this computer to play computer games, watch DVDs and listen to mp3s, but I ran into some lockup problems with playing games and watching DVDs. I installed nearly a dozen games, many from different companies. Some titles include No One Lives Forever, Serious Sam, Oni, Alice, Tribes 2, Everquest, and Anarchy Online. Every game locked up on me at random times. I would play a game and it would lockup within the first few minutes or after several hours of gameplay, but it was totally unpredictable. When games locked up, I could still see the image and hear the sound, but the sound was looped or frozen, and the keyboard and mouse were frozen. I got similar lockup symptoms from watching DVDs. So I would have to reboot each time this happened and let scandisk do its job. I could understand if the gaming software I was using was defective, but common sense dictates that out of all the different titles I bought, not all of them would lockup. I tried everything I could to troubleshoot the problem. I ran a virus scan, formatted my hard drive, I installed the latest BIOS, the latest video drivers and soundcard drivers. I even tried to isolate the problem. I uninstalled the soundcard and soundcard drivers to see if playing without the soundcard would help. Still got lockups. Then, I bought 2 video cards, the ATI 64mb Radeon and Nvidia Geforce2 Ultra Pro. I installed each card separately and played my games. Lockups occurred on each card, so I knew it wasn't the video cards, since those were high performance cards. Thank goodness. I returned the cards and continued my testing. I then tried testing the memory by using it exclusively on another computer to play games. The other computer played my games flawlessly with no lockups. By now, I was more than frustrated with my Dell system. I even troubleshooted my hard drive by formatting it, and trying it on another system. The games performed flawlessly on another system. Then, when I reformatted my hard drive and installed it on my Dell, the problems were still there. Finally, I emailed technical support at a gaming company and they narrowed it down to the power supply. With all the performance of my system, I was told that a 200w power supply was probably not enough to supply consistent juice to a power hungry 1 ghz system with an Nvidia video card. When playing one of my online games, I met another player who had similar lockup problems and he told me that the lockups ended when he got a power supply with more wattage. So, I tried to install other power supplies (Antec), but they didn't seem to work. I'm fairly computer savvy, but just in case, I even had a computer buddy help me pick one out. Apparently, Dell's motherboard is so proprietary that it only seems to accept power supplies from Dell.
3. Hard Drive: If that wasn't enough to frustrate me, my IBM hard drive failed on me 3 times within the course of a year! The hard drive made a clicking sound and Windows would not load. Perhaps this is not Dell's fault, since the hard drive is an IBM part, but 3 times? I learned a hard lesson the first time and began backing up all my important files on CDs. The first time it died on me, I was ticked off! Dell tech support was not able to help me recover any files. I was lucky enough to have a computer buddy recover the files for me. The data was so messed up that the only way for me to tell what the file was was by looking at the file extension.
July 2002 Hard drive update:Once again, my IBM hard drive has failed on me. Dell is sending a replacement. FYI, this is a Deskstar 75GXP model DTLA-307075, p/n 07N4116, running at 7200rpm.
» How did Dell's customer support handle my problems?
Originally, with the fan, there was no way they were able to help me if it wasn't broken. As stated in my update, the problem with the fan has been solved to my satisfaction. With the power supply, all they were able to do was to replace my power supply with the exact same one. That defeated the purpose, so I declined. The only thing they were readily able to replace for me was the hard drive, for obvious reasons.
Overall, I was more pleased with Dell's customer and technical support than I was with my system. Hold times were occasionally over 30 minutes, but when I was able to get through, they were able to resolve any difficulties I was having in an efficient manner. Everything...except my video and gaming lockups. I was less than pleased when one of their tech support told me that they don't support software defects that didn't come with my Dell system. Hello? Out of 12 games that I installed, it's highly unlikely that it's a software defect if every single game is locking up on me! When I told them this, they told me they could replace the video card, which they did, but the problem still existed when I got the replacement card. I knew this would happen, since I'd already tried 2 much nicer cards earlier. Sigh. Oh well.
» Who should buy this Computer?
If you're a gamer, this is not the system for you. I'd be hesitant to ever buy a Dell computer again. I'd much rather build my own computer, so I know what parts are going into it.
If you're just looking to browse the Internet and you don't need a stable system to save any vital files, this computer is fine. The 4 hard drive failures are enough to discourage anyone to save anything of value on the hard drive. The speed is decent, but I think Dell did not do a lot of research in putting this computer together. Is speed worth it at the expense of stable video performance for watching DVDs or playing games? Not to me. Especially for the price tag I payed for this POS.
» Final Comments
I asked Dell if there was a way for me to trade in this computer for another model and they said that all I could do was buy a new Dell computer (even after I expressed my utter dissatisfaction with this computer). By the time I did all my troubleshooting and the lockup problems were still evident, my money back guarantee period had expired. I'm so upset from this experience. I ended up building my own computer, with much better parts, for nearly half the money that my Dell cost me. I have no lockups at all now. If you are computer savvy, I'd recommend you do the same if you are thinking of getting a desktop or upgrading your computer (You can generally get robust and inexpensive computer parts at computer fairs), or have a computer savvy friend help you build your desktop. The only thing I'd buy a Dell desktop system for is the customer support, but what good is customer support if you have to call them all the time for things that should be working in the first place?
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 2,000
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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Epinions.com ID:
williamkwok
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Reviews written: 4
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