Quote:
Originally Posted by Stephen Hoover
I need one. Think this is a better deal than buying a $599. Acer or e-Machine desktop from Walmart?
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Dell actually has some preconfingured systems at Sams Club and Wal Mart right now (also Staples and soon to be Best Buy).
They are good general systems and most have nice 17", 19" or even bigger LCD monitors bundled with them.
However I don't think most or any of those had firewire and they all had just an integrated graphics card. Plenty of hard drive, RAM, and a CD/DVD burner though. For 95% of people those systems are great and sell between $589 and $899.
I wanted a system specifically for editing High Definition video which needs a lot of "ooomph" in processing power, RAM, and graphics card capability.
For that reason the $350 off promo code worked better for me as I was able to forego a monitor, speakers, etc that comes with the store packaged and instead get a more powerful processor, lots of RAM, and a dedicated 256mb graphics card with support for dual monitors (digital DVI at that!). What I got for $650 is truly amazing.
If I had been buying a computer for just general use like internet surfing, digital photos, word processing, etc then one of the bundled packages at a store would have been fine.
Bored is correct about Wal Mart employees not being any help if anything goes wrong but even with service going down some in recent years Dell is still one of the best at customer support so if you bought a Dell at Wal Mart you wouldn't have to deal with them locally.
I will tell you it paid off for me buying my Toshiba laptop last spring at a Best Buy that has the ""Geek Squad" desk on site. I wanted to put more RAM in and the cover to the RAM would not unscrew. I took it to two little computer shops. One guy tried and couldn't open it and the other wanted fifty bucks just to try. I took it back to Best Buy and the guy at the Geek Squad desk had it open in a couple of minutes with no paperwork, no charge! I had bought it at Wal Mart I would have been out of luck and would have either been out fifty bucks or would have broken it trying to open it.
The next few months will be a good time to buy as the new Quad processors become the new big thing and prices will drop on what has been the top end most powerful dual core processors.
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