Comments | adularia: consumerist blargh

adularia

consumerist blargh

Feb 20, 2009 14:15

If I had a nickel for everytime someone told me "You can buy it online!" I would be rich enough to just skip the whole pesky career change and spend my life looking at things to buy online.

Dammit, internets. I am very clear on this. A jpeg is not a substitute for an understanding of how any random object of desire will work for you. Apple ( Read more... )

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avar1c3 February 20 2009, 19:39:30 UTC

I'm curious, why the insistence on floor models instead of just making a best guess from the specs and returning if it's not everything you hoped for when it arrives?

adularia February 20 2009, 20:00:01 UTC

Because I've had some shitty Dells as assigned work machines, and I want to see how much (if at all) the overall hardware quality has improved in a pricier/higher-end line.

tnarg42 February 21 2009, 01:46:36 UTC

My experience with Dell laptops is usually Latitude=okay, Inspiron=crap. Inspirons seem to mechanically fall apart (mostly in the hinges) long before they are obsolete. The Latitudes I've had at work have been just okay, not spectacular, but not horrible.
I definitely agree on fondling laptops, though. Unfortunately, most retail laptops are of the consumer-grade=crap variety.

adularia February 21 2009, 22:14:01 UTC

Wow, I'm so glad it's not just me. The Dell I'm mostly thinking of was a Latitude, and really not acceptable. As in: seemed to ignore its own sleep settings, burned my lap if I took its "laptop" nature at all seriously, had a chiclet keyboard whose keys seemed likely to snap off at any minute, could not move between a wired and a wireless network without a reboot. I recently swapped an HP with similar but less severe annoyances for a Mac at work.

Now I'm back in the market for a PC because I want to be able to do 3D modeling with free/cheap modeling software and am tired of having to hunt for manufacturers (other than Wacom and Adobe, that is) that have deigned to create comparable Mac versions of their stuff. It just needs to be a GOOD PC. I am, as dymaxion put it, not looking for a good deal -- I'm looking for a bad deal on the right machine to keep around for the next several years.

agate456 February 22 2009, 08:47:45 UTC

The new Dells are halfway decent, specifically the E6400 and E6500. That said, if you don't care about how it looks and just want something that is going to last, Lenovos are just about indestructible. What size screen are you shooting for?

tnarg42 February 22 2009, 15:23:27 UTC

Yeah, I'll second that. I just got a new E6400 plopped on my desk the other day, and other than some problems with the corporate software load, it seems quite nice. It's probably the first Dell I've ever touched that didn't feel so excessively cheap.

agate456 February 22 2009, 19:28:04 UTC

The D630 and D830 were decent, but they definitely got better with the model refresh this year.

adularia February 22 2009, 21:16:38 UTC

13-15". I don't want to carry around a 17".

That E6500 looks really nice for the money. The problem is that I've been out of the PC hardware world (i.e. the world where you get to pick from more than two options) for so long that I have NO idea what sort of graphics card I should consider a minimum requirement to do 3D work without hating it. I'm glad to hear that Dell is paying more attention to case quality.

agate456 February 23 2009, 02:13:14 UTC

Well, currently most companies only give you the choice between an on-board Intel chipset and a discrete nVidia or ATI graphics card. I have yet to find a reason to want the Intel chip.

If you can find one to look at, I'd recommend checking out the Lenovo W500 (WUXGA, 15.4") or T400 (WXGA+, 14.1"). They're better laptops than the Dell, although it does have a 3 year warranty vs. their 1 year.

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