Dell Rip-off Can you find me a decent new Laptop?

[Treson]

Help. I've been looking to buy a new top end laptop. I dont care about having THE most expensive piece of kit available just the flexability to upgrade for at least 18 months. I really want an MSI GT780 with a new AMD 6970M but the current vibe is that its going to be Q3 2011 and I'm not that patient. The reason I'm asking here is that I've just had a bad customer service experience with Dell.

I recently looked at buying an Alienware M17x R3 but was absolutely disgusted with their pricing. I decided to check their US website to see what the difference between UK/US pricing was as I've found that importing has saved a lot of money in the past.

Well I setup the machine with the same spec's below.
Intel I7 2720
Nvidia 460M
FHD Screen replacement
320GB HDD (as intend to swap out with a 120GB Callisto or Vertex2E)
4GB RAM (OMG not spending £400 to go from 2x2 to 2x4GB)

Dell UK £2539.00
Dell US $2344.00 / £1505

At the current exchange rate thats over £1000. Even if I declared it at customs and paid import duty and VAT I'd be getting a steal! After spending half an hour talking to their customer services trying to get them to tell me exactly why they wanted to rip me off for living in the UK I got no answer and they refused to get their marketing department or someone with the ability to explain this discrepency to contact me!

Anyway if OCUK are going to stock new 2011 I7 2xxx Laptops or if anyone knows of a decent one thats not as ugly as the ASUS G73SW (OMG UGLY VENTS) drop me a post.

Cheers
Treson

 

[franco_22]

I don't think you realise that prices in the US are pre-tax or how import duty works. First of all, you need to shave off 500 pounds from the UK dell to compare them since the US one is pre tax. Then you have to take into consideration import duty and the fact that Dell is a US company and the US probably has a much bigger buying power for their products then the UK.

You're asking some sales guy who is probably saving up for college all this information, why don't you look it up yourself, the company sets it's prices, if you don't like it go somewhere else.

 

[matthab]

I think thats a good price. Look for discount codes and ring sales. When I bought my xps 16 they gave me a free upgrade the rgb LED screen. Also things like HD and ram Dell charge you a fair wack because your removing from the orginal configuration and someone needs to fit the part and do another set of checks. Working for system builder before, I know this is a pain and we would rather you stay to what is configured .

You dont also seem to realise how this works.

1) As mentioned theres import tax, VAT (US dont do 'inc' tax) and due to Dell not able to charge a restocking fee the prices are more. The last one is a european law.
2) There a US company there going to charge more. The same goes for Apple.

 

[Treson]

...Even if I declared it at customs and paid import duty and VAT

I know how US prices work without TAX and shipping. I have friends in Montana with which I would visit and have the Laptop delivered to thier home. Montana has a ZERO rate of TAX on everything (you tip more but its still cheaper believe me).

Import Duty to the Isle of Man is round about 10% then 20% VAT. That still brings it in under £2k

Yes companies are entitled to price things up as they wish but in my case if they want to try and rip off people by that much for living in a different region they're not having my money. 10% is the absolute most I would ever pay over the odds on something because of regional availability.

Honestly surprised to see people sticking up for Dell/Alienware after the recent barage of complaints I've heard about them.

It still doesnt alter the fact that I'm looking for a new laptop that will last at least a year before going "out of date" socket/chipset-wise. So my original question to OCUK about wether they plan on stocking Sandybridge equipped laptops anytime soon still stands.

 

[franco_22]

And you still don't get it do you?

It's NOTHING to do with Dell that a bum state like Montana has no sales tax and we have 20%.

I find it really ironic that you said import + vat is 2k. because if you shave the 20% off the UK VAT price and that's exactly what you get.

 

[JonJ678]

People aren't sticking up for Alienware, they're annoyed with you.

I'm pretty certain you'd have a bad customer experience with me too.

 

[Raikiri]

I find it really ironic that you said import + vat is 2k. because if you shave the 20% off the UK VAT price and that's exactly what you get.

Think about what you've written here.

Why would you compare the UK price without VAT to the US price including UK VAT?

UK price - VAT and import fees is roughly £1950, still £450 over that of the US price.

 

[Treson]

Think about what you've written here.

Why would you compare the UK price without VAT to the US price including UK VAT?

UK price - VAT and import fees is roughly £1950, still £450 over that of the US price.

Thankyou for being the only one to be able to add up properly. After the playing field has been leveled of all kinds of tax its still almost 20% price hike for living in the UK.

I'd like to point out that I've had a great experience buying from OCUK in the past which is why I'm asking them to find me a new laptop.

 

[Guardsmon]

why not look at Rock if you want gaming laptops? Not bought from them in a looooong time, but looks like they are still going and they always were pretty damn good. (or ASUS outlet)

And as much as no one likes the fact Dell and pretty much every other US based company takes the mick for us not living in their country it is something that most of us have become accustomed to. We all understand your pain, but at the end of the day there is little you can do about it and I wouldn't say that Dells technical support not having your answers means its bad.

I deal with Dell on a near daily basis and yes every now and again its not great but 90% of the time its spot on.

 

[Scougar]

Someone mentioned about US Pre-tax prices. If you buy somewhere like Delaware, you won't get charged any sales tax on your purchase. (And I'm not sure you get charged tax if you by online and live in a different state?)

 

[pcAnywhere]

If you buy in Delaware but live in another state then you'd pay sales tax @ your own states rate I believe.

@Treson - you are aware that most consumer electronics are cheaper in the US than in the UK, right? It's not just Dell / Alienware. It's also much cheaper to buy goods in SE Asia too...

 

[Treson]

If you buy in Delaware but live in another state then you'd pay sales tax @ your own states rate I believe.

@Treson - you are aware that most consumer electronics are cheaper in the US than in the UK, right? It's not just Dell / Alienware. It's also much cheaper to buy goods in SE Asia too...

Yup I check prices to make sure I'm paying inline with what I sould be.

For example I got a HD6870 a month or 2 ago for £153.00 + VAT from OCUK while they were $240.00 + Taxes in the states which is about £151 currently. OCUK offer very good value for money and dont rip you off on regional availability.

I switched to showing comparisons excluding and taxes and shipping so I dont get flamed again

 

[franco_22]

Think about what you've written here.

Why would you compare the UK price without VAT to the US price including UK VAT?

UK price - VAT and import fees is roughly £1950, still £450 over that of the US price.

450 for an item of that price sounds about right to me considering it's a US based company.

Oh btw, when I was in canada, I got a brand new psp with metal gear solid peace walker when it came out for about 60 quid, how much do they cost here?

Stop the press, fresh news here.

 

[Raikiri]

450 for an item of that price sounds about right to me considering it's a US based company.

30% price hike before tax purely for living somewhere else sounds right to you?

Oh btw, when I was in canada, I got a brand new psp with metal gear solid peace walker when it came out for about 60 quid, how much do they cost here?

Stop the press, fresh news here.

So PSPs were a rip off here too? What's your point?

 

[Aod]

if you're looking to spend that much on a laptop (about £1500 if i get you right?) then for a desktop-replacement powerhouse your first and last port of call should be a Lenovo Thinkpad W510

the top-spec W501 has a Core i7 720QM, QuadroFX 880M 1GB, 4GB of DDR3, built-in mobile-broadband card, 1600x900 screen, Fingerprint-reader, 2MP webcam, 320GB 7200RPM HDD, 9-cell battery and last but most importantly, the legendary thinkpad build quality which means you could throw the laptop down the stairs WHILE RUNNING and it would be fine, not to mention the best laptop keyboards in existence.

all for £1,530 including VAT.

if you're willing to spend around £2000, then you can get a W701 which has a NVIDIA Quadro FX 2800M 96-core CUDA parallel computing processor 1GB (dedicated) and WUXGA (1920x1200) screen aswell!

 

[Treson]

Looking at around £1500-£2000 tops. I'l be using to to play the likes of Crysis Warhead, Dawn of War 2, Fallout 3 with fully replaced HD texture packs and I'l want it not to struggle with Crysis 2, Deus EX3 and Elder Scrolls 5. I'l do minimal Video editing with it and use it to stream media to one of my HDTVs via HDMI.

The amount of cores isnt my main concern as long as a new processor can be dropped in quite easily when I want to upgrade. Starting point minimum Specs are as the OP above.

 

[JonJ678]

...should be a Lenovo Thinkpad W510

... the legendary thinkpad build quality

I'm interested to see this post. I was under the impression that their build quality had worsened somewhat under their new management, if this is not the case then it's good news indeed.

Assuming Aod is right in his belief that the thinkpads are as good now as they used to be, I'm entirely in agreement with him. I can't fathom choosing alienware over them. However, I'm not a gamer. Gamers will not like quadro graphics cards much.

However at the risk of trolling further, playing games on laptops is madness. You end up with a large, heavy box with a 40 minute battery life, which cost far more than an equivalent desktop and will suffer death through overheating sooner than you would like.

 

[Aod]

I'm interested to see this post. I was under the impression that their build quality had worsened somewhat under their new management, if this is not the case then it's good news indeed.

Assuming Aod is right in his belief that the thinkpads are as good now as they used to be, I'm entirely in agreement with him. I can't fathom choosing alienware over them. However, I'm not a gamer. Gamers will not like quadro graphics cards much.

However at the risk of trolling further, playing games on laptops is madness. You end up with a large, heavy box with a 40 minute battery life, which cost far more than an equivalent desktop and will suffer death through overheating sooner than you would like.

exactly, buying a laptop for gaming is about as sensible as buying a scooter for driving from London to Edinburgh. it'll work, just not anywhere nearly as well.
I should point out that none of the graphics cards offered by lenovo in any of their W-series laptops will be suitable for playing stuff like Crysis 2.

infact, i doubt that SLI'd GTX580s will run Crysis 2 well. honestly OP, to run the games you're looking at, not even a 2K DESKTOP will be suitable.

Re. build quality - the T60 series that Lenovo pushed out as soon as they'd taken over were very iffy build-quality wise, with some very... interesting design decisions.
however, the widespread criticism that Lenovo faced meant that they sorted their act out with subsequent models.

 

[pcAnywhere]

infact, i doubt that SLI'd GTX580s will run Crysis 2 well. honestly OP, to run the games you're looking at, not even a 2K DESKTOP will be suitable

I confidently predict that Crysis 2 will need nothing more special than a 6950 / 570GTX to run smooth as silk at high res... it'll look very similar to the console version.. some may even say identical.

 

[pcAnywhere]

I switched to showing comparisons excluding and taxes and shipping so I dont get flamed again

On that note, did you realise that there is no import tax on desktops or PCs? You'd "just" pay the 20% VAT. Not sure how the support would work (some companies have global support) nor if the PSU/brick will be universal voltage (110 to 250v) - I've seen a worrying trend of region specific bricks/adapters recently. Very annoying!

The HMRC website is quite useful sometimes