No offence, but people who buy DELL's ain't got a clue and have way to much money to waste.
Dells are good pc's if all you want is a low spec pc to do work on etc. But onec you start going into the higher figures where dell pretends that their pcs are for gaming thats where they become rip offs for people that dont know anything about pcs.
While I agree the XPS 710 and 720 are way overpriced, and they are taking the **** with the crippled nvidia chipet I do believe their next one down (9200) is superb value as are the midrange inspiron desktops both amd and intel models (530 and 531). And you don't have to buy an XPS to enjoy high end gaming either. Though I can understand the people who would as money may not be a factor or they do not have the interest or knowledge to build their own system.
As well as a homemade gaming pc like everyone else here I also have a Dimension 9200. Why ? It's a 2nd gaming PC first of all, and second I could not build it for less...because the deals Dell give are so good...try building a 965P,Q6600 G0,8800gtx,1tb drive, 2gig ddrr2, 22" screen,X-Fi and Vista Ultimate for under a grand. You can't. So this is a gaming system but not expensive in my book. Sure, you can't overclock, and their mobos are more or less proprietry btx, but the pc is dead reliable, you can upgrade the psu (standard atx) hence buy a more powerful graphics card if you want, and at the price they are, it's good value. Plus they are reasonably quiet, and the btx design/cooling is superb. Also, all the components are as good as anything you will get from an etailer. For example the X-Fi they sell now has proper optical outputs like the Azuntech, they get the Intel new steppings before everyone else, and pretty much have high end video cards close to the day you can buy them online. There is no way I could build for less then what I could buy it from Dell, especially with the way they include monitors so cheaply. Recently they were doing a 9200 and a 24" 2407 was only an extra 200 quid. If I could have built it cheaper I would have. Direct PC manufacturers margins in the consumer desktop space are very very tight, and they rely on volume, and since they buy so many components in bulk, the price they sell their pc's to the public is very hard to match with a diy. This was not always the case. But appears to be now.
I think some people on this thread are generalising with their comments and insulting a lot of customers who are happy with the Dell brand. But I do agree their sli rigs are way overpriced. And I am not fond of their tech support, but it's not something I would be relying on. Buy a Dell system if you want a good value, powerful gaming rig is what I say or just want something to wordprocess on. For the enthusiast or overclocker, building is still the way to go.
Certainly can't hurt the balance sheet to be linked in with Dell!
