rip off Britain @ Dell

gambitt · 31 Oct 2011 at 22:15

I fancy a Dell Vostro V131 i5.

UK price on dell.co.uk is £803 (comes down to £678 with quidco etc)

Exact same product on Dell site in Germany is £545 (not sure if you can use quidco or equivalent in Germany to get it lower)

No import duty to pay I presume so why the massive difference in price? I could ask a friend there to buy me one but of course it wil have a German keyboard...

JimboJet · 1 Nov 2011 at 00:54

Keyboards are sometimes avail to buy on the bay.

Scrutinize · 1 Nov 2011 at 08:14

Why would you want one of these?

Hg80 · 1 Nov 2011 at 08:37

I got a Dell XPS a few months go on a hotukdeals thing
The specs are
i7-2630QM
6GB RAM
Backlit Keyboard
1GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 550M Graphics Card
2x500GB HDDS
Windows 7 Home prem
1440x900 17" Screen

All for £683.44! and with an extra £50 cashback from quidco still in the pipeline making it a bargin £633.44!

Scrutinize · 1 Nov 2011 at 10:35

The v131 is the other end of the spectrum to the xps though.

However, here is where I take issue. The vostro is all about about vfm business computing and you can usually pick up the 15" i5 for 300-500 depending on specs and if you have the integrated or dedicated graphics and whether you have a 15-20% discount code and/or are part of dell’s EPP buying programme. Whilst the vostros are good value they are not, imo, premium machines and do not warrant paying a premium price for. Especially when I picked up my HP Probook 4320s (13") for £299 new which offers a much better build quality and overall package. You can get the newer 4330 Probooks for much less than the v131.

The v131 defeats the object of buying a vostro. You can buy a 13" Lenovo E320 direct from Lenovo with an i5 and Ati 6630 graphics (far far superior to the Intel HD 3000) for less than the vostro v131 and this is a substantially better built machine.