Another reson Dell sucks so bad.

[daship]

My frined needed a laptop so I made the mistake of advising him to get a Dell that was on sale for $549. It was the best deal I could find anywhere that day. Here is the one I recommended him for his budgeet: http/www.dell.com/us/en/home/notebooks/laptop-inspiron-1545/pd.aspx?refid=laptop-inspiron-1545&s=dhs&cs=19&~oid=us~en~29~laptop-inspiron-1545_cto_4

The dumb ass rep told him he should get a better one for the about the same price. He recommended him this one, and upgraded him to the lowest end wireless n card because he told him it could connect up to 50 miles away. http/configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=blcwcfp&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&kc=laptop_latitude_e5400

He obviously new my 70 year old friend didn't know jack and wanted to pawn old junk off as if it were the top of the line. This is very un acceptable behavior imo. My friend brough his new laptop over so I could install his alltel WiFi and this thing was soooooo slooooooooow. My Asus netbook can run circles around this pile of crap. I will be getting him a refund on Monday, and either they make it right by offering u ssomething better for being deceptive, or I will get a refund a buy a nice Gateway on sale @ newegg.com.


Shame on Dell for being so Deceptive.

 

[frozenlead]

The 50 miles thing is an obvious mistake...perhaps they meant feet or meters?

Anyway, you didn't really analyze the problem, you just assumed it was the Dell notebook. I would hardly say you could say it sucked...you didn't even try to figure out why it was slow.

 

[daship]

The 50 miles thing is an obvious mistake...perhaps they meant feet or meters?

Anyway, you didn't really analyze the problem, you just assumed it was the Dell notebook. I would hardly say you could say it sucked...you didn't even try to figure out why it was slow.

Well you obviously dont know much about PCs then. Maybe you should work at dell.

If you bothered to check the links it is a pile of *** compared to what he wanted to begin with.

I mean come on a single core celeron with 1G ram and a 80 G HDD, running Vista? Vista got a bad name for itself because it was to complicated for this type of harware.


I know why it was slow, single core celeron with 1G ram and a 5400 rpm HDD. Nothing to figure out there. common sense will tell you whats wrong.


The PC he called for in the first place was way better then what he got.

 

[frozenlead]

I've installed and used Vista on 1GB of RAM and a single core processor, and it works just fine. Sure, it's not lightning, but done properly it's faster than average users expect their computers to be.

The Dell probably came preloaded with bloatware, which is why it was so slow, which is not attributed to Vista being slow. An 80GB hard disk is overkill for Vista. 40 would be (for me) the bare minimum, but you can do with 30.

I use a 5400rpm disk in my notebook, and it's quite nice - and you can hardly say my notebook is slow, looking at the specs. The machine he had was fine, just poorly configured. Again, you didn't take the time to find the root of the problem - just threw your hands up, declaring that all Dells were bad. That's why Vista has a bad rep - and that's the only reason why.

And, if the alltel wifi (which, if I'm correct about what this is, you should know that 'wifi' is not correctly used there...it isn't wifi at all) is in fact a mobile broadband connection...there was a good reason why it was slow. It's mobile broadband. It sucked to begin with, compared to wifi.

Edit: and, FYI, I own my own PC repair business.

 

[daship]

If you owned a Pc business you wouldn't be so ignorant.

Maybe you just have never ever used a decent PC, so in reality you believe what you say to be the truth. I own a PC business as well sales/repairs and I can assure you a Celeron with 1G ram is painfully slow. The Dell came with Vista and Norton, nothing else.

I only sell PCs with 4+ gigs of ram and no hard drive slower then 92MB/s reads.

A 5400 RPM with 40-50MB/s is slow by todays standards.

The Dell rep talked him into a wireless n upgrade knowing dam well he intended to use alltel WiFi and this guy is a Trucker over the road and the Dell rep said he could connect to truckstops up to 50 "miles" away with the wireless n upgrade.

Everyone knows Alltel WiFi is about like dialup but when your out in the sticks its all you got.

I never complained about the alltel, obviously its slow.

I use high quality PCs every day and this think was low just opening my/computer. And really slow installing software.

80 gig is plenty huh? Well what you supposed to do with your movies and other important documents when the 80 is filled up?

Any PC with a Celeron and 1 G of ram is not worth more then $350, he paid $579.

Just because your happy with a bottle necked laptop, doesn't mean everyone else is.


Just because you fixed your mommys PC before, dont mean you qualify to say you own a repair business, LOL.

My Asus 900HA with 2G ram and a ssd is 10x faster then this piece of crap.

 

[frozenlead]

Kay, thanks for the insults, I appreciate them.

I've never used a decent PC? Did you check my signature? My notebook could run circles around yours.

You say that you own a PC business, and then you try to tell me that a PC with Norton installed is slow, and you don't find that a coincidence? Norton antivirus is notorious for being the memory hog of all antivirus solutions. You should use an antivirus that's got a smaller footprint, like AVG. (which is free, too).

You only sell PCs with 4GB of ram? What a ripoff to john doe who needs a PC to view his email. 1GB is perfectly fine for him.

A 5400rpm disk is slow to desktop drives, but, in case you didn't know, they're standard in the notebook market.

I can't speak for the Dell guy. Some of them are really dumb. Some of them aren't. Depends on who you meet.

80GB is plenty for john doe who checks his email, which is all you should be doing with a ~$500 notebook. It's got plenty of space for a decent amount of movies and music, if you feel the need. If you have that large of a digital collection, you really wouldn't be in this price bracket, would you? Or, you would already have a hard disk with that stuff on it that you can convert to an external one for $20. Most people's machines I fix daily don't have 10GB of personal files on them, let alone even one movie. John doe still depends on the DVD for movies.

Any PC with a Celeron and 1GB of RAM is not worth more than $350? Have you even looked at today's notebooks (other than your own, of course..)? Pretty much all of them are equipped with crappy Atoms for that price, and they have itty bitty screens, and no optical drives.

Bottlenecked notebook? What are you even talking about? How did determine that my notebook was bottlenecked? Do you even know what that means? That sort of statement requires data, you know, which you don't have any.

Yeah...because you have any right to say what my experience with PCs has brought me through the years. Who's to say you're qualified to run a business in PC repair? You don't seem to be to me - certainly not if you blindly diagnose problems like you just did. I hope people don't pay you to say Dells are bad, as I know people don't do that to me. I find the problem and correct the problem, through tests and logic. Not just "oh, well it's not as fast as my notebook, so it must be crap."

 

[daship]

1st of all I don't own a notebook. I own a netbook with a atom. If it had a core 2 duo it would pown yours in daily apps. Anyone who buys a notebook for gaming is an idiot. 2nd of all I would own one with a crappy 5400 rpm drive. 3rd of all my I7 920 3.6, 4x 30G OCZ SSD raid 0, 6G DDR3 ram, ATI 4870, 1TB storage, would chew up your bottle necked laptop and spit it out.

You laptop is decent but your hard drive is a huge bottleneck as well as your ram.

4th of all it is my customer and he has a desktop built by me and he expects his laptop to run to the high standards I have turned him onto. I knew his needs/wants befroe hand, and the one that was selected meet those needs. He didnt need the Dell rep to tell him oh this is a better PC get it, and take advantage of him.

Maybe you and your customers get by on yesteryear tech, but I take pride in what I do, and keeping customers happy is number one. Me and my customers expect point and click instant access, we dont enjoy the hour glass or circle at all.



Your laptop is lacking in the HD and ram. But hey you dont mind so more power to you. Why dont you run HDtune on your crappy HD and see just how bad it really sucks. For the record my PC gets 507MB/s reads. Photo shop opens as fast as note pad, as well as any other app. How about 18 sec boot to ready desktop from power off.


Maybe your next yesteryear buy will run what I currently offer now

 

[frozenlead]

Thanks for calling me an idiot. I don't recall ever putting you down like that, let alone you not having the knowledge of me to even suggest such a thing. You know, I bought a gaming notebook so I could go to college and still enjoy games in my free time. Not all of us have the luxury of staying in one place for a long time. In that regard, a gaming notebook is a perfect thing to use.

My hard disk is not a bottleneck, because I don't need high throughput. The things I do on my notebook require processing power, not the ability to save and read fast. I'd like to know how my memory is a bottleneck...the delta to 800 would not be a significant performance boost at all, and 4GB is certainly enough.

Of course your desktop can beat my notebook...it's a desktop, and it's newer. Surprise.

Hm. I found it odd how you didn't address any of the remarks I made on your troubleshooting techniques (or lack thereof).

Last time I looked, the Celeron is old technology, so, your customers, too, are getting by on 'yesteryear' tech. Nice way to be a hippocrit. Also, last time I looked, my customers were ecstatic with what I could make their machines do. I keep them happy and their wallets full, and hourglasses to a minimum. Like I said, properly configured and tuned, that PC can run very nicely with common tasks. Your customer expected high standards with a $500 notebook that you left with things like Norton on it? Is there any sense in that? I'm not saying the Dell technician was right, I'm simply saying that your attitude of 'it's slow, it sucks' is not a way to go about doing things.

My notebook boots in seconds, because I keep it on standby. Yay. I don't care. I want it to compute, and compute fast. And that it does. Matlab, Solidworks, Mathematica, and Crysis - fast. HDD throughput, I don't need, so there is no bottleneck, to my data. Not that I'm taxing it anyway.

Again, seriously. You didn't address any of my serious comments about your troubleshooting techniques, or your need to outfit normal people with extraordinary hardware. They just don't need it - it's a waste of money. Can we stop the random ranting about how my rig is better than your rig - i.e. I have more money than you? And I really don't need the insults, either. I doubt you'll listen to me (or have been anyway), so I'm done here.

 

[daship]

Everything you do requires HD access, FYI.

I didnt sell him the laptop. He bought it from Dell as per their false recommendations.

Im not gonna bother uninstalling norton on something that would still be slow and getting returned anyhow.

I never recommended the Celeron, I recommended him a core 2 duo. Obviously you cant read any better then you can comprehend PC specs.

You play Crysis lol, guess you dont mind poor FPS just like you dont mind poor access/load times.

For the price you paid for the so called gaming laptop you could of had a decent gaming desktop and a notebook.

Read the first post again and again until you get a clear picture of what happened.


Basically $550 budget give or take.

My recommendation:
Dual core T4200 2.0
15.9" screen
DVD Burner
3G DDR2 800
320G HDD Sata2
Wireless N "not needed but there"
COST: $549


What Dell told him was a better deal:
Single core Celeron 2.16
14.1" Screen
1G 667 Ram
80G Hdd Pata
DvD rom CD/RW
COST:$579

Trouble shooting there was noe to be had.
Norton 30 day trial wasn't and still isn't even activated yet, so it has nothing to do with it, and theres no other bloatware.

The specs of the PC run as fast as that spec will ever let it run.
Celeron+1G+Vista = watching paint dry to most of us. Its probably fast for what you and yours are used to but me and mine require alot more punch then that.


Save you allowance and I'll sell you a real PC one day.


To sum it up Dell lied and sold eol stock to a fool to help their bottom dollar. And you proved you are an idiot.


You should post your 3dmark06 score so I can get a good laugh of your gaming notebook.

Im quessing in the 8000 range max!!!!!

 

[frozenlead]

I wasn't going to reply, but after I discovered a flaw in your posts, I had to.

I was under the impression you'd recommended the Celeron - sorry for that. I'll be man enough to admit where I went wrong. But I'm still not going to be childish and call you an idiot, nor am I about to say because of one bad instance a computer company sucks. That's illogical. Every company has some bad workers.

Sure, I could have got a nice gaming rig for the price, but you're completely missing the point. A desktop PC is NOT PORTABLE, and that's something I need. Maybe when I'm not moving so often I'll be able to go back. But for now, I need power on the go.

Yes, everything requires HD access, but that doesn't make it a bottleneck. Everything requires a graphics adapter, too...does that make it a bottleneck? My load times on games are fine (generally under 15 seconds) but I'm really not up to caring about them. The game's performance is much more important.

And, I'm telling you - a Celeron and 1GB of RAM will run very well with Vista. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. It's all about configuring it. It won't blaze, but they'll be fine together for internet/music/movies.

Anyway - on to the error! The second notebook, with a Celeron and 1GB of RAM, is $499. It only becomes $579 after adding a P8400 (which crushes the other CPU). So now I really don't know where you got $579, unless the price has changed in the past day, which is really unlikely. (I didn't actually look at the configs because I trusted you to get them right. That mutual respect thing, you know?) Also, you didn't recommend him a core 2 duo on the notebook you wanted him to buy - that's a pentium dual core there. Wayyy not the same thing.

Edit: and did you notice one is a business notebook? Of course it'll be more expensive. Sure, the dell guy screwed up, but that doesn't say the same for the rest of the company, nor does it make their notebooks suck.

 

[daship]

The Dell rep charged him extra for upgrade to wireless n.

Just a little friendly info. Current Gen Pentium dual core and core 2 are the exact same arcitecture, lesser binned core 2s get lower FSB and some cache disabled.

Same principle as AMDs 3 core.
Item Number Quantity Item Description

224-2838 1 Latitude E5400, Intel Celeron 585, 2.16GHz, 1M L2 Cache 667MHz FSB
311-9240 1 1.0GB, DDR2-800 SDRAM, 1 DIMM for Latitude E5X00
330-1000 1 Internal English Keyboard Single Pointing, for Latitude Notebooks
330-1652 1 Documentation (English) Latitude E-Family/Mobile Precision
320-6894 1 Intel Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD, Latitude E5X00
341-7470 1 80GB Hard Drive 9.5MM, 5400RPMfor Latitude E4X00/E5400
311-8957 1 Single pointing touchpad for Latitude E5400
320-6892 1 14.1 inch Wide Screen WXGA LCDfor Latitude E5400
467-5769 1 Vista Home Basic Service Pack 1, with media, English Latitude
313-6507 1 No Modem for Latitude E-Family
330-0879 1 US - 3-FT, 3-Pin Flat E-FamilyPower Cord for Latitude E-Family
330-1970 1 90W 3-Pin, AC Adapter for Latitude E5400/5500
313-6662 1 24X CDRW/DVD for Latitude E5X00
421-0536 1 Cyberlink Power DVD 8.2,with Media, Dell Relationship LOB
430-3362 1 Intel WiFi Link 5300 (802.11 a/g/n 3X3) 1/2 MiniCard for VPRO Latitude E/Mobile Precision
330-0994 1 Resource DVD with Diagnostics and Drivers for Latitude E5400Notebook
312-0743 1 6-Cell/54-WHr Battery for Latitude E5X00
421-0111 1 Norton Internet Security 2009 30 Day Trial, Dell Optiplex Precision and Latitude
988-6059 1 No Warranty 2 and 3
991-5567 1 Dell Hardware Limited Warranty Plus Return To Depot, Initial Year
989-9140 1 Contract - Mail-In Service, 24x7 Technical Support, Initial Year
991-2878 1 Dell ProSupport Service Offering Declined
900-9987 1 Standard On-Site Installation Declined
310-9865 1 Intel Celeron Processor
310-8759 1 You have chosen a Vista Basic System
310-8977 1 Info SKU-Software and Peripherals products and solutions catalog included in system boxes
* -DISCOUNT/COUPON APPLIED
Subtotal: $539.00
Shipping and Handling: $0.00

Sales Tax: $37.73
Total: $576.73


Sure technically Vista runs on the crap hardware but slow as hell thats why Vista got a bad rap, it takes decent hardware to perform what most people expect. By all means with such low specs it should have xp.

 

[frozenlead]

It's not so much 'slow as hell' to the average user, but at least we agree on something. Ha.