The Volokh Conspiracy

Dell is inconsistent across models and product lines. But my experience with the Latitude product line has been good - certainly better than the quality issues that I had with my Inspirion.

Check out Ibex computers. Nice systems at nice prices. Good folks to deal with, too.

Remember: the plural of anecdote is not data. But I'll give you some more anecdotes.

I've had two Dells (one laptop, one desktop) and a Dell desktop at work.

The desktop (purchased c. 2002) was a work-horse and I got years of service from it -- very happy with it, never had to use customer service. The laptop (purchased c. 2005) died after a year and a half -- it was out of warranty so I didn't bother with Dell customer service.

The Dell at work was a mess and I had an absolutely miserable time with their corporate customer service. I spent hours and hours on hold, they did very stupid things like make me repeat every step that the last customer service guy tried when I called again. (I remember coming in on a holiday so I could sit on hold with Dell because it took so long.) Many problems with that computer and many problems with Dell customer service. I kept thinking "if this is how they treat their CORPORATE customers, how must they treat everyone else?"

So anyway, after the Dell laptop died and after the miserable experience I had at work with them, I decided to go Thinkpad for the replacement laptop. I had to deal with Lenovo tech support on one matter and they were fast and efficient. I have no complaints about them and would urge you to take a look at their products. Vista is another story however...

Hmmm. Don't know what that link's not working now, worked before. Here it is in the raw: "www.ibexpc.com"

Another reason to avoid HP is that they have outsourced their customer support to India, and it just doesn't seem to happen very quickly. We had a HP laptop that failed twice and got shipped back to HP. The third time, we insisted on a new machine. They sat on it for almost six weeks. It was only when we finally were able to escalate to a supervisor in this country that we got a computer back. The Indian technicians would absolutely promise to escalate, and it never was accomplished (or at least not for the six weeks). We heard all sorts of excuses for why our computer hadn't been at least returned, and they all turned out to be bogus.

I have been told that they do much better with their business grade computers, but the HP/Compaq consumer grade computers are highly suspect as far as reliability, and when they fail, service is lousy.

I second the Latitude line of Dells. Very sturdy machines. You have to pose as a small business or have access to an institutional buyer to get one, but they're worth the hassle. As a bonus, the Dell customer service in their business (not the consumer/home office division) is much better. Also, if you are thinking about a laptop, go for the accidental damage insurance. 3 years of coverage usually goes for about 10% of the purchase price, but well worth it when (not if) that beverage unfortunately gets spilled in the wrong place or the machine falls a bit too far onto a surface a bit too hard.

I prefer to build my own machines, but when I do buy a preconfigured machine, the past three I have purchased have been Dells and I have had good experiences with all of them.

While in law school, the top 2 lines were HP and Dell, with about the same reliability (I was the "computer guy" among my friends, so when issues cropped up, I was often asked about them). HP laptops are surprisingly good, but if you don't want to buy HP, that doesn't matter.

I suggest, if you are going to buy a laptop, go with Dell. They make good machines at good prices and I have never had any issues with their support.

If you are going to buy a desktop, strongly consider assembling your own from parts. It is not difficult, and can be a lot of fun if you're into tinkering at all. If you don't want to do that, Dell is a good choice.

If you want to run OS/X, buy Apple. If you are going to run Windows, then don't buy Apple: the price premium is not worth it.

FWIW, Vista does not have many problems at this time (32-bit, ymmv on 64-bit, but XP64 has issues too). Most people who gripe about it have not used it and are telling war stories (I do use it on my gaming rig). Dell does offer the XP downgrade option if this is an issue for you.

Desktop: build your own or pay a local teenager $75 to do it for you.

Laptop: For Windows, we our most recent good results were with Sony. Reliability and customer service can be very dicey with Dell, HP, Gateway (brought me to tears), etc. Vista sucks. Going Mac is good.

I agree with Snarky. Get a Mac. Use BootCamp to run Windows/Linux and MacOSX. You'll find you're running MacOSX more and more. But, you may just end up with a superior Windows machine.

Where I disagree with Snarky, however, is I would make sure the machine uses the Socratic method.

I have been very satisfied with my IBM Thinkpad. They are now made by Lenovo but I haven't heard bad things about the quality post-turnover and the newer versions I have had at work have also been reliable and serviceable. One of the great things about Thinkpads is they are very durable: in five years I have only had to replace the fan (a $90 out-of-warranty fix at the place Barnett recommended on the VC). The prices are a little high but if you are the sort of person willing to buy a good machine and keep it rather than cycle through a new junker every 18 months, try Thinkpads.

My Lenovo is holding up much better than my Latitude. If you get a Dell, get the N year onsite repair. The second year, the fan failed, taking out the CPU, requiring a new motherboard. I also needed a new battery (within warranty) and a new fat snake. Then the keyboard started falling apart -- literally, keytops fell off. Because I use a USB mouse, I hadn't noticed that the pointing device had quit working.

Too many compatibility issues with windows? It sounds like you've never tried a mac. I use a mac on my office windows network with no problems (far fewer problems than my windows xp laptop even).

Lenovo/IBM laptops. Solid build quality and great service in the rare event your computer fails. I'm a heavy, 'always on' user and mine take a great beating but have never crapped out the way Dell (best of the rest), HP, or Sony computers have done. Avoid HP at all cost. Too many horror stories about them (esp. on Consumerist).

Or get a Mac. I too was a skeptic at first, but when I finally switched (only a week ago) I quickly realized that it was a far more enjoyable computing experience than any Windows machine could possibly offer.

Compatibility problems? What compatibility problems? As a longtime Windows user, I have had none. If anything, my switch to a Mac was predicated partly on Vista's compatibility problems with devices on its own platform! And Apple's operating system frankly beats the bejesus out of anything on Windows now. Stick with XP? You get a last generation platform. Go with Vista? You're bummed because it's turd and we all know how Windows machines eat memory like nobody's business. On a Mac, you get stunning, buttery smooth visuals and usability at no pain. Go with the MacBook Pros (I'm typing on one right now) or the iMacs (which are stunning).

With regards to TomHynes's point number 2, please note that Intel is about to move to a new socket size on its motherboards. So if you were planning to get a comp and then upgrade to a better processor, well the better processors for the current generation of motherboards are being released now. So planning 5 years down the road might not be good at this moment in time.

After reading this post and these comments it almost seems appropriate to go to a techie site and ask for legal advice. But maybe its only me.

But I would recommend lots of RAM and a dual processor if someone were to ask.

Desktop: build your own or pay a local teenager $75 to do it for you.

Seconded. Or pay a systems integrator a few more bucks to do it. The quality is much better and the cost of upgrades is much less -- e.g. the base Apple system might be cheaper, but they charge such exorbitant prices for extra RAM or larger hard drives, for instance ($300 for a 2GB stick of DDR that costs $35 on NewEgg), that it's cheaper to get a powerful machine from Newegg.

3. I don't think build your own makes sense any more. It used to, but it is hard to build a desktop with Windows for less than $500, and you can get a pretty good Dell for that.

Correct at the $500 mark, incorrect at the $1000 mark due to absurdly over-priced upgrades at the majors. For instance, Dell charges $210 for 2x2GB upgrade of laptop RAM. Newegg has it for $57. Apple is even worse.

You can get an Apple and run Windows as well. Best of everything.

Nobody's mentioned Panasonic/Matsushita yet?
For a desktop replacement, get the CF-52.
For thin-and-light, look at the CF-T7, CF-Y7, or CF-W7.
You'll be spending between $1500 and $2000, but you get a built-in three-year warranty (expandable to 5 years) and 48-hour turnaround (they'll pay for overnight both ways if something goes wrong), and you get to enjoy an annual failure rate between a third and a fifth of Dell's, Lenovo's, and Apple's.

Another vote for Mac.

Lenovo has the best build quality of the PC laptops I've seen, but they also tend to be as expensive as Apple for a similar machine, and sometimes more so.

Compatibility is no longer a significant reason to avoid the Mac platform. Not when you can get virtualization software that lets you run Windows applications side-by-side with Mac ones. If that doesn't work, one can run Windows directly through Boot Camp.

Mac hardware is only slightly more expensive than *equivalent* PC hardware, and you get what you pay for. If you're close to an Apple Store, you can take your laptop in for service and have it done right there. There's nothing like that kind of service with Dell, HP, or Lenovo.

I third TomHynes.

I have many times taken the PC of a friend or family member, and simply reinstalled Windows and amazed them with the performance. I'm using the same Dell latitude for 7 years now.

Repartition the drive with Partition Magic or similar program so you have three partitions:
1- 20gb
2- 20gb
3- THE REST OF THE SPACE.

Install Windows on #1. Install a second copy of Windows on #2. Save all your data to #3.

Normally, you boot #1 and install the apps you are using. After a year, you swap, and start booting #2, and install whatever apps you are then using. In a year, you reinstall #1, and swap back to booting #1

I do the swap each year, around Xmas holidays. Takes about a a little time to reinstall XP and a dozen applications, but it is worth it.... particularly since this setup lets me go back to the old booting system anytime, in case I forgot something.

Just throwing this out there, but I keep saying the next computer I'm going to run Linux. It's certainly not mail and web that's keeping me put, and I understand there are Office work-alikes, but I've become fond of Irfanview.

What you should do for the CPU is go for an Intel CPU since you say you want a fast CPU. AMD has been losing the CPU speed race badly ever since the Intel Core line of CPUs came out in 2005. If you are going to purchase in the next couple of months go for one of the Intel Core 2 Quad models, either the Q9300 and Q9450. If you can wait a little longer, as others have said, Intel is about to introduce a whole new line of CPUs with significant advances in speed and technology.

Another issue to bear in mind is 32 bit versus 64 bit computing. If you go with the ordinary, 32 bit, version of either Windows XP or Windows Vista as the operating system it is not worth getting more than 4Gb of RAM. 4Gb is the limit of 32 bit computers as 4Gb is equal to 2^32. That said 4Gb is definitely the mainstream amount of RAM for computers at the moment.

Overall Windows Vista is the better operating system to go for with a new PC. A new machine will have the muscle to run Vista and the kinks have been ironed out over the last 18 months. If you do go for the 64 bit version then bear in mind that there are some issues with that still. However those issues are minor and with a new machine they are extremely unlikely to crop up.

The reality is that computers are now a commodity product so what sets apart vendors is not really the hardware they offer but the after-sales service. Bearing in mind the points about the CPU, RAM and 32 vs 64 bit operating systems I would say go with the vendor with the best reputation for after-sale services, unless that vendor has cripplingly high prices in comparison with others.

Oren's $300 figure for a 2GB RAM upgrade is incorrect btw: it's $200 (and still a ripoff). Macs come with a minimum of 2GB now -- sufficient for most workaday tasks. Most allow a 2GB upgrade to 4GB (easily installed by a third party other than Apple) which should make everything blazingly fast. Boot up for me is about 20 seconds. Upgrading your hard drive to a slightly smaller but faster hard drive should make everything even snappier. No load times for most applications. You click, it loads. Instantaneous.

Oren's $300 figure for a 2GB RAM upgrade is incorrect btw: it's $200 (and still a ripoff).

Would you like a screenshot? I didn't just make the figure up you know -- I went to Dell's webpage and looked at the cost to upgrade from 2x512 to 2x2GB.

Not when you can get virtualization software that lets you run Windows applications side-by-side with Mac ones.

My adviser (quite a tech-savvy guy) complains non-stop about Parallels slowing his Macbook to a crawl when trying to run XP and OSX side-by-side. Virtualization is great on the desktop where you have 4 cores and 8GB of RAM (or on servers that run on a cluster of hardware) but computing power is not yet there for the average hardware.

After many years as a computer professional, I feel qualified to offer some advice.

1. If you go namebrand, don't buy Home/Home-Office models. Doesn't matter what brand I've dealt with over the years, the Home/Home-Office models tend to have more problems. My guess has always been cheaper components.

2. Building your own can be fun, but unless you have a good friend to bounce ideas off of, it can be a headache.

3. Vista is much improved, but I still prefer XP.

4. I have always liked Macs as well. MacOS is a strong operating system. I don't recommend it for someone who wants to play games. I assume you want it so you can do work. If you just want a computer to be reliable and not have to think about it a lot, MacOS is a good choice.

5. Some people will try to talk you into some flavor of Linux. Linux is a strong stable OS, but IMHO, it still requires the end user to have a better understanding of the OS than say MacOS

Dual Processors with 2GB of RAM are basic hardware recommendations.

I strongly encourage my friends and family to consider mirrored hard drives. Most home users don't do sufficient backups. Mirrored hard drives help protect you from dataloss for a reasonable price.

No one has asked David the basic question: what does he want to do with his machine? Just word processing? Games? Heavy duty numerical computing? In other words, what applications does he want to run? If he wants to do digital photography, he's going to need much more machine than what's enough for word processing.

Do what I did, dont use any of them. Find a computer store and have them BUILD one from scratch with what you want. They all use the same internal parts anyway.

I ordered all the parts from various online sellers such as NewEgg etc and had a friend bolt it together...or as I said use a local comp. store in your area.

Get a lot more horsepower for the buck.

Oren: Parallels is slow, but only if you don't have enough RAM. If you have 2GB of memory and allocate 512MB to Windows, you generally should be fine. The more memory the better, obviously, but 2GB is generally enough, and that's what comes standard on Macs these days.

Parallels did slow my old MacBook to a crawl too - but that thing only had 1GB of memory. Slapping in 2GB made an enormous difference.

Your stated reasons for rejecting Apple aren't valid; as many have noted above, the Apple hardware will run Windows (XP or Vista) natively. There are two strong arguments in favor of Apple hardware: (a) at the high end, they run Windows and applications under Windows very well -- better than most PC's; (b) Apple's technical support is the best (check out Consumer Reports and other sources to confirm this). Apple devotees will also expect you to gravitate to Apple's operating system, as it turns out to be better than either XP or Vista for most work-related computer uses.

For the notebook, I would assume you want another ultraportable. The Lenovo Thinkpad X series can not be beat in my opinion. I have an X300 through work and would say it is the best portable I have ever used. Be sure to get at least 2GB of RAM. You can also still get XP from Lenovo.
As for a Mac, you would have to go with the MacBook Air to get an ultraportable. It just has two many limitations in my opinion: no optical drive, no ethernet, one USB port.
Here is a review comparing the X300 to the MacBook Air:
Review

I run a MacBook Pro with VMWare (ditched Parallels) for running Windows when I need to (not that often) and it's faster than a friend's Mac-less Windows machine. Yes, max out the RAM - it's the best investment you can make in a new machine. Another friend with a Mac uses the virtual desktops to switch back and forth between Mac and Windows screens with a single keypress - slick.

If you go this route get their 3-year AppleCare warranty. If you ever have any problems you get overnight round-trip and when you're ready to sell it they'll basically refurbish the thing for free, which recovers all the cost of AppleCare.

Apple also has automatic backups (Time Machine) which are super handy. No doubt somebody in your school already has a setup like this you can try.

I concur with those who say build your own desktop. My husband decided to build his own desktop after a friend convinced him that doing so would not be that hard. My husband, who knew little about computers, decided to give it a shot. Although it did take him a little while to put it together, he's thrilled with how it turned out. The result was a desktop that cost less than the average desktop but is faster and more powerful than anything he could buy off the shelf.

At least check out an Apple running Windows.

I work for a Very Large Software Company as a consultant; I've had a Toshiba Tecra M2 for three years, on the road 75% of the time, and it's been absolutely reliable as long as I use OpenOffice / Firefox / Thunderbird instead of the MickeySquish equivalents.

Dell is from H*ll.

Buy the Mac and run Windows, Linux, or the operating system of your choice natively via Boot Camp or in emulation via a virtual machine.

I have a MacPro with 4 gigs of Ram and two 20" Apple Cinema displays. I run Vista on one and MacOs on the other. To my surprise, Vista in emulation is actually faster than the XP box I used at my last job.

Apple has the best hardware in the industry, and the Intel processor allows you to run natively whatever software you need or want. Why choose one over the other when you can have both and never have to worry about compatibility issues again?

Video convinces more than talk does. I don't think people quite appreciate how much more intuitive and usable Apple's operating system is -- I certainly didn't until I took a look with my own eyes. It persuaded me. Also, if you can, try playing with the machines at an actual store. As Bart mentions, it is well worth your time. Pictures look impressive and all, but you don't actually get a feel of how they are like until you've set eyes on one in a store. Seeing one in the flesh actually exceeded my (already high) expectations, which surprised me.

I built my desktop and it wasn't that hard, but my impression is that the (time+money)/product ratio that you get from building your own desktop is huge if you're building a powerful gaming desktop (that would cost $1500-$3k retail) and much less if you're buying the type of desktop you probably want (that would cost $700-$1000 retail). I built my desktop for about $700 a couple years ago, it would've cost me about $1400 or $1500 retail. To build an $800 retail desktop would probably have still cost me about $550, with the same time investment (it took me about 16 hours altogether).

I've bought five computers this year alone. The key factors have already been discussed above:

1) Don't buy a home model, or even "home office:" Buy a business-grade model. My Dell Vostro is running fine in my son's graduate school environment. Important factor: the Vostro (as in the proposed configuration cited above) has a separate graphics card. On a laptop, this is more important than many realize, but also requires a solid internal cooling system. So get the business version. There's a sales cycle on all such machines: my fully-equipped Vostro cost $589. It might not be powerful enough for your needs, however, since upcoming software will require "big iron." You will likely do more video work in the future than you now know, since more and more material involves imbedding CPU-intensive tasks. My PowerPoints to government agencies or public presentations, for example, routinely involve imbedded animation or video to be effective; you can't just read the slides any more. Bottom line: even if you're not a gamer, power will be important.

2) Homebuilt machines are fine and don't require much expertise. If you want, you can get books on how to build your own, but these days, most of what you get just snaps together. But don't expect to save money; you just get a better performing machine, plus bragging rights. And, you don't want to build your own laptop, though customizing one your way is fairly easy these days.

3) Alternatively, you can find some companies that will build you a machine to your specifications. That, believe it or not, is what Dell does (disclaimer: Dell used to be a client). I use Velocity Microcomputers of Richmond, Virginia, which also sells through Best Buy now. Tech support is first-rate.

4) I have had major problems with NewEgg quality control, including endless shipments of bad memory sticks. And you will have to pay return shipping. I have not had a problem with TigerDirect; they do have a LOT of e-mail ads, though no worse than say MicroCenter. MicroCenter, by the way, has lost my business entirely, after a miserable sale and return of a defective house-brand laptop. It's like Fry's, without the personal touch.

5) HP has improved tremendously in the last couple of years. Carly Fiorina was forced out as CEO, but left a legacy of improvement behind. My most recent purchase was a HP laptop "special edition" open box, with no problems (other than a remote control which attacks fingernails). And my experience with HP customer support on a defective HP all-in-one was annoying, but they replaced the whole thing quickly and without cost or complaint. They also explained, in appropriately substantiated detail, the problem: on startup, the machine wants to draw full power, so being behind an UPS or even some control centers/surge protectors may confuse the internal processors. Since then, no problems with the machine.

YMMV.

I have a Macbook and love it, but I also have a desktop PC and that is what my school runs on (Windows XP). I have not had any personal experience with Bootcamp or Windows on a Mac so I can't say if that is the way to go or not.

My desktop is a Systemax and have NEVER had a problem with it. I have also heard great things about their laptops. You can find them at Tiger Direct or Systemaxpc.com. Solid PC, customizable, and great customer support.

"My adviser (quite a tech-savvy guy) complains non-stop about Parallels slowing his Macbook to a crawl when trying to run XP and OSX side-by-side. Virtualization is great on the desktop where you have 4 cores and 8GB of RAM (or on servers that run on a cluster of hardware) but computing power is not yet there for the average hardware."
If he's using a current MacBook, he's got a Core 2 Duo processor but if it's an older machine, it might be the older Core Duo chip.
The Core 2 Duo offered a good performance boost over its predecessor but the old chip was no slouch either.
Perhaps your adviser should contact tech support at Parallels and ask them to step through his configuration. It could be something as simple as not having enough RAM allocated to XP.

Insofar as "average hardware" - even entry level Macs have Core 2 Duo chips running at 2+ GHz. That's more than enough computing power to run multiple OS's.

In addition to a custom AMD 5600 machine running XP, I use a MacBook Pro with a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo processor. The laptop runs OS X and XP and it's a fast, stable combination.