I'm referring to both...
I admit the service from Dell is pretty good if you can afford to pay for it, the warranty's can be ok too, but I have seen them replace a faulty new laptop with a refurbished laptop... and I have been on the phone with them troubleshooting the same steps (I already did) for the sake of their records so they can validate the warranty.
And I have refurbished and worked on many workstations, laptops and even servers... I'm not all that impressed with cheap motherboards and bad airflow. Sometimes their cases have been impressive, but most of them are cheap.
Obviously if you are spending $400 on a new computer its going to have some cheap parts...
Never purchase replacement parts from Dell because their prices are ridiculously high!!!
I know it can be argued both ways but I have seen too much...
Businesses reap the benefits and disasters when working with 10+ computers.
Benefits:
- Decent warranties for failed/faulty hardware
- Decent prices
- Ability to apply images due to duplicate hardware
- Most should last 6-10 years
Disadvantages:
- Bad air flow (results in overheating)
- online drivers
- hundreds of models to filter through
- 4 versions of each model (Mini-Tower, Desktop Tower, Small Form Factor)
- Customer support
- Price of warranty renewal
- Price of replacement parts
My current job has at least 100 Optiplex GX520's and they are getting really old. But they are still kicking and I have to replace hard drives and or power supplies from time to time. The previous generation was plagued with bad capacitors. I hope they learned their lesson from that huge mistake.
In the end, I prefer to build my own computers. Businesses really don't have a choice but to use Dell or HP because they usually need 20-100 or even more computers. I obviously can't support that by building them myself.