Dell rant 1587
Whups. I read somewhere that the 'tone' of an email (or post) is misread in about 50% of cases. Let's revisit.
I'm not bitter, and perhaps "rant" is a little strong. I did my research, and was fully aware of the hardware (if not the software) that I was receiving. I was quite astounded at the *amount* of bloatware that was installed...that is the primary reason for my original post.
Yup, I'm just guessing at numbers. Given the prices that retail 'value' boards sell for along with the volume that Dell deals with, $10 for a PCI-E slot sounds reasonable. Maybe it's $20, but I doubt it. They need a plastic slot, some additional motherboard routing-layout, and an updated northbridge in addition to revised drivers. Probably looking at a couple dollars for the slot and a few more for the chip upgrade. The rest is mostly NRE, but that might partly be shared by the already developed 5100. Obviously, the 5100 series buys you more than just a PCI-E slot...I'm not saying the extra $200+ is unwarranted (you get a lot more for your money), just that it would be nice to see PCI-E on the 3100.
The heated mirror analogy is appropriate, point taken. Speaking as someone who wanted remote keyless entry and got air conditioning, alloy rims, and cruise thrown in for 'free' :)
Hi Clark, This is only my opinion, which is meant as food for thought. I can analyze the hell out of...
I believe Dell has corrected this. The new case looks nothing like the old clamshell dimension cases. And yes, that angled-down USB placement was a really poor choice! Still, case design has been one of Dell's motherboard-case. As with most Dell PC's, it is reasonably quiet. You pull a latch on the top rear of the case to remove the side panel.
I've learned to accept that no computer manufacturer would provide perfect support from all of its reps. Today I had a situation that was kind of mind-boggling...
Really? I thought the Dell-included CD had the OS + all the bloatware as an image, and you simply restored the computer from that disk. As I just received the computer last night, I haven't had the chance to browse the included CD's. FWIW, I did pay the extra $10 for the Dell WinXP restore disk. While there is a lot of bloatware on the PC, there are a few Dell apps that I'd like to keep, so I suspect a clone is in order. I use Ghost on all my PC's and I can't count the number of hours it has saved me...
Cheers, Dave
You're right -- CNET calls them "capacious but slow". One thing I've noticed is that especially for external hard drives people are more compelled to write a negative...