The evils of Dell desktops
I've had a Dell laptop for a couple of years now - it's magical, wonderful, largely problem free, and as a result of my positive experience, I bought a barebones Dell desktop, thinking I could easily add and/or swap parts.
Well, today I finally got around to installing my new 300 gb hard drive that I bought to augment the 40 gb that came with the desktop. First of all, let me tell you about the inside of my computer. The soundcard is integrated. Which means that in order to install my own soundcard, I have to disable the integrated soundcard through the BIOS (or so I am told). Moreover, there's an integrated video card, all sorts of weird plastic built-in coverings, etc. - in short, it's a dummy-proofed computer, which is resultingly harder to modify in any way.
So anyway - the hard drive. In order to take out the existing hard drive in order to set the drive as master, I had to disassemble this cage-like contraption that took me a fair amount of time, skin and frustration. Then there were all sorts of problems with IDE cables (luckily I had spare ones), and the lack of space for a second hard drive (it's just standing on end of its own volition right now), and just multiple annoyances that were magnified by the fact that Dell's dummied-down desktop is actually more difficult to work with - since they try to prevent people from doing anything to their own computers.
I think I would have had a nervous breakdown if it hadn't been for my buddy Jason. I was working on my desktop with my laptop next to me, carrying on a chat conversation with him whereby he guided me through the process step by step.
Next up - hooking up my old hard drives, one by one, to the existing set-up so I can transfer my old files to my new drive. (Due to the fact that my old video card is fried, I can't just use my external drive to transfer files).
In short - Dell sucks. Jason rocks.
Well, today I finally got around to installing my new 300 gb hard drive that I bought to augment the 40 gb that came with the desktop. First of all, let me tell you about the inside of my computer. The soundcard is integrated. Which means that in order to install my own soundcard, I have to disable the integrated soundcard through the BIOS (or so I am told). Moreover, there's an integrated video card, all sorts of weird plastic built-in coverings, etc. - in short, it's a dummy-proofed computer, which is resultingly harder to modify in any way.
So anyway - the hard drive. In order to take out the existing hard drive in order to set the drive as master, I had to disassemble this cage-like contraption that took me a fair amount of time, skin and frustration. Then there were all sorts of problems with IDE cables (luckily I had spare ones), and the lack of space for a second hard drive (it's just standing on end of its own volition right now), and just multiple annoyances that were magnified by the fact that Dell's dummied-down desktop is actually more difficult to work with - since they try to prevent people from doing anything to their own computers.
I think I would have had a nervous breakdown if it hadn't been for my buddy Jason. I was working on my desktop with my laptop next to me, carrying on a chat conversation with him whereby he guided me through the process step by step.
Next up - hooking up my old hard drives, one by one, to the existing set-up so I can transfer my old files to my new drive. (Due to the fact that my old video card is fried, I can't just use my external drive to transfer files).
In short - Dell sucks. Jason rocks.
posted by Nixie at 3:26 PM
2 Comments:
While I do my share of Dell bashing, their case setup is not that bad. Sure Apple always has better case design, but Dell tends to design their cases logically, and makes it relatively easy to replace parts.
Of course, the quality tends to go up as you traverse the consumer/professional product divide. Replacing two pci cards in a rack mount Dell 2850 server, and some hard drives too, not that hard...
Now if you could only use the built in video cards along with an add on video card to create a dual monitor setup...
you're such the dork.
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