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Programmer by day, comic nerd by night. My official job title is "Director of Janitorial Engineering"
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Similar to mine except mine is a 24" monitor
I have had a couple of questions about the new computer...and an interesting twist as well.
First of all I asked around at my employer before I went to buy a computer if we got a discount with Dell. I was told no, but we did have one with Apple.
So I placed my order. Less than 5 days after receiving the new computer I got an e-mail from a guy at work with a link to vendor's that the parent company get deals with. Who was on there? Dell.
I quickly went through the link and repriced out the computer that I had chosen as best as possible (anyone that has dealt with Dell before even though you can customize your computer...there are certain limitations depending on where you are coming from).
Needless to say after I had priced out the computer it ended up only costing me $40 for a whole heck of a lot of extra good stuff.
What I am gaining:
- I go from a 1 year basic warranty to a 4 year warranty AND a 4 year complete care warranty (incase I spill something on it)
- I get a better graphics card (ATI Radeon HD 3650 256MB vs ATI Radeon HD 2500)
- I get a premium mouse
- I get a Blu-ray/DVD/CD Burner with double layer Blu-ray write
- I get McAfee Security Center free for 3 years
- oh and I get a $50 gift card (thus making my new computer $10 cheaper than I originally had intended on paying)
What I am losing:
- I go from a 1TB (2x500GB RAID 0) setup down to 1 500GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache hard drive
So really this ended up being a sweet deal. I initially called Dell and told them I would just settle for them increasing my warranty to the 4 years vs the 1 year I had and they told me they couldn't do it...I would have to return the computer.
So I ordered the new computer with the new specs and the 12% discount (plus the normal Dell deal) and I put in a return for my "old" new computer.
Another advantage to this is that yesterday in the mail I got my Vista Ultimate 64Bit edition installation disk. To install it on the "old" new computer I would have had to rebuild the RAID and then reinstalled everything anyways. Now since I am getting a new computer I will just plop the disk in and get it setup correctly to start with.
As far as why I went with Dell instead of building my own...well to me it is an easy decision. Sure I might be able to save some money overall in the end...but peace of mind is worth more than money.
I now have a 4 year COMPLETE warranty on my system. This means that if anything goes wrong I only have 1 call to make. If I built my computer most part warranties expire after 1 year and I would have to go to each manufacturer to get the issue resolved. Plus since I would have done it myself it would have been more likely to fail on me eventually.
Here are the new computer specs:
- Dell XPS 420 (mmmm I like 420 lol)
- Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q9450 (12MB Cache,2.66GHz, 1333FSB)
- 4GB DDR2 SDRAM @ 800MHz
- ATI Radeon HD 3650 256MB graphics card
- 500GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache Sata hard drive
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I figure the 1 year warranty is enough, cuz by then it will be time to upgrade again!
Can you overclock? I have the quad core 6600 2.4Ghz that I bumped up to 3Ghz. (It's stable).
My Rig:
-Asus PK5-SE MoBo
-Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (8M L2 Cache 2.4Ghz 133FSB) OverClocked to 3Ghz
-3GB DDR2 @800Mhz
-nVidia 8600 GT 512MB
-320GB System HD
-2X500GB Storage HD
-2XOptical drives DVD combo/BluRay combo
-Dual 24 inch monitors
I put it together for under $900 including the OS.....
Monitors and BluRay extra! ;P
I would venture to guess that we are about the same in price, yours might have been about 20% cheaper after all is said and done.
I had my last computer for like 6 years and it wasn't too bad. This one should last just as long. Knock on wood!