Dell 5150 Dual Core 2.8GHz inc 19" LCD Monitor & Free Printer £429 (merged)

bookshifter

Cab00se wrote:

How did you get on phoning them?

I really hate using the phone, much prefer e-mail, but have to say dell's indian call center was actually pretty good in this instance :eek: Got through straight away, and "Amit" was easy to understand, he understood my accent, and he was really helpful. :money:

Oh, mine was the £439 deal not the £399 one.

My £399 5150 has arrived. I haven't opened it yet!

I don't think that I can return it or get a discount because I am miffed about the following week (£439) offer. So I don't plan on phoning them now!

I misunderstood Cab00se's situation. In their situation I think that they had every right to complain because their order was the £439 offer, and that offer was altered mid way thru.

Is it the case that Dell always offer 3 Day Specials every Sat-Mon, if that is the case nobody should buy from them Tues-Fri apart from misprices?!

My Dad needs a new PC so I could get the £439 'better' offer and give him my new and unopened £399 offer, naughty I know ! The small matter of 2 and a quarter hours to decide whether to go for this deal ........ I trust that this offer is the best sub £600 dell offer at the moment ....... Dilemma!

It seems like nothing is truly a special 'one time only' offer at Dell ........... and this current offer will be there in some capacity next week ......

Streeet

I don't think that I can return it or get a discount because I am miffed about the following week (£439) offer. So I don't plan on phoning them now!

It's your right to cancel the order within 7 working days for whatever reason. The reason you want to cancel because you didn't appreciate the alternatives is as good as any.

I wouldnt say there are always great offers. It all depends what you want. The 19" TFT swung it for me this time.

Your call mate but you dont get if you dont ask.
Best of luck.

biglugs

Any ideas which graphics cards would be good with this system.

I have a Dimension 5100 which I got a few months ago and I bought a Gigabyte 6600GT from Dabs.com which works fine - it is the silent heatpipe version which you can use without a fan if you want (although I choose to use the fan on lowest speed).
It works fine and I play games like Half-Life 2 at reasonably high settings with no power problems whatsoever.
Cards like this these days will cost about £90-£95 from a main supplier new, probably £20-£30 cheaper on Ebay. If you're a serious gamer it's worth paying the extra £90ish for a decent card, which is why it's better to get a machine without the X300SE fitted because you're paying for something you'd only have to junk anyway.

AJP558

jase_uk wrote:

I have looked under Dell Accesories and the only thing listed is 'driver reset tool' , it has no option to burn a disc. Help!! , also if i can get hold of a wondows disc, what do i do about a serial number?

Try a reboot & press F11 when the screen shows the large Dell logo early on in the boot process. I too "lost" the option to burn the XP CD as I used PartitionMagic to create new disk partitions before burning the CD. Dell Tech Supp told me to press the F11 key and the option re-appeared under Dell Accessories.

On an un-altered system, pressing F11 on boot should take you into the Dell restore/recovery options, but on my altered system it made the burn option appear once Windows had started back up. Its worth giving it a try instead of having to get hold of a XP CD.

However, if that does not work, then contact Dell support & explain the problem to them. I contacted them for 1 system and they sent me the entire stack of CDs relevant to that laptop. For free.

fairytooth

Simply amazing

You Dell bargain hunters are probably all aware of the latest offer but double memory and further price reduction to £399.04 now included for a couple more days. Probably the best deal yet - I've just treated myself.

http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?b=&c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&oc=D04516a&rbc=D04516a&s=dhs&sbc=ukdhsftdppdesktop3

fairytooth

swapmeetpete wrote:

I'd pay extra to NOT have McAfee

Me too - a complete waste of time :j

Whirly

*mutters about constantly changing deals*

It's annoying and to some degree I'm tempted to call them (I have 1 day to do so) and threaten to send it back...

BUT I've added my 250Gb HDD (nice silent Samsung), I've set it up how I like, and I've just added an extra 512Mb memory I bought for £10 (took me less than 5 mins). So overall I don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell of me actually sending it back.

Anyway, all I've lost is £10 and the chances are I'll change the memory for bigger modules when I see a bargain on 2Gb+ DDR2.

BTW has anyone else added extra memory and then found the Dell BIOS reporting the memory speed for all modules as 533Mhz (instead of 400Mhz)? Not knowing how reliable Dell BIOS's are when reporting I don't know whether I've managed to increase my memory speed or it's just reporting the rated speed of the memory modules. (Either way it would seem to indicate that the memory supplied was actually 533Mhz not the quoted 400Mhz)

bookshifter

fairytooth wrote:

Simply amazing

You Dell bargain hunters are probably all aware of the latest offer but double memory and further price reduction to £399.04 now included for a couple more days. Probably the best deal yet - I've just treated myself.

http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?b=&c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&oc=D04516a&rbc=D04516a&s=dhs&sbc=ukdhsftdppdesktop3

Just a note though.

If you bought it last night you'd have got a 160GB HD.

I am staying put with my 'lower spec' £399 ...... chicken, I know!

quoia

Does anyone know if all these 5150s that have been available over the last few weeks are all shipped with the same motherboard ??

It's just that I ordered one almost 4 weeks ago, the Dimension 5150 Pentium 4 Processor 630 with HT technology (3.00GHz,800MHz fsb,2MB cache) although because of being away on holiday it was only delivered yesterday.

It was at a good price but only 512Mb memory although did have wireless mouse & keyboard included.

The reason for the question about the motherboard is this latest offer with the dual Core processor with "upto 51% better performance compared to the Intel® Pentium 4 Processor with HT Technology"

OK so this is "only" a 2.8Ghz when I've got a 3.0GHz but with a 50% greater throughput it would equate to a 4.2GHz processor.

Will my motherboard accomodate faster and/or different Pentium 4 chips ?
eg upgrade from the P4 630 HT @ 3Ghz to a 640 HT @ 3.2Ghz or a 650 HT @ 3.4Ghz

OR

the DUAL CORE version currently on offer
eg Pentium® D Processor 820 with DualCore Technology (2.80GHz,800MHz fsb,2x1MB cache)

Would be nice to know that I can "significantly" increase performance by changing the processor as and when I can obtain a newer faster CPU (in a few months time) for a "nominal" amount of expenditure (probably under £50?)

Anyone?

Roger_Rampant

"upto 51% better performance compared to the Intel® Pentium 4 Processor with HT Technology"

My understanding is that you would only obtain that sort of enormous performance benefit when using software that has been designed to work with dual core processors, or if you happened to be running two CPU-intensive tasks simultaneously