I've worked on a lot of Dells and I can tell you, NEVER go for refurbished parts. A Dell Latitude with a refurbished hard drive is destined to crash within 2 months. A brand new hard drive is definitely the way to go. (This is at least my experience, we could be getting refurbished drives from a dude who sells them from the back of his van in Mexico for all I know)

I try not to judge Dell too much from my experience though, all the Dell computers I've worked with have had crappy corporate or school images put on them, which make for some ridiculous problems.

I salvaged data from a Dell Latitude D630 that got hit by a train once... 

and from a bunch that "fell down some stairs."

If I was managing my own retirement, I sure would!

I can believe that.  It does take a while to get through the chaff to get a new part, but after a while, I learned to anticipate each question and have the answer ready.

Accidentally "fell down stairs"? Yea, I can see that excuse! LOL

I have put ones together myself (and prefer them for my own use).  I like picking out my own components.  But the reality is, for the average user, you cannot beat the prices of a manufactured one.

And I agree on the notebooks.  I would not even know how to go about getting the parts for those suckers!

I manage my own retirement.... I get a pension and I manage to spend it.

On my first internship on my PC technician education (which is phony btw) I tagged along one technician that only dealt with Dell. He only ever replaced the motherboards.

On his checklist, there was a note: Temps ok?   But that doesn't meant CPU temperature. It was CUSTOMER temperature

Businesswise though, I got absolutely NO idea how they make ANY profit AT ALL on homeusers considering how much they must pay for service.

Joasoze

I don't know how it's called, but what you're describing is "brand loyalty on false premises". You attribute good components to Dell when it's really the manufacturers that should be credited.

Dell though have great support.

Got to have your priorities straight.

I disagree. I dont care what manufactures should be credited. The point is that Dell buys good stuff from them and put it together. Your argument could be used on lots of products these days. Nike doesnt build a shoe themselves (the design them and buy them from factories around the world). Lots of cars have parts from other carmakers. I cannot keep a track on that, I will only try to find out if for example Toyota has a good track record before I buy. I dont check if the Toyota has a Volvo engine (I know it doesnt its just an example)

How about if Volvo had a Toyota engine?

What if you took a car with the engine in the front, and one with the engine in the back, and cut them in half and fused them together? Would it be significantly faster, or would the weight offset any extra speed?

Which way would it go?

Well obviously forward

The front mounted engine would power the front wheels and the back wheels would be powered by the rear mounted engine. You would definitely want the engines to be fairly close in power. You wouldn't want a V8 in the front and a V4 in the back

Would make some hell of great donuts in the road.

Seriously, I understood what you were saying.  But the idea of the Pushmi-Pullyu stuck in my mind so I had to be the jerk that asked the question.

Any name brand computers you are basically wasting money. Get a good PC with quality parts made up for you, you will get a much better machine for a much better price

On desktops I agree.  But I am not comfortable doing that with pads or laptops.  Just too much customization going on (to get it into the small form factor), so I want someone I can bitch to if it goes south.

It's great (and lucky) that her data was recoverable. I used to buy Dell but these days I tend to go with the HP models. Except for the fact that they can't seem to design a proper power port I find them very reliable.