Bottom Line:
Avoid DELL at all costs.
Sorry, cant disagree with this more. For people who dont know how to do things computery, Dell PC's are an excellent choice. Obviously their cheaper models might be prone to problems, in exactly the same way that any other companies cheaper models are prone to problems. And unless you happen to speak in an incredibly heavy regional accent of some kind, Dell customer service is not that difficult to get on with. The tech guys run through the right kinds of checks most times and will be very helpful providing you dont shout at them because they are in india. Most UK based tech call centres are simply full of asian employees anyhow! (and I work for a company that has one, so am speaking from experience).
Dells midrange, laptop and higher end PC's are always very well made, granted exceptions occur, however it is often traced to a bad batch of parts from a third party, rather than Dells build quality.
Yes, you can get gaming rigs cheaper elsewhere, but thats because Dell dont specialise in them, they specialise in home PC's covering a variety of abilities, and work PC's for offices mainly. And yes, you can build your own a lot cheaper quite often, but as I mentioned, for people who dont know how to or are not compentent enough, its hard to beat a Dell.
I've had 2 laptops from them, one over 3 years old, still going strong (in use by mum on a daily basis), the one im on now which is going very nicely after a year and still playing new games nicely. 2 netbooks, one a Mini9 from Vodafone package, was in perfect working order until I sold it after 2.5 years to a mate...amazingly it died quite quickly, but given he gave it to his 5 year old son to use, I suspect it wasnt the laptops fault. A Dell Duo which I bought myself, fantastic device, yes, battery life isnt amazing, but then its pretty nippy and capable of doing a fair bit more than my Mini9 could, and as I leave it in the dock at work it doesnt matter. Well built, and a year in has had no issues.
Desktop, 4. First one got struck my lightening and the hard drive was still working properly after so I could retrieve data (thankfully insurance company was very very helpful and sent me back the HDD), second one only died because I overloaded the PSU rather massively, third and fourth ones, Dell Dimension 8300 and 8400 (both 3ghz P4, but 8400 was PCI-E) are still working strong after god knows how many years abuse, mostly to do video encoding and crunching stuff.
So thats 8 Dell PC's over around 14 years, only three no longer in operation, one from a lightening strike! The other from me adding more RAM, another disk drive, another two hard drives, a much more powerful graphics card, a soundcard and a TV Tuner without realising what might happen. Otherwise, all good. The third a mystery, but I suspect child abuse as my friend didnt let me see it to see if it could be fixed...lol
If you've had a bad experience with a company personally, then fair enough, I can appreciate why you might be reluctant to use or recommend them, but you have to take it in context. With a company of Dells size, of course there will be a large amount of complaints online to read.....they sell fantastically huge numbers of PC's compared to the smaller, gamer rig specialising companies.
If you are just jumping on a 'hate Dell' bandwagon because of their success....then please, save it for clan forums where people like to bitch and moan with no good reason and slate everything because its cool and not consider the implications.