Vista or Windows XP

(1) Dell Support.

overall I'd give it 7/10. The 7 they do get is for being there, returning calls, fixing simple problems, and trying to solve more difficult ones. The 3 out of ten they didn't get were because of attempts to offer blatantly unacceptable solutions or to fob off the problem to Microsoft, and because a competent PC user/enthusiast probably knows more about fault finding and fixing than they do.

For support you've got phone, email and chat options, reps are (in my experience) unfailingly polite and helpful. However, there are issues of continuity of response between different representatives if you don't get a first time solution, they don't always seem to have read the original log or email about the fault (so you have to explain the problem repeatedly), and they repeatedly offer unacceptable "solutions". By this last, I mean that on having a problem with Vista's sleep mode, they repeatedly made a first suggestion of turning off the sleep mode altogether. Subsequent to that they did try and fault find, but when this wasn't working they several times suggested that it was "a Vista problem" and that I'd have to wait for a MS fix to appear. After much testing on my part I identified the Creative XFi drivers as a culprit, and further digging has resulted in an apparent fix of changing the card slot, and letting Vista allocate a new and unique IRQ. The original "lock up on sleep" problem appears to occur because the XFi driver isn't capable of sharing an IRQ with other high throughput devices (in particular the graphics card), but the default install for Vista seems to put all PCI devices on the same IRQ. Now, I think I've got it solved, but I would have hoped that Tech Support would know things like that, so that I didn't have to spend months sorting this out. But in addiiton to not suggesting this, their default suggestion of turning off power save means that they probably close other people's problems without actually recognising the true cause, and thus an otherwise resolvable fault is not added to the knowledge base.

But...I don't think you'll find that anybody else is doing support differently or better, and using HP hardware at work, I think that Dell equipment is far better, so you'd buy on price and quality, and accept the Tech Support as it is.

(2) Vista or XP. No question - Vista. Vista is a far prettier, more mature system, it is the one that all software and hardware support will be focused on going forward. It offers better security than XP, and the whole package has a lot more value add. As far as I can see most of the teething troubles that have got Vista a bad press are now sorted, and in terms of other faults (like my sleep issue) those could just as well have been on an XP system. Why invest in software that was released six years ago? I accept that you've got six years of bug fixing in the meanwhile, but you wouldn't dream of buying a single core processor running at 1.7GHz now, so why buy software of that vintage? There is a single caveat - if you wish to run any specialist software that you must have, and is not compatible with Vista, then you have no choice other than sticking with XP, or paying for new versions. Having said that, most of my apps and games predate Vista by some years, and all run without problem, it just isn't somthing you should rely on for business critical apps, or for any proprietary databases or the like.

(3) Your call, based on your needs. My suggestion: If you don't do gaming, then an Inspiron, if you do gaming, then a low end XPS with an 8800 range graphics card.

Either way go for a low end Intel Core 2 Duo processor (even the low end Core 2's will kill anything you can currently throw at them), 2Gb of RAM (anything over 3Gb won't be seen by the OS), and a modest hard disk (unless you do heavy photo , video or database work). Do splash out on a 22 inch wide panel - you'll really be pleased with that after a couple of months. Strip off anything from the default spec that you don't need - eg only buy an XFi sound card if you do gaming or use your PC for enthusiastic music purposes (the on-board sound works far better than you would expect), and delete any hardware or software from the order unless you really need it. If you have Office XP or later, you can carry that over to the Vista machine.

I've half a mind to also recommend Vista 64 bit as a means of giving your machine a longer life, but I don't have any experience of Vista 64, and chances are that you'll be looking for a new machine in four years time anyway, which is the sort of horizon that you'd be looking at mainstream apps and games coming in 64 bit flavours.

Regards,

Led

Recommend you check the specs for yourself (don't hold out much hope of a Dell rep happening across your request here!), but one point I would make is that all the HP monitors and screens I've seen haven't been up to much. My work laptop and desktop monitor are HP/Compaq's, and I wouldn't tolerate the quality on my own account even if they were free. If you're buying a monitor with the computer, then Dell screens are going to be a safer bet. And make sure it's a 22 widescreen as a minimum.

Led