I wouldnt go that far and say the machine is a lemon.
I upgraded from a Dim4300 to the Dim8400 in August. been using it every day and it is running great. no problems at all with it.

one thing that is a small complaint is i notice a difference in the quality of the case btwn the two above computers. The 4300 case had a more solid feel to it when opening the case. The 8400 is more flimsy. I have read of someone having one of the push buttons on the bottom of the case breaking thus the person could not open the case.

Since i dont open the case every day it not that huge a deel- maybe once a year i would open case-had to recently to put in a new video card

if you don't plan to upgrade much get the 8400. see my specs below..paid €2000 for it which would have cost me €3500 in the XPS..i know dell made a price mistake for this system as it should have been €2500 but their loss is my gain...the chassis does not justify that cost

i also got the 17n ultra sharp flatscreen plus 5.1 surround speakers and the deskjet 720.

i know one guy who paid €2000 for his xps and was bitterly disappointed with the graphics card etc..pure jealous when he saw my specs

The 8400's were upgraded in mid to late september. They work like a charm now. The early ones did have problems. Mine was built Sept 26th.

I've had my 8400 for about a month now and I've had no problems (this is my third Dell and all have been great so far, knock on wood). I use it mostly for gaming -- Doom 3, some strategy games and one online game. The odd time on a weekend I've gamed all day with no problems on the computer.

My only beef with the system is all the pre-installed software. When I tried to install Doom 3, the installer kept freezing partway through the install. I exchanged the game, hoping it was a disk problem and had the same issues. My next thought was the hard drive, but it proved to be fine. Finally I shut down every running process, aside from the necessary ones and the game installed perfectly. So one of those preinstalled programs was interrupting the install I guess. Doom 3 runs beautifully on the system with an x800se.

I had actually planned on getting a system built by my local computer shop. He's been in business for 15 years, so he's reliable. It turned out his system was actually more expensive than the 8400 I ordered though. He was charging a lot for DDR2 memory and a PCI-E-based MB.

I've read a lot of Dell horror stories and I'm sure some of them are true. The bottom line is sometimes you're lucky and sometimes you're not, regardless of whether you build it yourself or rely on a computer maker like Dell.

I must be lucky! I got my 8400 July 18th and its ran perfectly all this time. I even updated to SP2 with zero problems.

 

Tom

 

how big is your hard drive mine was a 250 gb before it died.

Maxtor Calypso 80 gigger.

 

Tom

 

I've had my 8400 for about 3 weeks now. Had to have the Ram replaced. the Fan gave me a shock with its fluctuating,but I am assured this is normal and I had what seems to be the customary Fan failure message at the very first boot up. Other than that the thing runs great. I would say that as regards sturdiness the casing is not as strong as my older 4100 which seems like a Tank compared to the 8400 and the Motherboard pops in and out like a sheet of Aluminum.(thats what the Tech who replaced the ram said)

But with what I got for the price I think its a Good buy