Mine was only just delivered (this morning) so I can't say much as to the quality of the computer itself just yet, but I do feel the need to comment on my experience with Dell customer service thus far:

So far so good.

Shortly after submitting my online order, a VERY friendly rep (with a thorough mastery of the English language) called me to confirm my order details. To my surprise, she did NOT try to pitch me any of the extra bells or whistles I had decided to forego when I made my order.

I purchased a "popular" model so that I could get expedited delivery (at no cost to me whatsoever), so I was disappointed when I received an email telling me delivery would be delayed by a week or so. In reality, my computer was delivered BEFORE it was supposed to be delivered -- just two days after I ordered it (again, at no cost). Not bad!

Set-up was about as user-friendly as you could ever want. I'm as technically disinclined and disinterested as anyone I've ever met, and I had the thing up and running within minutes.

I'll update my review as necessary, but so far I have no choice but to recommend that you order a Dell.

Ordered an Inspiron 1525 over the phone. Rep put the wrong name on the order. I had to ask him twice to correct his mistake. After he input my credit card info and finalized the sale he changed the warrenty terms, from in-home to mail-in, apparently my punishment for making him correct his mistake. E-mailed him about the switcheroo, of course no response. Computer's OK, customer service was disgraceful.

I have owned my inspiron 9200 for 3 years.  I have a yellow line permanently running down the left side of my screen, a battery that died & only lasts 6 minutes total and horrific service experience.  Buy a mac if you can!

Have an Inspiron 530 for about two to three months with (yes) Vista and it's a decent product.  Easy to use but the OS doesn't read many of my old programs- but that's Vista's fault not the Dell.  Dell's customer service isn't what it was 8 to 10 years ago, but it's still on par or slightly better than average.  All in all, a solid purchase for a good machine.

I have a dell 1500(Im typing on the now. My only concern with the actual computer is that only the left side of my space bar works. It just kinda went out and my laptops only a year old this month. It bugs me but by now means will I try customer assistense. Noone there speaka ingrish btw i know how to spell no one but i hit the right side of my space bar :(

Having owned an Inspiton 8100 for at least the past 5 years with only one issue (DVD stopped reading but was replaced with a DVD+RD drive), I didn't even consider any other brand or model of laptop for its replacement. After 5+ years of daily use with little to no problems at all, I finally decided it was getting too old and too slow to handle todays program requirements so I purchased a 1720 and as with the 8100...I love it. Dell's Inspiton series has proven a great system for both home and business use. My 8100 was used for both environments and the 1720 will be used in the same manner without giving it a second thought. Kudos to Dell for the Inspiron...a great product from a great company!

Good computer but God help you if you ever need Dell´s terrible service.

Ordered laptop. Date changed from 10 days to two weeks, to three weeks, finally from July 8 to sometime in September. Vendor problems are not DELL's problem so they wouldn't help. We spent 3 hours on hold for their worthless phone support. Never a DELL again.

I am currently in "dell hell" trying to get a replacement for my out of warranty Inspiron 9100 which has a fried motherboard. Similar to the thousands of similar cases found on sites like the dell forums and this site.

I would strongly recommend to people in the marketplace for a notebook to choose VERY carefully and educate yourself on company history as well as the notebook in question. Dell has been undergoing a sea change of late due to the huge backlash over this and other models and the unrelated battery recall.

BUT, Action and words are two different things and Dell to date has not been able to turn things around. The same thing is happening to me that has happened to so many dell customers over the past 3 years. Customer service that is non-existent, offshore tech help, I could go on but it is, as I have said, a familiar story by now to most.

RDOG and you others, don't give up, in cases where you grab them by the throat and refuse to be passed around, Dell has been replacing out of warrenty computers which are proven to be defective due to design or hardware...you have to be persistent and VERY proactive.


In any case, Caveat Emptor or however it goes...

My Inspiron is only about 2 years old, and it will no longer run for more than about 10 minutes before crashing and displaying the blue screen of death. And it's not a virus/software problem, I reinstalled Windows and it didn't help. The error messages I see suggest a physical hard disk problem. I figure that if that's the quality of engineering I can expect from Dell, that if I can't afford something of higher quality, like Vaio or IBM, I might as well just save a few hundred bucks and go with something cheaper like an HP, I can't get much worse luck than I've had with Dell.

I have had my inspiron for about 2 years and have several problems with it, the latest dealing with the motherboard which is not worth fixing. Trying to fix anything through Dell's customer support is an absolute nightmare. I spent over 2 hours on the phone getting transfered between about 6 different people. In the end, I didn't get any help. I'm switching over to Mac. If you've never had any problems with your Dell, you should feel very lucky and cross your fingers that you never will.

I love it. Recently purchased a Dell after having problems with my Toshiba repeatedly shutting down. Shipping was very fast and the Inspiron is excellent!

When I received my first new inspiron 9200, it did not work. I was told to send it back to be repaired. I told them to send me a new one. The motherboard died within a month of the end my 1 year warrenty period. I sent it back to dell to be repaired. It died again 6 months later. Now, I am told that the warrenty period is over and the new motherboard is not covered. Warning....Do not get scammed by Dell as I was.

I have had my Inspiron 5150 for about two years and have not had any problems. I have used it ALOT during the past 2 years and have traveled ALOT with it--but no problems.
However, just recently I have been having overheating problems. I chatted over the web with a Dell Rep. and they said they will fix it for free even though my warranty is expired. I havn't sent it in yet but I plan to.
Overall for the price, it is not a bad system--but definately not the best either.

I bought a Dell Inspiron 9200 about a year ago, and I've been very happy with it. But - given that I've had no problems - I haven't needed to call Dell's customer support, which can apparently be a hit-or-miss experience. The Inspiron 9200's wide screen is great, and I've been impressed with its overall performance.

Inspiron 5160 worked great until the power adapter failed after a year and it would not charge anymore. Had the motherboard replaced and a year later it happened again. Dell's phone support is chaotic and confused. If you find the right person they will help but finding that person can be very difficult. Their customer support seems to be spread all over the globe and the nice lady in India has no clue what the nice guy is Mexico was talking about. I will never buy a Dell again.

I have had my Inspiron 5100 for 2 years and I am converting to Mac next week. I have had consistent problems with overheating (typical 5100 fan problem), ethernet card, battery life (ha!), initial installed software (corrupted). I spend too much time fixing probs weekly; in 3 years of Gateway, I had 2 minor problems (fixed once and permanently). I won't buy a Dell again.

I bought 2 Inspiron 1150s 14 months ago. The first computer that I use has had the motherboard, video screen and harddrive replaced and now the CD drive is broken. I have always bought Dell for years, nothing but Dell, but that is over. I will never buy Dell again. Now after 14 months I will go and buy a different brand. My second computer has only had the harddrive replaced. Only! Dells from Hell!

I purchased a Dell 5160 in Oct. 2005 and up to one week ago I would have rated it as a 3 (due to overheating). Now, I rate it as a "0" because (1) my motherboard died (2) my warranty is out (3) I paid $1,600 for a piece of junk and (4) Dell knew about the long-standing motherboard problems and has done nothing to fix the problems. They stole my money by selling a known defective product. Now, I'm stuck with the problem of retrieving invaluable data and at great expense.

DELL Inspiron 5160 is not very inspiring. Exactly 1 day after the warranty expired my LCD went out and now it's very DIM. In addition, I just recently had a registry corruption occur. Luckily I know enough to fix my own stuff so I don't have to deal with DELL. I am convinced however, that DELL has realized the secrets of big car companies like Ford, GM, and Chrysler where they can sell you crap in hopes that you'll be stupid enough to purchase their extended warranties and service plans where they really make the $$. Well, this whole experience has driven me to purchasing a Mac. I will never buy a DELL again, and they've even made me weary of purchasing any Intel based product. I'm sooo tired of all the unreliability!!!!

I purchased a Inspiron 5160 in January 2005. The computer was great until August of 2005. They had to replace the motherboard because the AC adapter would not stay plugged into the back. Since then, everything has gone wrong. The motherboard has been replaced three times, the CPU and fan replaced once. The technician noticed a crack in the palm rest... had that replaced. Then the LCD screen went out... could hardly see it. They replaced the LCD screen then after using it for about 4 hours, it went out again. They replaced the graphics card, didn't help. Now they are going to replace the LCD and graphics card once again. If this doesn't fix it, they said they would replace with a refurbished system.

For those of you who are completely satisfied with your Dell Laptop.....wait until exactly one year and one week after you bought it.... I have an Inspiron 5160 and exactly one year and one week....yes, right after the warranty expired...the computer will not boot past the first screen that says DELL, which indicates that I have a major hardware problem. Dell will extend my warranty for $50.00 + parts + labor, which will end up costing me about $200 to fix their substandard product. :( Don't buy a Dell...they smell....really fishy to me!

My Inspiron 6000 was priced right but, more importantly, has superb performance and capabilities. One of the best laptops I've ever used.

Real cheap, good customer service, and it serves its purpose. For $650 I got an Inspiron 2200 and have no complaints.

I have the Dell inspiron 1150 and after reading the disparate reviews that seem to be either that they are wonderful ( the computers that is) or they stink I am of the mind that Dell has very poor quality control. My computer was always terribly slow. I could to think faster after a few dringks than this puppy but when the hard drive locked and the terrible tech service wanted me to buy more memory and a new harddrive I got really angry. Dell has such poor quality control and now indredible unstable customer service that I went out and bought another unit altogether. I wasted a grand on a heavy stody undependable unit. SUD YOU ARE GETTING A DELL...SAY NO PLEASE.....

I have a inspiron 1150. This is an excellent computer. I have never had any problems with mine. Dell has excellent technical support. This was definately money well spent. Thanks Dell!!

The quality of the Inspiron notebooks, although they've improved somewhat in the past cycle, has been lackluster at best; particularly the 5000E series. We've had three of these units fall apart (literally) at the screen/base joint. The keyboards are poor and the hard drives have a bad tendancy of going bad rather quickly. If you can afford at Latitude, get one! If not, look to get a unit from IBM as they're quality surpasses that of DELL's Inspiron line.

Works great! Easy to use, lightweight. No problems.

I haven't really had any problems with my Inspiron 5100. But when I needed my Ethernet connection replaced I had the misfortune of dealing with dell's customer service. Each time I had to call I got stuck talking to someone who a. was hard to understand, like english was obviously not their first language, and b. they knew nothing about the computers. The third time I had to call them I got this one lady who, every 30 seconds said, please hold for a few minutes while I do more research on the subject. It got old after a while and in the end she never did help fix the problem. They're commercials say that they have award winning customer service, I'd like to know how that's possible. (this is more of a Customer service complaint with dell than their computers, but their wasn't a section for that)

I loved the Inspiron 8600....until after 1 (one) week, the hard drive died. Worked fine one morning then every time I booted up said 'hard drive not found'.....after 2 hours with tech support that's what they came up with too. Returned it. Leary to try again.

dell treats thier employees bad and they are overpriced.

Computer has never performed. I spend half of my life rebooting either because it has frozen, or because the cursor is uncontrollable. I have spent hours trying to correct problems. My husband took pity on me and spent an entire day on the telephone with Dell Support. I had mistakenly purchased an extended warranty. What a waste of money! The fix was that they sent a new CD ROM insert. That did nothing at all to correct the basic deficiencies. I am shopping for a new computer to buy, which is why I am looking at the ratings. Hopefully, there will be a better alternative!

I've owned 6 laptop computers in the last decade and the Dell Inspiron 8500 was by far the best of them. I am keeping in mind that computers have a lot more to offer now, so it's not a fair comparison the laptops I owned 5 or 6 years ago, but still the Dell Inspiron is king. The reason is that Dell uses separate components in their computers instead of building everything hard-wired into the motherboard. This equates to a more customizable, user-configurable, and usually more reliable computer than Sony, HP, Compaq or any others (those are the 3 others I've had). I have much more to say about each of these companies - I have ample experience with nearly all of them, but I will say that Dell's tech support, though still not nearly satisfactory, is the best of these companies by far.

A few years ago i bought a 3500 They gave me more than I wanted in the laptop and guess what they charged me for it too. Unfortunately I needed the laptop so it would have been a hassle to return it. This has happened in another purchase as well ... you guessed it no more HELL I MEAN DELL for me ;)

Best laptop on the market today. Never any trouble from the 2 i own.

I have a Dell Inspiron 5000e and it has to be the slowest computer I have ever owned. I can't run more than one application at a time. It takes at least 10 minutes just to load a web page and it constantly freezes. Does anybody else have these problems?

Bought a Dell Inspiron 2600 last summer in preparation of going back to law school. It arrived a few days after I placed the order online. It was a little slow with the base memory, so I bought some more from Dell at a very cheap price and it showed up within 2 days. No real problems at all, I've always had good luck with Dell's.

It is now April. In November I ordered a Dell computer - The one that arrived had the Wrong CPU!, wrong Graphics Card!!, and Wrong Speakers!!! - I mean what else is there? It was the WRONG Machine!!! Next Dell billed me for the wrong amount, "corrected" for the wrong amount (twice) and 6 MONTHS LATER it is still WRONG. I have not received the correct bill yet. What a Nightmare! Trying to get a competent person to speak to at Dell has proven to be even harder than getting the computer I wanted!! SAVE YOURSELF – RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN AWAY FROM DELL

I bought a Dell Inspiron 4000 approx 18 months ago, and within seven months I started having major problems. In Feb 2002 I first had a screen that was shaking so bad that I could not see anything. When I called it took two hours and one phone cut-off before they sent out a new hard drive. They sent the hard drive, but sent the wrong install disks. After trying to re-install over and over again and it still would not work, I called Dell again and after three phone calls someone finally realized they sent the wrong disk. After re-installing, the new hard drive did not work. They sent a third and after five hours I was able to get it to work somewhat, but still was not able to get the media player to record. It still was making a clicking noise and a blurry screen, so they finally sent someone to replace the motherboard and LCD display. Now here we are in November and this hard drive has now gone bad again. This has been the absolute worst laptop I have every had. I would not recommend this to anyone. I come to find out that several people who bought Dells around the time I did have had nothing but problems. This was a $2400 laptop that's not paid for yet and now I need to spend more money for something else. I thought I was buying Dell for dependability and service. That's very far from what happened!!

After two returns on my 7000 they got the hinges fixed. My only other complaint is the weight. Best in it's class two years ago. Still works great and a year left on the warranty.

This series of laptops is made for people with needs for greater than word processing. It meets these needs with its great specifications. A bit on the bulky side, but nevertheless, a powerhouse for the road.

Really good notebooks for college students and home users. I especially like it's sleek design, available in cool colors. It's light and portable. Also, customizable like all Dell products.

This is a good computer. The one my parents own is nice, compact and reliable.

I have had my Dell for about a year (refurbished). Its a great computer to use for word processing and internet. It froze up on me once and the battery doesn't seem to charge. Dells customer service is great, however. I will always buy from Dell.

Although you can choose all the features you want on the notebook, it is not worth the price. Dell is very backed up with orders so good luck getting your computer within a couple months. By that time the system is obsolete.

I like it because of it's style. You can pick the color of the laptop, plus the price is good.

These laptops are excellent because they have a good battery time. They're faster than regular computers. The screen has a good 15" active TFT screen so you see from all angles.

Fast, loaded with everything you need to work, play or surf the net. Excellent customer service. Pricey, but it's worth every single penny. A little bit heavy but you get the performance and the 15 inch screen usually locks.

Good- sharp screen image. Fast system speed. Very reliable. Solid body design. Flexible configuration. Bad- heavy. Hot when using for a long time. Bad sound quality. Suggestion- supply plastic cover for CD-ROM and battery components.

Dell is a great company. They have great technical support. I have this laptop and I use it mostly for word processing. I really like it though.