Every Dell I have used is bad. They are incredibly slow, can't run anything, and if you want to watch videos on one, forget about it! I do like the idea they have of letting you customize your computer to fit your needs..... supposably.

Dell can withstand anything

Dell is my preferred model for all my home computers - both desktops and notebooks. In general, I do not see any major performance problems on any of them. Our company is considering Dell as the preferred vendor as well. The amount of overall serial computer-related problems has significantly decreased, when we switched from the Industrial computers to Dells in our equipment. From the drawbacks, I would list lower than averag quality of customer support and difficulties to alter the default configuration for batch purchases. For example, we found couple of years ago substantial problems with Western Digital Hard Drives 200 GB, and we requested to replaced them with Seagate drives. Our request was not granted, in spite of the multiple purchases.

Products are average to subpar and tend to have lots of breakdowns.  The standard warranty, however, is only 90 days, which is outrageous for such an expensive product.  Customer service is notoriously awful, as was reaffirmed for me today.  I had ordered a new monitor that was supposed to be compatible with my current system specs, as per the Dell rep I spoke to, but as it turns out, indeed it is NOT compatible.  I didn't open it right away, as I ordered it to take with me on a relocation and kept it in its packaging, thinking if it malfunctioned, I'd be covered by the 90-day warranty.  Unfortunately for me, it turns out that the warranty doesn't cover exchanges for incompatible products purchased through incompetent sales reps.  No, that would be covered under the return policy only, which is just 21 days, and since mine had expired by about two weeks, I would have to foot the considerable cost of shipping to return the monitor and get a refund, during which time I'd be without a monitor for possibly weeks, considering that they took two weeks to ship it last time.  From now on, I am no longer a Dell customer.  I urge everyone to be wary of Dell sales reps, who will say anything to make a sale, and of inflexible return policies.  Don't buy one early for a Christmas or birthday gift, or you'll be out of luck if something's not right with it out of the box!

Have a laptop and a regular machine from them. 8 months and 3 years old. Not a single problem with either.

Am using a dell as I speak (or type), but I am beginning to have some mechanical trouble.

hard-drives are cheep and fail, and they are slow... but all the rest of the computer is fine

Generally builds average value computers for the home and pretty good business workstations, but their blind loyalty to Intel and rejection of AMD turns me off from them (not because I'm an AMD fanboy, but because I'm unbiased and beleive manufacturers should be also.)