i am going to buy a dell lap top soon..not sure which one to get i will only be using it to surf the net been looking at the studio 17 don't want to pay more than £550.......

I got a Dell Vostro earlier this year with fairly good spec, and it was £320 delivered. You're best to keep an eye on the site and check offers every week or so, as Dell charge £60 delivery. Sometimes they have free delivery on certain machines, or free double memory, or it's cheaper to buy the more expensive machine and get free delivery rather than the cheaper one and pay £60. There's usually a discount code kicking about on the web aswell for a 5% discount if you look.

 I bought a XPS M1530... really happy with it.. spec'd it up a bit and it kicks serious butt! 4gb RAM, 2.5Ghz C2D, 320GB HDD... laods more besides..

I did notice the other day that they were on special offer... might be worth a look.

Geeba how much did you pay for it??

My lappy is going down hill fast lol need to get myself a new one. 

i have a dell home p.c. its ok but dell put that much crap and trial sofware onto it, it took me ages to get rid ov it all!

and dont get a dell printer coz wen it buggers up, no one will touch it to see wots rong...

other than that mines ok

I have had 2 dell machines, both have been laptops and they were very good & the current one is still working well.

As said above, Dell do put some rubbish onto the HD so all i do when the computer arrives is wipe the HD and restore only the OS from the rescue disk, all is fine after that.

I will be buying a desktop system as i now have my own house with a spare room which will be used as an office for when i'm working at home.

 Curly I stacked it full of extras... dedicated 256Mb nVidia GT GFX, 320Gb drive, highest res pannel you could get at the time 1920x1200, 2.5Ghz CPU, 4gb RAM, mobile broadband (you just put your SIM in the back no dongles hangin off) and it came in at 850 odd quid IIRC? I'll have to digg the bill out... but its a lot of machine for the money... games and media are no problem and with S-Video and HDMI plugging in the telly is no bother to.... got a really well built feel about it to. But yeah stay away from Dells printers etc....

 Cheers mate, just looking at the Dell site now and it's about £800 for what i want.

 hi have a dell xps m1330 - and i love it, such i nice peice of kit, paid alot of money for it, as i bought it when it was just out.

 this is the one i have been thinking of getting

Compatibility Alert

Dells get slated quite a bit. However many would agree they're good value for money. I ran one for 3 years faultlessly and would still recommend them despite moving to a mac.

 I have a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop, 2 GB ram, 250GB HDD, and a super fast processor. It cost about £450 and it's an awesome machine.

I also own a Dell desktop, albeit specced up by myself. Can't go wrong with them in my opinion.

Geeba:

 I bought a XPS M1530... really happy with it.. spec'd it up a bit and it kicks serious butt! 4gb RAM, 2.5Ghz C2D, 320GB HDD... laods more besides..

A colleague spec'd up a similar-sounding XPS 'laptop' a few months back. It's more a 'portable computer' than a laptop though, as it's noticeably larger and heavier and noisier than any other 17" laptop I've used before. Great machine for performance and features, but not for travel as you'd need a suitcase to take it anywhere with its power supply that's almost as big as the rest of the machine again!

I had a couple of Inspirons over the last few years (15" followed by a 17") and recently replaced with a 17" Vostro and it seems a pretty good compromise between performance+display vs size+weight+noise.

Ballesteros:

Geeba:

 I bought a XPS M1530... really happy with it.. spec'd it up a bit and it kicks serious butt! 4gb RAM, 2.5Ghz C2D, 320GB HDD... laods more besides..

A colleague spec'd up a similar-sounding XPS 'laptop' a few months back. It's more a 'portable computer' than a laptop though, as it's noticeably larger and heavier and noisier than any other 17" laptop I've used before. Great machine for performance and features, but not for travel as you'd need a suitcase to take it anywhere with its power supply that's almost as big as the rest of the machine again!

I had a couple of Inspirons over the last few years (15" followed by a 17") and recently replaced with a 17" Vostro and it seems a pretty good compromise between performance+display vs size+weight+noise.

I'd never buy a 17" for mobile work... more of a home laptop.. mine is a 15" and suits me fine... small enoght to be carried and big enought to watch movies on when I work away from home and play games... No noise from mine?? the cpu fan spins up under load but thats about it. Not sure on what power supply he has ether? mine is a standard Dell unit which is the same spec as every other Dell I've owned...  the M1310 is nice and small with the same performance... I almost went for that.

Geeba:

Ballesteros:

Geeba:

 I bought a XPS M1530... really happy with it.. spec'd it up a bit and it kicks serious butt! 4gb RAM, 2.5Ghz C2D, 320GB HDD... laods more besides..

A colleague spec'd up a similar-sounding XPS 'laptop' a few months back. It's more a 'portable computer' than a laptop though, as it's noticeably larger and heavier and noisier than any other 17" laptop I've used before. Great machine for performance and features, but not for travel as you'd need a suitcase to take it anywhere with its power supply that's almost as big as the rest of the machine again!

I had a couple of Inspirons over the last few years (15" followed by a 17") and recently replaced with a 17" Vostro and it seems a pretty good compromise between performance+display vs size+weight+noise.

I'd never buy a 17" for mobile work... more of a home laptop.. mine is a 15" and suits me fine... small enoght to be carried and big enought to watch movies on when I work away from home and play games... No noise from mine?? the cpu fan spins up under load but thats about it. Not sure on what power supply he has ether? mine is a standard Dell unit which is the same spec as every other Dell I've owned...  the M1310 is nice and small with the same performance... I almost went for that.

Ah, I didn't notice that the 1530 was a 'normal' Dell. The guy I work with bought a 1730, and they're a completely different beast (seems like a desktop squeezed into a 17" laptop for gamers, noticeably bigger than a normal 17" machine). What he didn't see on the Dell website was the PSU, which is the size of a brick - http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/mobile/2008/dell-xps-m1730-x9000/dell-m1730-adapter.jpg

I used to have a 15" Dell and still think that's the most practical compromise if you have to travel with it anywhere other than the boot of a car. I rarely have to commute now, maybe once a week on average, so a 17" suits me - just gets a bit annoying on the odd occasion that I have to train/tube it for the day.