Bargaining With Dell

buzzard767

golfaknifeaholic
Gold Site Supporter
On electronics forums it is a well known fact that one can bargain with Big Box stores such as Best Buy. Show them the price at Amazon and they will usually match it. You'll have to pay sales tax but that's the price of immediate satisfaction.

I didn't realize that some online companies would bargain but yesterday I had a pleasant experience. I've been looking for a new laptop with HDMI output among other things as it will help me immensely in my hobby of calibrating television sets to high definition standards. A friend of mine who is an excellent amateur photographer recently acquired a a laptop with a Blu-Ray burner and I was so impressed with the overall performance I thought "what the hell" and decided to get a computer with more high end attributes than I absolutely needed. I use www.dealzon.com to watch for bargains and have been waiting for the right unit to come along but so far it has been a no go. The retail prices I've seen have been downright gagging. :(

Yesterday while browsing www.dell.com I found a laptop that should keep me happy for a few years. It has an i7 processor, Blu-Ray burner, dual 500GB hard drives, 1080p 17" screen, and even 3D. The price listed was $400 less than retail and on top of that I had received a 10% off coupon via email for my birthday. When I added it all up, the net was still at the gag level but considerably less than anything else available that I could find so I decided to buy one.

In going through the online purchasing process I could not find a place to enter the coupon code so I entered the chat mode with customer service. After fifteen minutes of back and forth I was told that the coupon did not apply to laptops and was quoted a price beyond that which I was willing to pay. I thanked the man, told him that prices were going down every month, I was not in a hurry, and I would purchase at a later date. I closed the chat browser window and cut him off.

Less than five minutes later my cell phone rang and it was the same customer service representative telling me that the price was already reduced $400 yada yada yada. Interestingly enough, when I told him my mind was made up and I would buy only after prices were reduced he immediately offered me the computer for $100 less than the original net I was expecting. I thought it over for two seconds, told him yes, and we closed the deal.

The bottom line is that these companies, well, at least Dell, could be successfully negotiated with just a little bit of pressure. The economy is still bad no matter what the government is putting out, sales are slow, and deals can be made. :)
 

Mama

Queen of Cornbread
Site Supporter
Congratulations Buzz! Sounds like you go a really sweet deal! Due to this economy, I think the art of bargaining is back.
 

Doc

Administrator
Staff member
Gold Site Supporter
Congratulations Buzz! Sounds like you go a really sweet deal! Due to this economy, I think the art of bargaining is back.
Exactly. Congrats Buzz. A nice bday present indeed. :thumb:
 

JackieBlue

Banned
Congrats on the purchase! I've always had good experiences with Dell. Once when my desktop crashed, I was on the phone with a Dell rep for 6 hours (on and off but mostly on) and he walked me through the whole process.
 

Keltin

New member
Gold Site Supporter
Awesome deal Buzz, and thanks for the tip!! I had no idea you could bargain like that. Sweet!
 

ChowderMan

Pizza Chef
Super Site Supporter
I bought my first Dell (mid-80's) in a (now defunct) big box store - like yes - _before_ they went to mail order model and _way_ before "on-line/mail order" + Dell Kiosks. Dell has a mall kiosk in King of Prussia, establishes legal nexus, last Dell I wound up paying sales tax, not pleased....

Dell once was like Sears "Craftsman" in a way - good, better, best. pretty simple. I was an avid Dell dude for years and years - between business & personal probably bought / spec'd 150 machines - ala entire department complement. not only did Dell make rock solid machines, their customer & technical support was far ahead of anything /anybody else. $99 on-site, three year "service" in the early years I'm sure Dell made a bundle on that - just because: nothing broke. in later years, a lot more costly and a lot less reliable.

that, most regrettably, has changed. personally I think Dell has lost their focus - they're selling everything from cameras to TVs to computers. customer "service" is outsourced to (?) where you get "If I understand correctly you want me to help fix your computer?" type inane responses. curiously, Dell tech support for _business_ accounts was revoked from the overseas drivel and put back to USA reps.

when my Dell 5150 notebook died - at $3k plus, not a cheapo throw-away model - I went shopping. if I left my shopping cart unattended for more than a couple hours it was trashed because of "price updates" - your cart is no longer valid - from 2-3 hours ago. long story short, I bought an HP - notebook then a desktop. lacking top notch tech support, why pay more?

I bought a Dell notebook for my son. had issues. after the fourth "oh the hard drive has failed we'll send you a new hard drive" - accompanied by hours and hours and hours of "rebuild" time - only to get the dreaded three beep POST notice, I send it back. Fedex had a delivery signature, Dell said they didn't have it, legal PA nexus came in handy when I threatened Dell and Fedex with small claims court. of course, the purchase price was refunded to my Dell account - took another 8 months to get a real paid credit aka money in my bank.

bottom line, Dell makes decent machines. not nearly to the reliability of what they once did. and if you buy one, make sure it gets under a "business" account because the off-shore "customer service" is not superior to any other maker, now-a-days.

Dell was once upon a time the absolute best PC maker. not so true anymore.
 

buzzard767

golfaknifeaholic
Gold Site Supporter
Perhaps it's luck of the draw. I've had three Dells including the laptop I'm typing on now with zero failures. My fingers are crossed. For what it's worth, the computer I bought has dual hard drives so maybe I can set up a raid array that will cover me if one fails.`
 

Keltin

New member
Gold Site Supporter
Perhaps it's luck of the draw. I've had three Dells including the laptop I'm typing on now with zero failures. My fingers are crossed. For what it's worth, the computer I bought has dual hard drives so maybe I can set up a raid array that will cover me if one fails.`

With 2 drives, you could set up a RAID 1 array. It may increase read performance, but write performance will take a hit and be slower. But, it offers perfect redundancy should one disc fail, the other keeps going as if nothing happened.

But, the RAID array has to be setup at the time of install. You can't set it up after the PC is up and running. You'd need to do a full wipe of the hard drives, then set up the RAID array, then reinstall everything from scratch.

Kind of a pain at this point unless you have all the install discs and don't mind mucking about in the BIOS to set up the array.

Another option now that you have one HD installed and running is to get disc mirroring software and just use it to mirror the disc every week or so to fully back it up.
 

ChowderMan

Pizza Chef
Super Site Supporter
..has dual hard drives so maybe I can set up a raid array that will cover me if one fails.`

set up the second physical hd as a separate logical partition; keep the OS on one logical/physical hard drive and all data on the second (separate) logical physical hard drive.

RAID only works for "instant" failures. bad data / root kits / malware / etc gets copied/mirrored from "good RAID drive to bad RAID drive" - an absolutely useless technique for the usual and customary home user.

a redundant array is valuable only where a physical drive failure can be "saved" by switching to a second "good" physical device. typically only of any value in a "must" continuous operation scenario.

get some good disk imagining software and use it.

my DW was driving the desktop on CNN.com; clicked on something - yeah - that specific - regarding the bin Laden situation and the machine was totally toasted. firewalled, up to date virus protection (am I a zero day victim?) - could not even launch an .exe - "pick the application associated with this extension...." the fake "magic Virus program" destroyed the OS, dis-linked every single desktop icon from it's program and pointed it to a hidden file launching the fake anti-virus, on and on.... what more you need to know?

I recovered using a disk image - all data and everything else on C: was destroyed/overwritten by the recovery process. hence my point: never _ever_ keep "data" on C: - partition out the single/multiple physical hard drives so anything of any importance - including bookmarks - is written/backed up / stored on a non C:\ drive.

the wisdom of that advice I learned in DOS 3.x in the mid-80's - it still applies, in VISA/Win7 SPADES.
 

Wart

Banned
I've often found the tact of 'they/you can make a little or less money or you can make no money, you're choice' is one that works.


my DW was driving the desktop on CNN.com; clicked on something - yeah - that specific - regarding the bin Laden situation and the machine was totally toasted. firewalled, up to date virus protection (am I a zero day victim?) -

My guess is yes.

I forget where I came across the information where binLaden head shot graphics were poisonous and in the wild. 'They've' been able to plant 'viri' in graphics for quite some time. Someone took advantage of peoples ... curiosity? ... to launch a new one.


I recovered using a disk image - all data and everything else on C: was destroyed/overwritten by the recovery process. hence my point: never _ever_ keep "data" on C: - partition out the single/multiple physical hard drives so anything of any importance - including bookmarks - is written/backed up / stored on a non C:\ drive.

the wisdom of that advice I learned in DOS 3.x in the mid-80's - it still applies, in VISA/Win7 SPADES.

That, and more.

I would extend "non-C:' to : an external drive which can be plugged in after the machine is booted and anti virus fully functional.

The laptops running Win 7 Ultimate, the hd is broken down to two partitions, C and D drives, the 100 meg 'boot partition' is gone.

In prep of reloading the OS I'm moving files from D to an external when two BMPs are flagged as having a Trojan. The story of D is a bit convoluted, A couple months ago I was moving files TO D in order to format the external drive. After moving the files to D the Tool at the keyboard executed a clean command (without the all switch) on D instead of the external. LESSON: Stay out of the root Admin account at 3 AM.

So the lap hasn't been able to access D for months. I recovered the files and am moving them to the external when the Trojans are flagged. Those files came from someplace else, don't know where or when.

Since the anti-virus said they were cleaned I opened one of the files, yes, may have been a dumb move, but from what I can tell the picture was of an amusement park ride.

So this/these file(s) survived at least three trips through anti-viri scanners three times, From wherever to get into the first machine, from that machine to the external, from the external to D. Wasn't till it was recovered and moved from D to the external that it was detected.

RAID only works for "instant" failures. bad data / root kits / malware / etc gets copied/mirrored from "good RAID drive to bad RAID drive" - an absolutely useless technique for the usual and customary home user.

Which is where I'm heading.

A mirror would just mirror bad stuff if bad stuff happened.

Plus, the data isn't being protected against physical loss or theft if the data is being kept in the same physical location.

Backing up to a second machine would still have potential to backing up bad stuff, and infecting a second machine.

Does not seem to be an answer to this one. Damn.
 

ChowderMan

Pizza Chef
Super Site Supporter
as the story unfolded, my DW apparently did nothing but 'open' www.cnn.com from a bookmark. whatever 'linked pop-ups' were on the main page were unclean.....

re-reading the thread it is not entirely clear what you want to accomplish. a fall-over RAID to keep the machine "running"? the idea is fine, but actually I have a lot more faith in internal hd's than the externals. I've had two externals just simply drop dead without warning. pried open the cases and put the drive in an adapter and yeah, "They're daid, Jim!" last internal that failed - other my my son's Dell - which I hold to this day was not the drive, at least not all four of them in a row - was in an IBM XT. took all flipping night to fdisk the new drive . . . .

don't forget, you'll need to be checking the logs regularly to even know your primary has failed...

my backup scheme is simple. I use a .bat file with xcopy to backup the hard drives to an external. my externals are 'babied' - they sit on a desk, never go nowhere, not subject to any kind of abuse. which is why having them drop dead is even more unpleasant.

I hit the batch file at least weekly, more frequently if I'm doing "something important"
once a quarter I burn the external to DVD, delete all the external contents, and start over.
the history DVDs go off-site.

once per quarter I image the OS drive. I xcopy the c: drive as well, but only bits and pcs by using the xcopy /exclude option. this is because when I'm not looking the blinking machine will put something on C:..... somewhere..... but I don't xcopy \Windows or \Program files, for example.

obviously this routine gets interrupted in real time should anything go bump in the night.

I've thought about the web-based backup services - frankly I don't trust them. in my particular case I also possess client data and putting that somewhere on somebody's server out of my direct control just gives me the willies. not like any servers have never been hacked, recently . . . .

running in safe mode and a/v checking on an external is probably the most effective. actually I think it reads "any non-OS partition" but who's counting.... on those .bmps - it is not uncommon for a file to get flagged as 'infected' as a false positive. if they keep turning up, send them to your a/v vendor for an explanation.

>>no answer to this one
potentially quite true. if one surfs long enough one will get zapped. could be minor, could be major, could be nuisance, could be intentionally horrifically damaging.

that's why I have stacks/spindles full of backups and images. ps: Win7 is supposed to have an onboard imaging tool - not used it - not seen it. I hate it when Microsoft does that. they "kill" the aftermarket that produces really good stuff by providing a really crappy "free" tool. think Edlin.....
 

Wart

Banned
as the story unfolded, my DW apparently did nothing but 'open' www.cnn.com from a bookmark. whatever 'linked pop-ups' were on the main page were unclean.....

I just visited CNN, NoScript is allowing 2 domains, blocking 7 domains (and subdomains), and preventing a redirect.

One of those domains is FaceBook.

Illustrates how CNN itself may be secure, if someone wants to plant something through CNN they need only crack a site running on CNN ... and there you go.


I have a lot more faith in internal hd's than the externals.

Same here.

I don't know about laptop internals, our PC has been running for 3 years, I'm starting to wonder when it's going to fail.

The external is 2 years old, is ran only as needed, and I wonder if it's going to make it through the next read/ write cycle. Not because its making noise but because of external drives reputation.


I've thought about the web-based backup services - frankly I don't trust them. in my particular case I also possess client data and putting that somewhere on somebody's server out of my direct control just gives me the willies. not like any servers have never been hacked, recently . . . .

Sony? :yum:

Alot of people think thats turnabout.

Then theres "The Cloud". Oracles vision of the future from '95 or so, on line applications and storage accessed via todays version of the Dumb Terminal, the thin client.

In a way the cloud is a good idea, assuming there are professionals actually assuring data integrity and redundancy.

OTOH theres the aforementioned hack but also , can you trust the service you're using not to data mine?


>>no answer to this one
potentially quite true. if one surfs long enough one will get zapped. could be minor, could be major, could be nuisance, could be intentionally horrifically damaging.

Worse than that for some of us.

I go to a university, and universities are filled with little shits who think its Ok to do whatever they can do. This includes instructors.

I've gotten to the point that I don't trust anything.

Even this site is running Viglink.

ps: Win7 is supposed to have an onboard imaging tool -

It hangs.


I hate it when Microsoft does that. they "kill" the aftermarket that produces really good stuff by providing a really crappy "free" tool. think Edlin.....

Ok Professor Peabody.
 

ChowderMan

Pizza Chef
Super Site Supporter
>>crack a site running on CNN ...
or any embedded reference link - and the "ad services" are probably the worst. those are programmed to pop-up "automatically" and I seriously doubt CNN (for example) vets all ad links before allowing them to go live.

I've personally seen Forum sites using ad services that got hit with pop-ups that the user cannot make go away. you couldn't close the pop-up, couldn't minimize the pop-up, couldn't move the pop-up (window) - either you bought the product or hit the big red switch....

>>the "Cloud"
I don't see that internet security is even remotely "ready" for that approach.
Amazon just laid a Cloud-Egg, those kinds of technical glitches will get resolved however access by user name and password can be cracked; ergo it will be cracked.

wasn't it IBM PS/2 that presented itself as a thin client? hmmm, didn't work out, I see....

>>it hangs.
oh great, that's more late night calls I'll be getting . . . .
 
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