the thing with dell is its quantity not quality
i know a few peeps who got computers of them a years or 2 back and now they regretting it
the hd are unreliable and the mother board is prone to problems related to the south bridge , north birdge or cpu socket
thats why they sooooo cheap
No they dont sell them cheap due to being prone to problems, thats a load of crap, if it was true dell would go under, but they are thriving.
they sell them cheaper than you can build them because they buy components in bulk
for example if me, or you was to buy an OEM AMD 3200+ X2 64 CPU we would be looking at £40 - £50
Dell buy them 500,000+ at a time and pay £15-£20 per cpu
Do the same for each component in the PC and you have a very cheaply built PC, Add on a decent profit, and you are still undercutting the competition.
I know people who have always bought Dell desktops and always been very happy, personaly I buy Dell Monitors, and Dell Laptops, but i like to build my desktops myself, just because its fun to do, and you can customise that little bit more to your needs.
I used to build PCs for all my friends and family, but i'm honest with them, when they come to me now, i just say get a Dell, you cant go far wrong, itle save time and effort, and you will save a few quid as well as having a support line to call instead of bugging me.
The aftersales service is fantastic too, I had my optical drive go in my 8 month old laptop (one of those things, they are lit-on made, they are not bullet proof) I phonede dell in the evening, the next morning a guy all suited up in a BMW (worked for dell, not a courier) came and brought me a brand new drive out to exchange.