DELL XPS? Why HIGHLY priced?

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Why is DELL XPS highly priced??? Is it because the "cool" LED lights? Or the NVIDIA GeForce 7900 graphic card? I wanted to get XPS but looking at the price, i changed my mind. I am on limited budget. I need to pay for college, books and laptops. If it was under 2000 i'dn't mind grabbing one on the spot. If there is, please let me know.

 

Get the e1705.

 

e1705 is much more affordable esp with all the discounts. They are virtually identical except for the fact that you can't get GeForce 7900GTX in e1705, "just" 7900GS.

 

I recently bought a M1710 and its almost like an E1705 except that the lid on the M1710 is much nicer and the keyboard is grey instead of black. Thats pretty much it. I have to admit, though, the M1710 is pretty good lookin’, but I don’t think looks alone justify the higher price. I guess a couple of marginal benefits that the M1710 has over the E1705 is that the screen on the M1710 has a lot less leakage than the E1705 and the video card in the M1710 has dual-pipe cooling which makes overclocking the 7900 GS a little more fun.

 

You pay for the XPS logo and the support that comes with an XPS. There is a huge difference in the quality of the XPS support and the Insperion support. The major thing is the Insperion's support is all outsourced, and frankly the quality and knowlege of the people ist as good. XPS support is manned by top trained people here in America. So you can understand what they're saying and they can help you alot better. Well thats the support in the US, im not sure about XPS support in say India or Europe, but it still has better support then the other Dell notebooks. That is really something that make the XPS worth it in my opinion. If your XPS has a problem they will do everything and almost anything to get it fixed, even send you a new computer free of all charge.

 

Your paying a lot for looks with dells XPS systems. If your not after the highest end GPU - the 7900GTX 512 (Only offered in the M1710) then go for the E1705. They both use the same chassis, but the XPS has some other mods like the LED's and logo's etc. Another nice notebook is the Precision M90. Have seen some VERY good deals on it through dells outlet. Like a 2.16 core duo, 2GB's RAM, 100GB 7200RPM, and the 2500M GPU (think it's based off the 7900GTX) all for around $1500! If you can get a deal like that go with the M90, if not go for the E1705.

 

Where would I find the M90 for $1500?

 

Dell Outlet.

 

LOL India and Europe? DELL makes terrible support in those countries. For the record, i live in Canada. How's the support down here?

Also, i thank everyone who responded to this post. I needed the info's!

D3158

 

My experence with the XPS support here in the US has been great. I had some major problems with my 1210, long story shot, they gave me a new computer after walking me through everything possible to fix mine.

 

Like the others have said, your paying for a name and some lights (plus moderatley better support) when your buying an xps. The E1705 can give you close to the same performance (REALLY close if you overclock it), and not bankrupt you on the way.

 

http://www.journeyed.com/itemDetail.asp?T1=90178553
They also have an M90 on there for $1800. Education discounts are fantastic. And if you don't feel comfortable ordering from there, you can call Dell and ask them to match the price like I did. I ended up getting the config in my sig for $1975 (now it's $1800 from them). You'll have to haggle with Dell for a bit to get them to do it.

 

I agree with those that say the e1705 is just as good of a choice, and if your on a budget it even better only difference is gfx card.

 

You're basically paying for the XPS name, marginally better support (very marginal - maybe even the same - if you buy Dell On-Call with the E1705), the cool LED lights on the lid and the touchpad and to a lesser extent the graphics card (if Dell offered the GTX in the E1705/I9400, the performance difference would be null). It should also be noted that the E1705/I9400/M90/XPS M1710 all share the same case (if you minus the XPS' lights and the M90's different trim) and therefore have the same build quality.

 

At least for the m1210, it is more profitable for Dell to have it an XPS - the 710m was very successful and the coupons must have been eating away at profit (or anyway, the profit margin is considerably less for Inspirons)

 

i see but one thing i heard from numerous people i know that Dell's built quality on the laptop is terrible but their recent support is excellent since XPS was introduced. Is this true or am i being misguided? I heard Toshiba's and HP's and IBM's are very good built quality.

Thank You
D3158

 

XPS has actually been around for atleast 5-6 years buddy. Now yeah the support is great, and the build quality is better than the insperion's. The notebooks are just better build, more solid. My 1210's external casing "when closed" is about 90% solid metal, its like a rock. Ive droped my old one before I returned it from 4 feet high, an cocked at a 45* angle when I droped it. It made a hell of a bang when it landed, but it booted right up, a ok, excpt for that problem I was already having... I dont know, lots of people hate Dells saying they're crap in every way. But then again if that was true how would they be the largest notebook maker in the world? These people your hearing from are the unlucky few who got lemons, and the fan boys of other brands. Dells are good, the only bad thing is all the bloatware you get with it, but thats easy to fix.

 

There is a simple explination why you HEAR more about dells duds. Dell sells to the masses (they sell many more laptops than other brands), and like with EVERY BRAND (not a SINGLE brand is excluded) there WILL be a some defects, or duds. Well since dell has a bigger percentage of notebooks out there, they will have a bigger percentage of duds, a bigger percentage of people who hate them for that. And we all know how people love to complain, so your going to hear ALL about how them, and there 4 closest friends all bought the same laptop and all got crappy laptops. I would say the inspirons have a similar build quality to an HP notebook as far as having no flex, a good keyboard, stuff like that. However, I will say that they do use some cheap plastics on some parts of the laptop (the area around the keyboard), mine already has a little nick on the bottom right edge near my centrino stick from when I dropped the power supply on it there (actually, considering I've had the notebook for 3 or 4 months now, one little nick isnt too bad I guess).

 

Nice. Yeah i get it now. Actually i am sort of on a tight budget and people from here recommended me to get E1705 but i dont think thats for me because i need a battery life that would last me 3+ hours without getting "way too warm" on my lap since thats where the laptop will reside at. Any ideas?

Thank You
D3158

 

Well, with a 9 cell my e1705 lasts about 2.5 hours (not gaming). And you will never need to worry about an e1705 getting to hot, its is a VERY cool running laptop (for a DTR). Right now I have been using my laptop since about 10 this morning and its been on my lap the entire time (4 hours about) and there is very little warmth coming from it. Otherwise you could check out the asus w3j if you want battery life, its a bit more expensive, and has a lesser graphics card, but better build, and I think it has a camera on it.

 

nice. Thanks "spookyu" for the feedback. I'll make sure i check both of the laptops you mentioned out.

Thanks once again
D3158