by Lord_Mizaru » August 9th, 2005, 3:03 pm
Sorry folks, I've been gone for a little while. Let's see if I can help out....
Dells. Well, what can I say? You get what you pay for. As far as I'm concerned, a Dell is an ok computer. You get some decent hardware, though far from the best, and for what it is it's a reasonable price. For your every day user, who wants to surf the web and play a game or two, a Dell is just fine. If you want a high quality product, you get Alienware. If you want the best possible machine on this Earth that will never fail you and will quite possibly cost less than Alienware's not quite so good alternative, you build it yourself.
The short answer is I know quite a few people with Dell computer's, and the only problems they've had with them are problems that they created themselves. The computers for the most part work fine. And on a heads up for you guys out there in search of a monitor with some money to burn, last I saw Dell has a special deal on their 24" widescreen LCD's where you can get it at a ridiculously good price. My uncle just got one and loves it to bits. Best of all, it may say Dell on it, but it's just a Samsung OEM and we all know how good Samsung monitors are. So if you want a 1920x1200 (a.k.a. 1080p) monitor, you know where to look.
Now then, the raid question. I'll be honest. Raid is not my speciality. That being said, I don't think you'll get away without having another hardware controler. But they're not that expensive... I saw a PCI one the other day for about $40 CDN...