Welcome to the NHK!

Seriously, I’ve never had much trouble with Dell. I’ve got a 15 year old 386SX-16 with 4 MB of RAM, 80 MB HD , and a 15″ CRT that boots fine.
Sure is ugly, though. I’ve also got two Dimension 2800s, a 4800, an Inspiron 531, 2 600m laptops, an I9300 laptop, and my personal fave, an old I8600 laptop that just won’t die.

I always pay more and get the “Drag and Drop” warranty (Complete Care) for my laptops, and I get good service. Kid dropped a cell phone on the I9300, cracked the LCD, and Dell had it fixed and back to me in 1 week. The only trouble I’ve run into was recently when I installed XP Pro on the 531. Getting everything to work was a real PITA, and Dell wouldn’t support the downgrade from Vista.

If I want few hassles, I buy a Dell with a warranty.
If I want high performance, I build my own, and take my chances!

I have had the hardest times getting definitive answers about the Inspiron 530 (Quad-core edition). Mine came with a 350W power supply that everyone is assuming up and down is “junk”, yet I have never read of it failing on anybody. I get that it is likely not as good as a Corsair 700W power supply. The only power supply that has ever gone bad on me was an Antec that everyone was swearing by. But so far, so good, using a Radeon HD 3870, Blu-ray, DVDRW, and two hard drives.

I am running 1GB and Vista 64-bit, waiting for my 4GB (2 x 2GB) to come in tomorrow. I’m ultimately only going to use 4GB (hopefully at 800Mhz) but if the 800Mhz doesn’t work, I’ll use all 5GB (hopefully).

Things that I’ve found out:

A) Inspiron 530 uses a standard ATX power supply, replace it with whatever good power supply you’d like. (I haven’t tested it myself, as I rather like Dell’s. But I have found very credible information that supports that claim.)
B) Vista Ultimate 64-bit “Just works” drivers wise. The chipset drivers in Dell’s website are 64-bit compatible. The Realtek audio drivers need to be optained from Realtek, though the sound “just works”.

I rather like the Dell Inspiron 530, I think the case is “just right”, it’s quite small but not spacious and well ventilated and good looking.

I don’t know what peopel are talking about with Dell’s “bad customer service”. I’ve had very good support, and all I’ve ever bought from them was refurbished to boot.

Since the power supply is standard ATX, that should mean that a standard micro-ATX motherboard should work in this case.

Overall the case design gets a 9/10.
Hardware quality gets an 8/10 with 10/10 for value. The heatsink and fan are solid looking, as is the little 350W power supply with the PCI-E connector.

One more thing about “my research”. Definitely get the Quad-core Inspiron 530 if you have a choice. The motherboard is a little bit better electrically, as is the power supply, and of course the Q6600 is a fantastic processor as well. I’ve bought two of these reburshibed and they’ve both been 100% new looking and feeling.

Finally, if you get a choice between the regular Dell mouse, and the “premium” Dell mouse… I recommend getting the regular two button mouse. The “premium” mouse is terrible (too light, too cheap feeling… they both are, but for a basic mouse, the regular is better).

Thanks!

So perhaps another takeaway (along with caveat emptor) is that user forums are more helpful when more people contribute. Which leads me to the observation that nobody has left comments at Microsoft Windows Live Gallery to say that the add-in for SnagIt does work.