Not sure why this was bumped but ok....

Dell catches hell because they've diluted the service side of the equation to such a great degree. What formerly was normal service now is "gold" service. The standard warranties on the dimension/inspiron products have been watered down to nothing!

IMO they're still my preferred vendor. I buy all office machines from the outlet. We have 55-60 desktops and have gone through three refreshes since I started buying outlet machines back in 1998 or so. Back in those days you couldn't even order from the website. You called in and ordered machines over the phone and prayed the service tag ya wanted was still around.

All my *servers* are outlet machines. We have 9. None have ever failed. The oldest is a PowerEdge 2300 (rackmounted..BOY that thing takes up a buncha space). None have ever failed save the occasional HDD dying. On the desktops... in ten years we've had two failures due to power surges and four HDD deaths of attrition. Otherwise, they've been perfect. I wouldn't buy anything else. I just won't order without gold support now.