then again, i own two dells (a dimension e510 (~2005) and an e520 (~2008) i think as well as an ancient (~2000) XPS. All work fine still. Only problem was some ram went funny in the old XPS.

I support companies that use only Dell and love their machines, from 40 to hundreds of machines, environmental factures must be at work here.

Thanks everyone for your help here. I'm pretty convinced this customer needs the UPS to help circumvent the problem with more of a brownout )low voltage ) issue as vanwicz suggests. I spoke with an electrician today and he agrees that this could very well be causing the customers issues. I will be investigating this further with the customer and will let you all know what I have found.

I am not knocking Dell, but I only know two people with Dell PCs and both have had a lot of trouble with their PCs soon after delivery and both had even more trouble trying to get assistance from Dell. While that is 100% problems with Dell for me, 2 PCs out of maybe millions is all I know about.

Mmm. Well, mine were all okay. Came with a pretty decent spec and a samsung SATA II drive, internal layout was good (even if annoying because the case/motherboard combo was nonstandard).

Only PCs ive ever had problems with are Acer and Packard Bell.

i have old dell laptop ,in the shead sitting doing nothing but works great when needed ,some for my dell 450 ,and in the house i have a toshiba laptop, new ,and 4 yr old Compaq laptop, only problem with it was power jack broke ,and my main computer is 5 yrs old and a generic p4 with a biostar motherboard and it has never given me a hardware issue .also sold dozens of used Dell over the past 6 yrs ,with little or no problems ,nothing wrong with dell's except what jbennet says about the mother boards and also the psu ,on some of them

Nothing wrong with windows except.....lol

Every (non-slimline) dimension and XPS i have seen in the last 5-6 years has had a standard PSU, only problem is the dell one is physically a different size so it sticks out a bit and the holes dont line up quite right requiring you to snip some of the mesh off the back for the plug and switch (but they do work fine)

yeah i done that, also drilled holes in the tower for the screws .