Optimus 17 vs XPS 17 (price gap)

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loverdose

Bronze Level Poster
Apologies if it's against forum rules to discuss Dell..


I have configured an Optimus 17" laptop with i7-2670qm, 8gb memory, 500gb 7200rpm HDD nvidia 555m, 6-cell 48whr battery and 1080p screen for £805.
I have configured a Dell XPS 17 laptop with i7-2670qm, 6gb memory, 1tb 7200rpm HDD nvidia 555m 9-cell 90whr battery and 1600x900 screen for £624 (after promos).

That's quite a difference in price for very little hardware change.
In fact, if I am hugely bothered I can make the 2 builds identical and upgrade to 8gb memory and full 1080p screen on the XPS17 and the total still comes to £50 less than the Optimus. (I'm only fussed about 1080p I guess, memory is dirt cheap unless you buy from Dell!)..

Both have the same warranty as far as I know.


I know this is mostly a PCS forum - but is 2gb more memory, 1080p screen and the PCS brand at the loss of an extra 500gb hdd (I believe there are 2 x 500gb in raid) and the 9-cell battery worth the £181 price difference?
 
Xoil

Xoil

Well-known member
First off PCS>****,

PCS are custom builds that are done by hand. **** are custom builds done by hand with amillion preinstalled softwares put on. Plus Dell mess around with support (Use to own a ****, had a 5 year warranty on it and tech support, year 1 phoned them up for support, had to pay £150 for a 1 min fix, id didnt pay it.) PCS will have a turn around on just over a week.

Just me, go PCS, you cant go wrong.
 
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Wozza63

Biblical Poster
optimus will also save you on energy and probably have a longer battery life seeing as the GPU can be switched off and transferred to integrated graphics when not gaming

also the customer service here is amazing, phoned up for the first time to talk about my CPU cooler id sent in, the call took approximately 2mins30secs and probably didnt even cost 50p, whereas Dell, there call centre will be in India somewhere, the rate you pay will be a minimum on £1per/min and you will be sitting there for an hour waiting for someone to talk to who doesnt have a clue what you are talking about half the time

plus, PCS have seperate warranties included, ive ordered a 1 year warranty, but my SSD has a 5 year warranty when purchased seperately and PCS include this, Dell do not, the phone support is also lifetime, as well as email and live chat, I know for a fact that HP will refuse to help you when out of warranty by phone E-mail or anything else, the RAM warranty is lifetime as well

When you also want an upgrade (not really much option with a laptop) you can ask PCS to pick it up and they will fit the part in for you, I think this is free of charge

the list of benefits goes on as well as awesome Clevo chassis' great for cooling and motherboards
 
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loverdose

Bronze Level Poster
The difference between similarly specced 17" is roughly £180. Is the customer service really worth that much more though?
 
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Wozza63

Biblical Poster
lol well, not alone, but that compined with the other upgrades, yes, yes it is

dell generally choose the cheapest parts available (eg, the PCS 7,200RPM is the WD one which offers the best speeds, Dell will often offer something cheaper and not quite as fast)
 
Rakk

Rakk

The Awesome
Moderator
Were you trying the phone lines or the live chat thing (I know they've had problems with the live chat thing before, also it's at the bottom of the list of things to be answered behind the phones and emails I believe)?
 
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Wozza63

Biblical Poster
yeh I had problems with it for some reason and has trouble connecting, usually because they are busy on the phones
 
PCS

PCS

Administrator
Staff member
I just configured the XPS 17 on the Dell website with 6GB RAM and a 1GB GT 550M and it came to: £1,032, that's £227 more that our price. You must have some amazing promotional code? :)

Please can you post the link here of where you have configured it?

xps.jpg
 
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loverdose

Bronze Level Poster
Keep in mind the price difference is actually large enough to afford the full 3-year in-home next day repair warranty for for XPS and still have money left over..
 
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loverdose

Bronze Level Poster
They're not all codes, only NDSMGBHFWKW2S9 is a coupon code.
E-value code is simply a unique reference code to each laptop deal. Think of it as a url. So yes, the 15% voucher stacks on top of of that. Quidco also stacks on top of it, using quidco + vouchers is commonplace & the quidco website even says you get 15% off plus 8% cashback.

Happy to provide screenshots if it'll help. Also happy to be told PCS is still better value :) not trying to cause trouble, just trying to understand which will be the better buy.
 
PCS

PCS

Administrator
Staff member
I must admit when you apply all three discounts the price is keen. How they can charge £1032 for one person and £757 for another is just wrong!

Save the quote on your account using your email address registered to loverdose. I'll then talke a look at it for you and see what we can do. :)
 
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Wozza63

Biblical Poster
lol have you seen the amount of bloatware you recieve? that alone is enough to put me off of Dell and straight back to PCS, and you probably cant even format your HDD as the laptop doesnt usually come with the windows disc, whereas PCS supply this

plus i got a pop up saying they recommend IE9, says it all really
 
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loverdose

Bronze Level Poster
Wozza, not to sound defensive about dell - but for £5 I think you get your windows system restore dvd which doesn't even include drivers let alone bloatware. Not sure, but I think that's what it does.

IE9.. lol


PCS : Thanks :) I will now try to figure out how to save a quote! Hopefully you are able to recreate the Dell deal yourself to see I'm not lying or something :)
 
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loverdose

Bronze Level Poster
Okay I added a quote, but I can't figure out how I landed it on £805 earlier today. Closest I can get the optimus 17 is £811 plus delivery with the regular sata or £819 with the scorpio black. I can't remember which I selected earlier when it was £805.

Random question - any reason why you offer Kingston SSDs but not Corsair, OCZ etc? I haven't researched performance figures but the Kingston ones seem to be pricier.
 
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Wozza63

Biblical Poster
PCS did originally stock OCZ SSDs but they had so many returns of them (due to faulty hardware) that they canceled them and it was replaced with Kingston, they are all pricey really and kingston is still much cheaper than Intel SSDs
 
PCS

PCS

Administrator
Staff member
I have edited the price of your quote. The cost is more for the WD Black drive. Have a look and let me know what you think?
 
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