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Dell....

R

rei101

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 24, 2011
976
1
A "friend" of mine gave me a Dell Inspiron without OS because some money he owned me. In theory I can go to Dell and download W7. But now I know why he didn't do it...

What a lack of navigation, dead end roads, and bureaucratic that web site is.

Oh.. and now I have to pay $127 for W7.

Once you are on a Mac you never go back.
 
If you put an OEM Windows disc in, it will install without making you enter a CD key. It checks the BIOS for a key and simply uses that. The sticker on the bottom doesn't matter.

You can even use Dell OEM disk for a Toshiba, but then it'll say that the Toshiba is warranted by Dell :p
 
If the machine comes with a product key, just a grab an OEM install. It won't even ask you for the key. Either that or give Dell a call, I'm sure they'll be happy to help.
 
The Dell Dude is still working as a bartender / waiter in New York City. Kind of want to track him down and hire him to work our company holiday party. :p
 
rei101 said:
A "friend" of mine gave me a Dell Inspiron without OS because some money he owned me. In theory I can go to Dell and download W7. But now I know why he didn't do it...

What a lack of navigation, dead end roads, and bureaucratic that web site is.

Oh.. and now I have to pay $127 for W7.

Once you are on a Mac you never go back.
Click to expand...

Reminds me of friends situation. He runs a recording studio.

A client wanted to trade his Dell Vista laptop for $700 owed on services. We look up the laptop on eBay and it was only worth $50-75 on finished auctions.
 
if you search for Windows 7 direct download, you will find all the isos direct from microsoft, they are totally legitimate.

you can then use an application to either burn the iso or write the iso to a usb stick.
 
roadbloc said:
If the machine comes with a product key, just a grab an OEM install. It won't even ask you for the key. Either that or give Dell a call, I'm sure they'll be happy to help.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I just built my own PC and if you use an OEM version it will ask for the product code that comes in the disk package rather than what's on the side of the machine. Plus, the OEM version costs less than the retail version. The catch is you can only use the OS with that one motherboard (unless you want to call MS and have them give you another key for a new machine, but that's time-consuming and may not work).

If you've used Windows 8 and are okay with it, go for it instead. It costs the same.
 
Kissaragi said:
Or you could stop complaining, goto newegg and buy windows 8 for $99 ?
Click to expand...

There's a problem with that, a ton of Dell's drivers are proprietary and the OP would need to make sure that certain components on his machine will have Dell drivers for Windows 7.

Case in point, we have Optiplex's at work (and I forget the laptops, latitudes maybe?) and all of their network drivers, graphics drivers, and sound drivers are proprietary from Dell. If you download a newer graphics driver from ATI for example you'll literally have to reimage your machine because not only will the new graphics drivers fail to install, but you won't be able to reinstall the old ones straight from Dell's site either.

That and some machines have drivers on Dell's site that are 3 and 4 years old with no updates even if the machine itself is newer and just using older hardware.
 
SevenFourSeven said:
Agreed. I just built my own PC and if you use an OEM version it will ask for the product code that comes in the disk package rather than what's on the side of the machine. Plus, the OEM version costs less than the retail version. The catch is you can only use the OS with that one motherboard (unless you want to call MS and have them give you another key for a new machine, but that's time-consuming and may not work).

If you've used Windows 8 and are okay with it, go for it instead. It costs the same.
Click to expand...

Stick with Windows 7. Windows 7 is a great OS like Win XP. Win 8 is a terrible OS like Win Vista. With Microsoft every other OS is good or bad--depends on when you start counting.
 
Frisco said:
Stick with Windows 7. Windows 7 is a great OS like Win XP. Win 8 is a terrible OS like Win Vista. With Microsoft every other OS is good or bad--depends on when you start counting.
Click to expand...

This as well. For most users it wouldn't matter but if you do a lot of multitasking Windows 8 (in my opinion) is just a bad OS.

I think its a bad OS anyway as its really sloppy with the whole "two desktops" thing.
 
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