Dell XPS 8300 desktop

Pros: Well built, compact, quite fast, reasonably power efficient, higher end machine.

Cons: Dell support and marketing are confused and not helpful. It is hard to buy what you want. Dell appeal to people who don't want to fuss around building their own white-box system, but don't offer the knowledge, support or information to allow this.

Summary: I think this review was harsh if not biased. It criticises the Dell for lower performance than some and then criticises it again for higher power consumption than another. But the low power consumption machine was well slower than the Dell, and the faster machines used significantly more power. That's physics and blaming this machine on both counts seems to indicate a bias. An alternative view might be that the Dell hits the sweet spot in performance vs power consumption.

For this reason only I have reduced faith in the other views expressed.