Dell XPS One 2710

Pros: Beautiful screen

Cons: Technical support
Faulty equipment

Summary: Like most of the reviewers, I was tempted by the specs on the computer and the form factor of an All-In-One. I bought the $2,699 (2710) version. Received it quickly in two days, set it up with the user accounts, watched it lock on the Dell screen after the first reboot. That was a Tuesday. After many hours on hold and talking to ineffective customer support, I tried to get an exchange the following Tuesday. The support person informed me that my problem history was not significant enough to approve an exchange. The advice was to return the broken one and purchase another. While the advice was dumb, I did it anyway. The new one came and would not boot up after the first reboot. Technical support is now sending me a Windows 8 disk so that the operating system can be restored.

Since I have an IT background, I decided to troubleshoot the problem some myself. I normally don't like to do that when I purchase an off the shelf product. I am paying the premium price so I don't have to do this sort of troubleshooting. Anyway, I decided to try since this was the second computer in two weeks. The short version is that both machines have disk related problems. One was a disk boot partition failure and the other was a SSD caching failure.

I'm now $6k in the hole to Dell. I have two beautiful paper weights. Along with an ever growing disgust for Dell.

AVOID...DON'T BUY...ETC...ETC...

Note: The disk arrived. All of the hard drive partitions required deleting, a new Windows 8 install was performed and now the system is running. Since all new drivers had to be installed and 70% of them are not on the Dell site, the technician had to remote in and provide drivers from "his personal stash". Now only the monitor functions don't work. There wasn't a driver the tech could fine, so the device manager has it listed as "Generic PnP". The volume cannot be adjusted and the CD/DVD can not be eject. The glowing eject button is there, but doesn't work.

Like the summary says, buy at your own risk. If you have your mind set on this machine, buy the 3 year premium warranty. You will get your moneys worth out of the warranty.