Dell XPS 8700 X8700-3312BLK Desktop (Windows 7 Professional, Windows 8.1 Pro Update Included) | Best Product 2014

Dell XPS 8700 X8700-3312BLK Desktop (Windows 7 Professional, Windows 8.1 Pro Update Included)

CUSTOMER REVIEW



My 9 year old Sony VGC-210G desktop - (w/ Windows Vista Ultimate - Pentium D 930 processor - 2GB RAM)) finally bit the dust. I had the Dell 8700 in mind so it took less than 30 minutes to pin down the best equipped package with Windows 7 Pro for the lowest price (including next day Prime shipping - $11.99) was right here on amazon. Both my new Dell computer and recovered data from the old Sony came the next day. After installing several key programs, I was up and running, business as usual in just a few hours. It was pretty much a "plug in and go", initially with most devices requiring drivers at first.



Thankfully a lot of my old software works fine, "My Deluxe Invoices & Estimates v10" works faster than before with no freeze ups. I had doubts about MS Office Word 2007, it was taking too long to install but after 15 minutes it asked for the product key and voila! One noticeable difference - from having a much older desktop PC is just how quiet the Dell 8700 really is. Both the CD-ROM and DVD drives run very smooth as well.



Pros:



Sleek, light weight, small foot print. For an entry level graphics card the NVIDIA GeForce GT 720 1GB does quite well with HD videos and streaming. Probably not a good choice however for gaming enthusiasts. 1 TB is nice and with the 8 Gig DDR3 memory I'm not going to have to upgrade any time soon, if at all.



One more plus, I like the Wi-Fi. In fact after 3 weeks since taking my PC out of the box, it's still sitting in the middle of my office desk. I'll eventually put it back on the utility rack where it belongs, next to all the other goodies like the surge protector and ethernet cable.



Cons:



Compared to other PC's on the same wireless network, I have just one slight performance issue. The download-upload speed on Wi-Fi: Ping- 24 ms, 6.63 Mbps on the down, 6.12 Mbps on the up. Being hardwired I'm getting: Ping - 19 ms, 35.45 down, 6.87 up. I tested 2 other laptops and the speeds are 25-27% faster respectively.



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