Background

My wife, Lisa (who is in school right now,) and I decided it was time to retire our old, hand-me-down Dell Dimension 4100. It had served us well, but didn't have the processing power to efficiently run the new virus software packages and do email/word processing/web very quickly.

I was tasked with looking into buying a new laptop for home use. At my office, I purchase new workstations and desktop computers for our companies 15-20 employees. We always buy Dells. I also help my co-workers with their home computer purchases, and try to steer them towards systems with good specs so they won't be frustrated with a budget system that most stores/websites lure customers with. So I went to the Dell website and started looking around.

Our laptop budget was less than $1300, but I really wanted to get one of the Latitude line of notebook computers. I've been really impressed with the quality of these laptops, but they are a bit more expensive than the Inspiron line of notebooks. Another nice thing about the Latitude line is you get North American based tech support.

That lead me to the Dell Outlet (http://www.dell.com/outlet). Dell Outlet has a lot of desktop and notebook computers. Some of these have been previously owned and returned, others might be canceled orders, and others might be items that were scratched while they were being built. These systems can be considerably cheaper than the same computer you build on the regular Dell website. They are all covered by the same warranty as a new Dell, and they are suppose to be checked out by Dell technicians and not have any defects that would effect how they work.

Searching the web for reviews/information of customer experiences on Dell Outlet, I couldn't find very much. Usually, I wouldn't purchase from a site with so little information and feedback from customers, but, you know, its run by Dell, so it shouldn't be a problem.

I spent a week or so on the Outlet site, looking for a system that fit the specs I wanted. Finally, a Latitude D820 appeared that fit my needs. It had a Intel Core Duo T7200 processor, 1GB of RAM (I later upgraded to 2 GB of Crucial RAM from newegg.com), a 7200 RPM hard drive, and a 128MB video card. I figured that this would be a great system that would serve Lisa and I for the next few years. It was a "SCRATCH/DENT EQUIPMENT" computer, but I figured I would give it a chance. So, I ordered it and excitedly waited for our new computer.