In this review we’re going to be looking at a couple of desktops from both brands to see who offers more for your money. We’re also going to be taking a peak into their customer support so you know who’s really got your back when problems occur. I scavenged around both company websites for the best desktop under £400 and here’s the results:

Dell Inspiron 545: £359.01

• Processor: Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Processor E5300 2.6GHz,
• Operating System: Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit,
• RAM: 2048MB Dual Channel DDR2 800MHz [2x1024]
• HDD: 500GB (7200rpm) SATA Hard Drive
• Graphics: Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100
• Other: Dell IN1910N 18.5″ HD Widescreen Monitor – UK/Irish + Standard Warranty1 year of coverage included with your PC

HP Pavilion P6105: £339

• Processor: Intel® Pentium® processor E5200 2.5ghz
• Operating System: Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium 32-bit
• RAM: 3 GB DDR2-SDRAM
• HDD: 640 GB
• Graphics: Intel® Graphic Media Accelerator 3100 Integrated Graphics
• Other: 1 year, pick-up and return, parts and labour + 15in1 memory card reader

Remembering that the Dell model is £20 more expensive than the HP, at first glance Dell have clearly won in more categories. You say Dells CPU runs 0.1ghz faster? Think again, after some research I discovered that both the E5200 and E5300 are exactly the same CPU, all Intel have done is overclocked the latter and increased the price. Therefore, the battle of the CPUs is a draw.

We are now faced with the choice of Dell’s Windows 7 and HP’s Windows Vista. This should be obvious, Windows 7 wins without a question. Vista is far slower, has infinite amount of driver issues and looks much uglier than its successor. The RAM is also a no brainer and is actually quite disappointing on Dells part as it is so cheap nowadays, but HP obviously sussed this and have offered us 1GB more.

When buying a hard drive, I always search by brand (Western Digital being my personal favourite) as this almost always guarantee’s reliability. However, as much as I try, I just cannot find out what hard drives both company’s are using. Sure, HP offer 140Gb more but with all your precious data on there you would hope it wasn’t a cheap temperamental drive. For a family PC, I wouldn’t think you’d need more than 300Gb unless you have thousands upon thousands of music/pictures (it would take a lot to fill 500Gb) Therefore, anything over 300Gb is fine and all we are left to go off is the capacity, in which HP offer more, despite it being quite unnecessary.

Both brands offer a free 1 year warranty, I was hoping for one or two more for when these mysterious hard drives fail but this is all we’re offered. I was also not hoping for, or expecting a free monitor, but taking a look at it there is really no reason to complain.

Dell IN 1910 Monitor

Ten minutes of Google based research is all you need to discover the horrors of customer service. The first review page for Dell that I came across was a disaster. It was a large number of user reviews on Dells customer service at www.ciao.co.uk. One title of a review read “Possibly the worst customer service imaginable” and 90% of the others followed the same theme. Orders placed 2 months ago still hadn’t arrived and had been constantly rescheduled. A search for “HP” on the same site gave completely opposite reviews with 4/5 or 5/5 stars all over.

With the results in, Fast PC Mods highly recommends to choose HP over Dell. The reasons being, HP is one step up in terms of specs, and ten times better with customer support. My own personal experiences with Dell have shown their true, shifty way of business that really takes money out of your pockets for things you could do without.  If you are looking to purchase the featured HP model, upgrading to Windows 7 would finish the product off as an all round winner. You might also get discount on the upgrade if you bundle it in with the desktop, depending on which site you buy from.

You may also be interested in our article on What To Look For In A PC for further help.