![]() Unlike HP's Total Care software, which stores the information locally on your PC, Dell's Support Center links to various resources on its Web site. Dell also has added a software suite with various free and fee-based means to take care of your system. Beyond those basics, all three vendors have remote control tech support, in which you can turn over control of your PC to a support tech via the Web. It also has a 24-7 toll-free phone support. Dell's basic warranty gives you one year of parts and labor coverage out of the box. However different the hardware might be between HP, eMachines, and Dell, all three vendors have comparable support offerings, which offer you a variety of choices for ways to troubleshoot your system. HP's SlimLine gives you less flexibility due to its smaller chassis. But at least with the Dell you could upgrade to a 3D card, the Wi-Fi option, and a TV tuner (although, as was pointed out to us by a reader, you'd have to shop elsewhere for the tuner, as the model on Dell's site is PCI-Express only). True, both systems' slim chassis require that you use half-height expansion cards, which limits the extent of your add-in options. Where as HP offers room for only one graphics card and one standard PCI card, Dell has room for the 3D card and three other PCI cards. That might be bigger than the Pavilion SlimLine (10.8 inches high, 4.5 inches wide, and 13.3 inches deep), but Dell puts that extra space to work. The Dell measures 14.1 inches high, 3.8 inches wide, and 16.1 inches deep. If we take a closer look at HP's competing system, we find that HP might have the smaller design, but the Inspiron 531S offers more expandability. This leads us to suggest that if your computing needs are simple and you don't spend a lot of time working with digital images, you won't lose much if you aim a little lower than the system reviewed here. But our music- and movie-encoding tests don't show a significant improvement with more memory. You can see on our Photoshop test that the Inspiron 531S's extra memory gives it a significant boost to photo editing compared to the eMachines system. Don't get us wrong, we'd much rather have 2GB of RAM than 1GB, especially if you're running Windows Vista on a PC with an integrated graphics chip. What's ironic is that the Dell's extra memory doesn't show a significant benefit on all of our benchmarks. In other words, there's some markup going on over at Dell that goes beyond what we can find if we shop around online. Going from 1GB to 2GB on Dell's site adds $100 to the cost. Similarly, you can pick up two 512MB sticks of memory for $50 and pop them into the eMachines to bring it on par with this new Dell. That's with bringing the Dell's memory down to 1GB and getting rid of the optional FireWire card, which adds another $30 to our Inspiron config's price tag. If we play with Dell's configurator to match the two systems more closely, you still end up paying $30 more for the Inspiron 531S than you would for the off-the-shelf T5230. ![]()
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