Aargh… Game over for Dell at least in this round. As expected I spent about 3 hours on the phone with Dell Support today for a problem that was obviously a hardware issue. They finally came to the same conclusions although they didn’t get to checking the most obvious things (like checking for the failure in Safe Mode which I did before calling). The support folks were reasonably efficient but they are following a script – they’re not doing any thinking of their own and it seems I was already 3 steps ahead of them, they made me go back and go through the steps anyway. Click here, click OK etc… man, that is frus-trating. So finally they told me to send it in.

Now I didn’t opt for the On-Site warranty (because I know that anything they do here locally on-site will be a nightmare) so I was told it would take 10-14 days for turnaround… Ha. Ok, I’m no real hurry, but that’s pretty ridiculous. When I signed up for send in service I’d figure it’d be something like 5-6 days maybe 3 for shipping plus 2-3 for turnaround. I've had to send my machine to Dell once or twice in the past, but it didn't take that long. Their actual turnaround is 5-6 days. You gotta be kidding.

Next, Dell sent me what I thought was the wrong CD with the box. Instead of an installation disk, I had a disk for a monitor in my box. So I talk to the guy in sales (also in India) and he tells me that they don’t ship CDs anymore. I said – “Huh?” No, they don’t ship CDs anymore because, “people lose them and then call Dell for a replacement.” So now, you ALWAYS have to call Dell if you want a CD. So let me get this straight – I buy a copy of Windows but I don’t even get a CD? That’s – didn’t I say this before – ridiculous. All of this with a guy who had a bare command of the English language, over a VoiceIP line that kept breaking up… Instead Dell installs a hidden partition - wasting a few gig of harddisk space - that you can preserve and install from. All this to not have to ship a couple CDs for Windows and drivers???

I finally snapped. No more… the machine is going back.

I’m bummed. I was looking forward to a new machine and even worse while the machine was up an running it was in fact a very nice fast machine, with a beautiful display – pretty much exactly what I was looking for. But I just can’t keep wasting time like this…

It’s really a shame that what broke this for me ultimtately wasn’t the fact that the machine had a hardware problem. While it’s a pain in the ass, I can understand that hardware problems do occur. As I’ve said before I’ve been pretty lucky with my Dell machines before (this was going to be #4 in the line of laptops), so I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. But it was customer service that broke the camels back. Not only did they waste a lot of my time, but they wasted a ton of theirs as well. Nothing to say of the cost of retrieving the notebook etc. It’s costing nothing as much as it’s costing me in lost time though. I have better things to do than fight a computer and deal with tech support that can’t diagnose a problem or take advantage of the information that is available on the other end…

So, now I’m off looking for another machine. Unfortunately, I’m not convinced I may not end up buying a Dell at a future date – looking around at the other big manufacturers I see neither the configurability nor the pricing of Dell machines that is even close. And I’m not convinced that the Tech Support story is any better. Heck it'd be faster to buy a new machine altogether and have it shipped. And I was checking with Kevin McNeish a few days ago and he ordered a new one too and it was cheaper to boot.

Took a look at the IBM line - they don't have any 17 inch display models. I really want a big screen machine. Toshiba has 17 inch displays, but all the models I looked at didn't have high performance options or high resolution modes (1920x1200). No options to buy 2gig of ram and no options for high speed disk drives. That leaves HP which I don't think I want to buy a laptop from, and Compaq...

Oh well, time to move on. I guess I can get back to work now on old and trusty machine… never mind that it’s a fucking Dell too <g>…