Dell XPS 410 @ [H] Consumer

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Jason_Wall

[H] Consumer Managing Editor
Joined
Jul 22, 2005
Messages
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To introduce our newest editor Josh Norem, we bring you the latest edition of the only honest Dell evaluations on the Web. We were the first to read the Riot Act to Dell about their bloatware (among other problems), we were then the first to congratulate them on taking steps to correct those issues, and now we're here again to lay out the problems that they still have in their operation.

We've had some pretty interesting tech support experiences in the history of [H] Consumer, but none parallel the traumatic gauntlet of dropped calls, useless solutions, and verbal sparring that we had to deal with this time around. And then there's the new purchasing configurator that Dell has rolled out, a funky restore process, stability problems, and a damaged chassis.... Quite the initiation for Josh.

All in all, we’d appreciate a little more effort on Dell’s part to walk the XPS walk rather than just talk the XPS talk. Show us how special this system is from the minute the box arrives. Ship it in a special external box with a nice mouse and maybe even a nice mousepad rather than the generic Dell item... For the premium we paid, we have to say we expect a bit more.
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We could almost excuse technicians not knowing everything there is to know about a specific product, but being hung up on when calling Dell’s exclusive tech support line is inexcusable. Once we actually got someone on the phone, things didn’t get much better. Not only were the technicians we spoke with obscenely ponderous and generally lackadaisical in their responses to our problems, they didn’t fix any of our issues on their own, and were adamant about not sending us a new video card despite our repeated requests.
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Thanks for reading!
 
We finally got Dell to RMA the video card, and the new card worked like a champ.
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And yet again you guys managed to get another system with a bad vid card. Christ, somebody needs to get ahold of Nvidia and or ATI and figure out why the hell the vid cards aren't surviving the shipping process.

As for the tech support problems, it doesn't suprise me in the least. I started building my own systems after dealing with tech support from Compaq back in 1997/98 and have never looked back.
 
Ive been following all of HardOcp's reviews on Dell products and the piece about when Kyle and the crew visited Dell HQ to get some feedback. After all that, I still dont get why the tech support dept for Dell is still their weakest link. Are their tech support people based in the US or are they overseas? Im curious. This one sounds more like the Systemax review in reverse: instead of sending replacement parts, they simply refuse to. Thats inexcusable in a system like this and at the price you are paying.
 
Everyone that we talked to was outsourced support. Normally outsourced personnel avoid that issue and say they're not allowed to give out personal information - but David and Ravi practically volunteered that they were India-based.
 
DNA Doc said:
Everyone that we talked to was outsourced support. Normally outsourced personnel avoid that issue and say they're not allowed to give out personal information - but David and Ravi practically volunteered that they were India-based.
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Its nothing unusual that your tech support would be that lacking. I have called Dell numerous times (usually non hardware related ) and its either 1) they are hard to understand 2) sometimes kinda cocky or 3) can't help you.

I've had good luck becuase I called their tech support line after spilling water in my Inspiron 6000 and they were quite helpful in helping me get my comp up and running again. However when my buddy called with the same problem, they wanted to charge him $$ to fix his comp. Oh well i guess it depends on the person and who you get.
 
amdfan25 said:
After all that, I still dont get why the tech support dept for Dell is still their weakest link.
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Not just tech support either, "PREMIUM" support. :rolleyes:


amdfan25 said:
Are their tech support people based in the US or are they overseas?
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I believe India was mentioned.

amdfan25 said:
I'm curious. This one sounds more like the Systemax review in reverse: instead of sending replacement parts, they simply refuse to. Thats inexcusable in a system like this and at the price you are paying.
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Regardless of sending parts or not, both had ridiculous support issues. I fully agree about your point on price... OEM's need to understand they're dealing with expensive hardware, and essentially, someone's hard earned cash.
 
Daftie, I understand the support situtation. After all Im a home customer and their support is usually hit and miss. Not to mention all the tech related horror stories I read before i bough my laptop. However if you are a business customer, you can expect greater level of service. Ive heard nothing but praise for their enterprise support. Why is the service so spotty between the different divisions at Dell? Who knows, perhaps somebody from Dell might come on it and explain it to me.
 
Enterprises = bigger voice, it's that simple but it's so wrong.

Hahaha, I just realized I'm typing this on a Dell Latitude CPi (Laptop)...
Thank God I can fix my own stuff, I would rather eat soot than deal with Dell after reading how the "new guy" ;) was initiated with those support calls. My sentiments are with you, man.
 
If its any consolation, in most cases of visiting peoples homes, when we (I work for Qualxserv, another Dell Warrantee sub-contractor) call in, we get routed to India just like you do. Its only with the corporate customers (with appropriate corporate service contracts) that we get routed to Texas and speak with people who actually sound like they've actually seen the innards of a computer before, and aren't just reading from a script.

As an aside.. i had one guy from (i can only assume) India actually tell me his name was "Elvis". Uhhuh.

I've heard customers tell me the people they've talked to on the phone voulanteer that they're in India, the Phillipenes, Brazil, Chile, and other such countries where they gladly work for an equivelent of 80cents an hour. Its a sound economic decision for Dell, but not a very good decision based on customer service, IMO.
 
daftie said:
Enterprises = bigger voice, it's that simple but it's so wrong.

Hahaha, I just realized I'm typing this on a Dell Latitude CPi (Laptop)...
Thank God I can fix my own stuff, I would rather eat soot than deal with Dell after reading how the "new guy" ;) was initiated with those support calls. My sentiments are with you, man.
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Im on a Dell Inspiron 6000 that had an unfortunate accident (see previous posts). Still the tech support for Dell is a hit or miss depending on who you get. Its a darn shame that XPS support is still farmed out to other countries. Come on now, tech support for a 2-$3000 and you cant even understand what the tech is saying :eek: :eek: :mad:
 
I wont touch a dell computer I have friends that sing there praises from dawn to dusk. They have the top of the line XPS with the customs cases a Gen 4 and a 600 are the exact models both were almost 5000 dollar computers and they dont impress me that much the 600 will have days that it wont boot and gives random error but that friend says its just part of having a computer. Thankfully the friend with the Gen 4 admits the only reason he has it is because he didnt know how to build at the time and has admitted he will prob build in the furture.

I have two dell monitors in front of me and thats as close as Ill ever be to a Dell computer. I have spend to much time seriviceing my moms dell and quirky little problems on my friends.

I just like the look on my friends faces at lans when my 1000 home built stack keeps up or beats the 5000 machine

sorry for the rant. Its just that everytime something happens to my computer someone will say yeah thats why I got a dell and well they arent anymore immune to problems than the next computer.

/rant
 
sadly outsourcing of all tech support is becoming the norm. I honestly wish there was a way to bring the jobs back to north America but from a comapny perspective what do they do. spend 20$ an hour on tech support in north america or spend 10$ a day for tech support from india. Seems like a no brainer doesn't it . The down side to this is many fold though. One huge issue is the quality of tech support falls into the toilet when they send the work overseas. And for those people that say oh the big guys get better support. Don't fool yourself, unless you are calling about a server you get the same shit support, it just so happens that the person will be from canada or the U.S. Dell has some strange rules their techs have to follow and getting them to send parts can be like pulling teeth. I got so angry with a dell tech support guy i ended up sending an email to the president of canadian operations. I spent 2 hours on the phone over a bad mother board. I had moved all the components to another machine and they worked fine but this ass wanted to install drivers run burn tests and other crap. I got so frustrated i actually told him he was incompatent and that maybe he should try listening to what i am saying before asking me to try another god damn driver(wow just typing this pisses me off lol). in the end i had a face to face meeting with the vp of canadian operations and discussed what they needed to do to fix this and he acknowledged they have problems but they also have a budget and other constraints that limit the level service they provide. What a copout.
 
trudeak said:
they also have a budget and other constraints that limit the level service they provide.
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How efficient is his budget if his support person is working on one problem over and over again?
Look at your cost of ownership of his product. How much time did you waste working with his support. How much time did you waste testing all those other components on other motherboard? How much is YOUR time worth?
 
All I can say is: woof. :eek: If I heard of someone I know provide that level of "tech support," they would be pimp slapped back into the Timex-Sinclair era. :cool: I have a Inspiron 9300 that *knocks on wood* has had zero problems and I'm so thankful for that -- I'd rather chew on rusty bloody nails coated in Anthrax than have to endure a marathon understand-the-tech-person-in-India session. That's why I build my own machines and servers. That way I can't give myself bad technical support. :D
 
I wish i had listened to your warning and gotten myself a drink or something Josh! DAMN that was long lmfao, so did the tech come in to the [H] offices and realise that "oh shit... these guys know what they are doing" or were you somewhere else? lmao
 
the video card didnt work because it was one of those stolen MSI cards, dell bought them from woot too :cool:

nice review, I have had to deal with dells customer support on the phone when a customer had a bad hard drive... after a few hours on the phone they still didnt believe me that the hard drive was bad (even after putting the phone up the the drive which was making loud "CLACK CLACK CLACK" sounds)

I finally gave up after 2 hours (after considering stabbing myself with my leatherman) and told the customer to just buy a bigger hard drive anyway...
 
FLECOM said:
the video card didnt work because it was one of those stolen MSI cards, dell bought them from woot too :cool:

nice review, I have had to deal with dells customer support on the phone when a customer had a bad hard drive... after a few hours on the phone they still didnt believe me that the hard drive was bad (even after putting the phone up the the drive which was making loud "CLACK CLACK CLACK" sounds)

I finally gave up after 2 hours (after considering stabbing myself with my leatherman) and told the customer to just buy a bigger hard drive anyway...
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Damn you beat me to that joke about woot. I was going to say dell must have stolen the other truck.

Yea dells support for the most part sucks. I had them tell me to restore a 2 month old notebook one time because the optical drive was bad. Pissed me off. Trick is to get through to texas or the east coast call center if your a business customer. They seem to be a lot better. Last time I called I needed a logic board for sff dell. Gave the tech the service number off it and said ship me a logic board. Guy asks why it was bad. Told him it had blown caps and would not stay powered on. He asked how many caps and where then got my info for a replacement to be installed. I asked him to just ship me the part insted of sending a tech because I didn't want to wait for him and the guy said sure after asking a few questions to make sure I could do it. Great service. This was one of the few times I've ever been able to say that for dell. Thing with this dell though I would have had them ship me another unit as it was new. I've had a few come in with issues before and I just request a replacement. In the last year I've had like 3 replaced(1 refurb and 2 that were prob damaged in shipping). You'd be susprised how fast they will approve a replacement for one that has either a major issue or has more then one minor issue. With the USB issue I would have requested another box as it could be a short or a bad board.
 
0mega said:
I wish i had listened to your warning and gotten myself a drink or something Josh! DAMN that was long lmfao, so did the tech come in to the [H] offices and realise that "oh shit... these guys know what they are doing" or were you somewhere else? lmao
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We had him come to the office. He just looked around a lot and said, "So you guys play games for a living or something?" and we just said "yeah," since every PC in the room had a gaming benchmark running.
 
Hey guys, long time reader, rare poster unfortunately. I have read pretty much every system evaluation you have done, and continue to love every article I read.

Anyway, I want to make mention to the USB reboot issues you talked about being unresolved. I work for a University, in Classroom support. We have 2 open labs, and several computer enabled classrooms. The USB issue you mentioned has been happening in our classrooms as well. I don't think you have an isolated incident, insofar as I've seen some of our HP workstations do the same thing, along with our newest purchase of dell Optiplex 620s. I don't believe it is a short in the system somewhere (although if it is, then my Dell and HP reps will be hearing about that.) I plan on contacting our company's Dell representative and see if we can get their team of engineers on it for a solution. Just know that your problem is not an isolated incident. I'll post if anything gets resolved.
As always, great reading, and I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing the USB problems. We've been kicking this problem around for about a year now.
 
Targ--In all of my years working with PCs I've never seen this problem, but that's interesting that you are experiencing it as well.

Like the article says, not only would it reboot but somtimes it would freeze the system and cause the 120mm intake fan to spin up to its maximum rotational velocity as well. Then the system would just sit there, totally frozen and howling like a banshee until we rebooted. It was a very bizarre situation, that's for sure.
 
Another long time reader (right from the start almost I think... never did win a damn thing from Hypothermia :D) posting for the first time!

This support horror story doesn't surprise me in the slightest, sadly...

In New Zealand I worked in administration for a major company. We had all Dells. Everything. Servers, desktops, notebooks.

The support used to be incredibly good. It was at the time based in Australia, and we always got through on the corporate support line in quick smart fashion, got someone helpful, and got quick results. In the case of a 'not sure' situation, a courier would arrive same day to pick up the machine to test, and we'd have it back in 3 business days maximum. If a part was broken, they'd ship across town because they had a warehouse, so we'd often receive it same day. If the site was somewhere else in the country, it arrived next day. No cross-checking, just a sticker and packaging to send the old part back. Seamless, painless, fantastic.

Then the support moved to Malaysia. Ouch. Bad response time, bad phone support, techs didn't give a damn, and getting replacement parts was almost impossible, let alone having a machine couriered off for testing/fix.

Then the support moved to India. OUCH! OH MY GOD! GIVE ME MORPHINE!!!

It was incredible. We ended up giving up most of the time on the phones, relying instead on emailing through support request forms due to sometimes 2-hour wait times. And this is on the corporate support line. We used to hold office lotteries to guess when the request would be answered. IF it was answered. If it was something simple, it might be answered two days or so later. If it was difficult, they often didn't bother.

We had hundreds of servers and God knows how many thousand workstations. It was so bad in the end that we got pretty much every New Zealand Dell exec to the office to rip their faces off in a meeting, and ended up with our own NZ-based support team at the Dell office because it was just intolerable.

Bottom line - Outsourcing to India/Malaysia/Timbuktu bad.

They might save money on support infrastructure costs... but what value does one put on the loss of respect and image in the marketplace?

Shareholder-controlled companies seem to be more increasingly experiencing this problem. Shareholders don't often understand or want to understand the details of logistics, customer satisfaction and other such petty things. They just want more dividend payout.

Moved all the way around the globe to Germany... wonder if the support for Dell Deutschland is also done in India? :D

.......................
Shuttle SN85G4V3
Athlon 3400+
Geforce 6800GT
2048MB Kingston HyperX
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Intel iMac 20"
2048MB
256MB X1600
 
Somewhere along the line I read a story about a television sitcom in India that deals with employees at a telephone support center dealing with angry Americans. I've long since lost the link, but there are times when I'm absolutely not surprised they deal with angry callers (not implying you blew up at them, but even the patience of Job isn't enough for some support centers).

I have the advantage of getting enterprise/business level support, which is somewhat better. Nevertheless, I do feel your pain with the run-around.
 
I have actually seen the USB issue with a couple of homebuilt computers with Antec cases and Asus MB's. I thought it was a shorting issue, but now I wonder.
 
Sniper_Merc said:
And yet again you guys managed to get another system with a bad vid card. Christ, somebody needs to get ahold of Nvidia and or ATI and figure out why the hell the vid cards aren't surviving the shipping process.
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//begin sarcasm
Well Nvidia has decided to send all the cards that will not run FEAR to Dell, because
"normal" Dell customers will of course never play a really cool recently released first person
shooter. They enjoy solitaire, minesweeper and Barbie Horse Adventures.
//end sarcasm
 
daftie said:
Enterprises = bigger voice, it's that simple but it's so wrong.
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I literally just had $8,500 worth of Dell servers delivered to my door. One will be a new [H] web server, and another with be a stand-alone www.Ratpadz.com server (we are introducing new product in November). We got great deals and discounts and we still use the first two Dell servers I ever bought.....$13,000 each, a dual 666 and a dual 733. This is the first time we have bought Dell servers again, but the product they had were just too well priced with Silver level service to boot. This also represents the first Intel servers to grace our cabs in the last 3 years.

My purchasing, processing and delivery were super-smooth.

Anyway, this was a bit off topic, but we will be writing reviews of one of these boxes at least.
 
Do we have a "Tech Support Horror Stories" thread around here? I think we could definitely use it....

So it sounds like your experience could be summarized like so:
--A bit quirky to order, and Dell makes it difficult to bypass all the margin-padding accessories
--You got a Dimension with an XPS badgeand a slight dent
--Good hardware (ignoring the USB thing and once you had a good video card)
--Forget about getting decent tech support. It's not gonna happen, even if you're paying extra for the "premium" support.

It seems to me that your experiences with XPS premium support have been hit-and-miss. On the XPS 200, you had a good experience. On the original XPS 400 review, it wasn't so pleasant. Of course, those times you had to make up hardware failures.

I have to agree with a previous comment--how in the world do you guys end up with such a horrific failure rate for video cards?

 
I've read (or at least browsed through) all [H] Consumer reviews and this particular installment is as informative as any of them. I do however have a couple of suggestions:

1) I think your reviews have become a bit too critical of actual shipping damage to the box rather than the computer itself. Dell doesn't really have control of how a carrier handles its product on a box by box basis, but if the computer arrives absent of physical damage, Dell's packaging engineers did their duty. Also, I was surprised that you were so critical of the "Open Me First" label. It doesn't hurt anything.

2) On the other hand, I definitely think you guys should be more critical of Dell's case interior. I know you mentioned it in passing, but the interior of the case is not really up to "XPS" standards in my opinion. In fact, from the pictures you posted, it appears that the wiring job you got with your system is worse than the $600 BTX system I purchased last year. Given that the XPS case is identical to the other Dell cases, I feel like the actual build of the computer is one area where Dell could have distanced the XPS brand from its other products, and it did not do so.

3) One of the most interesting areas of your review is always the tech support section and I thank you guys for bending over backwards and taking your time to expose the flaws of even the best companies' tech support departments. But I think it is almost getting to the point that tech support is too large a part of the overall article. I value the info, but when I usually bring tech support issues to an OEM computer manufacturer, I've already diagnosed my problem (as I'm sure most of the readers here have). In most cases, it takes me only a few mins to empty their head and press for an RMA. Still, I understand the need for a comprehensive evaluation of the overall experience.

4) I'm not an expert in "value-added" software, but doesn't Dell use it reasonably well to keep the costs of their products down? I don't see too much problem with paying a bit less for the computer and cleaning it up when I get it. I end up spending hours tweaking computers even if they run well anyway.


Great job on the articles in my opinion. Keep writing and I'll keep reading.
 
Outsourcing may save Dell money in the long run once the support techs receive appropriate training. But, in the short run, it is costing them quite dearly. Word of mouth spreads quickly and can / will affect their bottom line.

We'll all have to see how Dell responds to this review, if they even care to.

Thanks again for another great article [H]!
 
350zdanny said:
I've read (or at least browsed through) all [H] Consumer reviews and this particular installment is as informative as any of them. I do however have a couple of suggestions:

1) I think your reviews have become a bit too critical of actual shipping damage to the box rather than the computer itself. Dell doesn't really have control of how a carrier handles its product on a box by box basis, but if the computer arrives absent of physical damage, Dell's packaging engineers did their duty. Also, I was surprised that you were so critical of the "Open Me First" label. It doesn't hurt anything.
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We're critical of the shipping damage becuase it appears to us that the ding in the case door was present when the unit was placed inside the box. It seems that whoever put the PC in the box didn't inspect it, or if they did and they saw the dent, they simply didn't care. That's inexcusable behavior, regardless of the size of the vendor, and especially so given that we're talking about Dell.

As for the "open me first" label on the box, it's indicative of the entire XPS hooha in our opinion. Someone, at some point, held a meeting, and it was decided to print that on the box as something "special." But in fact, it isn't special at all, and is totally unnecessary. It's as if Dell is trying to add value with a piece of flair, but it's actually completely worthless and adds nothing to the user experience.

On the other hand, I definitely think you guys should be more critical of Dell's case interior. I know you mentioned it in passing, but the interior of the case is not really up to "XPS" standards in my opinion. In fact, from the pictures you posted, it appears that the wiring job you got with your system is worse than the $600 BTX system I purchased last year. Given that the XPS case is identical to the other Dell cases, I feel like the actual build of the computer is one area where Dell could have distanced the XPS brand from its other products, and it did not do so.
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Overall, we think the wiring is okay in that there's room inside the interior to remove or add parts, but it is a little messy, as we noted. Dell has taken the time to actually route cables around the perimeter of the motherboard, and to keep them out of the way via special clips, which is actually useful. Sure, it could be cleaner, but overall the wiring leaves ample room to work inside the PC if necessary.

One of the most interesting areas of your review is always the tech support section and I thank you guys for bending over backwards and taking your time to expose the flaws of even the best companies' tech support departments. But I think it is almost getting to the point that tech support is too large a part of the overall article. I value the info, but when I usually bring tech support issues to an OEM computer manufacturer, I've already diagnosed my problem (as I'm sure most of the readers here have). In most cases, it takes me only a few mins to empty their head and press for an RMA. Still, I understand the need for a comprehensive evaluation of the overall experience.
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You know, we never plan to write a novel on the tech support experience, but sometimes it just works out that way. If we call them and they respond quickly, it's a one-pager. In this instance, it was a long, drawn-out experience over several days with several techs. We'd be remiss in our roles as evaluators to not include that information the evaluation, so we put it all there for you to read. And besides, we didn't go through all that just to forget it ever happened :)

I'm not an expert in "value-added" software, but doesn't Dell use it reasonably well to keep the costs of their products down? I don't see too much problem with paying a bit less for the computer and cleaning it up when I get it. I end up spending hours tweaking computers even if they run well anyway.
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This PC was much better in the bloatware department that the XPS 400 we reviewed last year, but it's still not as good as we'd like it to be. They've made improvements for sure, but it'd be nice if they would cater to the hardcore crowd they purport to be catering to by shipping systems with clean windows installations, or even let you choose "no extra software" when purchasing in order to keep the price down even further.

Great job on the articles in my opinion. Keep writing and I'll keep reading.
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Thanks for your feedback. We appreciate it.
 
Good review. Too bad Dell doesn't know or care how bad their technical service is. To imply that one of their products carries premium support to me implies that rest of their support is rather blah!

Dell as an individual retailer is great. I love their monitors and occasionally, their hardware is on par with some of the more popular etailers out there. But that's about it. With a computer of this size and complexity, I think it's too many variables for Dell's tech people to diagnose--especially with either crappy training or no training at all. In other words, there are too many moving parts for Dell's protocol to guide their support guru's to promptly solve issues without wasting valuable time.

I commend you guys for the patience you endured.
 
Josh_Norem said:
Like the article says, not only would it reboot but somtimes it would freeze the system and cause the 120mm intake fan to spin up to its maximum rotational velocity as well. Then the system would just sit there, totally frozen and howling like a banshee until we rebooted. It was a very bizarre situation, that's for sure.
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this freezing and fan spinning up I haven't witnessed yet, but then again, the motherboards or fan controllers might be different between the two lines (optiplex and XPS) Also of note: the HPs tended to be (in our case anyway) more prone to the behavior than the Dells, but the cross-vendor nature of the issue makes me point more towards a common denominator: chipset and/or perhaps an Intel/windows issue. We've upgraded chipset drivers, BIOs revisions, hardware, different versions of windows. I can confirm that it doesn't seem to happen on windows 2000. We took a problematic box that originally had XP Pro SP2 on it and tried Win2k with SP4, and couldn't replicate the problem, but that is probably far from an absolute test. We happen to have several AMD based desktops in the field now and I am going to talk with one of my guys to see if he's seen similar behavoir, or if it may be Intel related. I am really interested to see if anything comes about on this, since, like I mentioned, it's stumped us in our department.
 
ummm get a amd dell article going since dell sells amd now its only fitting that they get some press :rolleyes:
 
That's a pretty thorough review. :cool: I wonder, however, why "Exceptional" is rated below "Excellent". Aren't they synonymous? If not, wouldn't "exceptional" be higher? Perhaps there should be a "Very good" between "Good" and the upper 2 rankings.

According to the bottom line score, this Dell barely makes it to "poor".
 
Josh_Norem said:
We had him come to the office. He just looked around a lot and said, "So you guys play games for a living or something?" and we just said "yeah," since every PC in the room had a gaming benchmark running.
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LOL!

btw.....Josh Norem....You wouldnt happen to be the Josh Norem from MaximumPC>?

If so. Awesome!!!!

I loved your work in the magazine business. Great to have you at the [H].
 
That is why you all need the number to XPS premier support base directly here in the good old USA. I have had this number for a while and just checked it again it does automatically transfer you a few time but in total it take about 2min to get a rep out in Nashville. Hope this helps all of you with xps systems 1-866-566-2055
 
Once again, I'm quite shocked as to what happened here, as my XPS Gen. 2 laptop support calls went a heck of a lot smoother when I had that system.

I had to phone Dell a total of 3 times for the laptop -- CD-ROM drive, motherboard, and display. All three times, I was connected to a tech within minutes, the techs knew a fair bit about the system, and did not hesitate to send replacements parts when it was obvious we were dealing with a hardware problem. All of them spoke fluent English (honestly, the only time it felt like I was dealing with someone from India was my initial purchase of the system).

Overall, I was quite happy with the Dell support I received -- not sure what happened here. :(
 
I play the family technician between my own family and my girlfriend's family. Between all of them I have serviced the Dell belonging to my girlfriend's sister the most, or given over-the-phone tech support for, and that's out of at least 6 or 7 different OEM computers between everybody.

My girlfriend's sister literally refuses to call Dell tech support anymore for her computer. And she did that even when it was still under warranty too, because she could talk to me and I could tell her specifically what was needed and how to go about fixing it, yet in her experience the tech support just gave her the runaround.

A friend of a friend of mine (also an owner of a Dell system) in Michigan once told me "Dell computers are great, as long as you intend on fixing them yourself."

All in all, I do know what my girlfriend will not be getting with her next two grand being saved up for a computer. She was considering a laptop, and Dell was on her list, but now after this, I'm going to make sure the name gets crossed off.
 
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