A memo to Dell.

[theweaselking]

Dear Dell,

When sending me a new hard disk that you have promised is already partitioned and formatted, with the recovery partition fully configured and a full set of the default right-out-of-the-box software (including, say XP) installed, it is perhaps advisable that you should maybe, possibly, potentially PARTITION AND FORMAT AND INSTALL SOFTWARE ON IT. Opening the bag the drive came in might have been a start, there.

I should not have to spend 3 hours partitioning, formatting, installing, and patching to get the system back up again, because you promised me that it would already be done for me, because a system that's a month old had a complete hard disk failure.

Oh, and the "product recovery" CD you sent with the computer in the first place? Doesn't work if the drive isn't already formatted in all the right ways, and you don't tell me what those ways are.

You suck and you're wasting my time,
John

Comments

[goose-gumshoe.livejournal.com]

Daaaaaaaaaaamn Dell! Don't be wastin Johns time.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

Lemme tell you a little story about Dell and System Restore.

I got my Windows XP-running Dell for Christmas of 2005 from my parents. Around February of '06, I installed PCLinuxOS and dual-booted using LILO. And it was good.

A while back, I got tired of having my machine's HD divided up, so I decided to run System Restore and go back to Windows. Sadly, my machine had come without a System Restore disc, and so I called Dell. Dell informed me that their System Restore was not a disc but a partition, and that I had to press a particular keystroke (ctrl-F9, if memory serves) while the computer booted. Of course, at this point, my MBR had been altered. I alerted Dell of this, and asked how to restore it; they informed me that there is no way to restore their custom MBR. Instead, they told me, they would send System Restore discs, which now existed, evidently.

A week later a package came in the mail, and it contained four CD-ROMs. These CD-ROMs were not System Restore. They were a Windows XP disc, a driver disc, and two Programs discs. Better yet, the driver disc was for the wrong fucking model, and was in fact for the model that replaced mine (the Inspiron 6000) in their product line. But the wireless networking drivers were good, and I was able to download all the appropriate drivers.

I always wondered what other people were meant to do.

[kjn]

Not install LILO?

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

By other people I rather mean "people who aren't competent to babysit an OS install and then hunt down drivers." Though... I suppose such people wouldn't have been able to overwrite their MBR in the first place, eh?

[mhoye.livejournal.com]

"Not buy Dell".

[jl-williams.livejournal.com]

That's a little bit stupid. Dell computers, in terms of hardware, are no different than any other computer in terms of functionality, lifespan and what they're actually supposed to *do*. The only difference, really, between Dell and the rest of the companies out there that sell computers to you, is one of customer service...

...in which case they're better. Hands down. Dell has better driver availability than anyone else (ever try to get a BIOS upgrade from HP?), more competent technical support than anyone else, and by far a better sense of "don't screw up this customer's relationship with us if you can help it" than anyone else.

Are they perfect? Certainly not. And in John's case, they have clearly failed him somewhere.

But to make a blanket statement without any real basis is, as I said, stupid.

Question: When was the last time anyone ever called technical support to tell them that they had *no* problems with their computer?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I have to say, for the record, that once you *get* the hardware, Dell's HW replacement are, hands down, the simplest I've ever done. The insides of the cases are clean, simple, uncluttered, and everything works with a minimum of fuss and concern. It's a joy to work with and I wish more people could do that.

(although I will ask when the last time you *needed* a BIOS update for an HP machine is. I've needed BIOS updates twice. ever. And one of those was to make a machine be able to see a hard disk bigger than 4GB.)

The thing I've noticed, though, is that while Dell's hardware is comparable and their hardware *replacements* are a joy to behold, their customer service sucks ass. I am consistently not listened to, or given bad advice, or told things that are outright lies, by first-level tech agents who don't understand my problem and seem unable to realise that while I sympathise with their concern that I might not have plugged in the machine, I really *do* mean it when I give them the exact error message I get on bootup that tells me the hard disk has failed, and that I really *do* look like an asshole to my boss when I take their "formatted, partitioned, factory-default drive for your hardware", plug it in, and then have to spend 3 hours putting XP and all the updates onto it because not only is it a brand new blank drive, but their "recovery" disk GPFs as soon as I boot from it, too.

Dell's second-level techs, the times I've gotten through to them, appear to know their stuff and listen to me, and get the job done admirably. It's the first-level people who know shit and cause problems - because if they knew shit, they wouldn't *be* first-level tech agents, and I know directly from the mouths of Dell first-level tech support people that they're told to get rid of callers any way possible to make their desired metrics rather than solve problems.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

My husband works for Dell, and he's one of the second-line level of techs that you mention.

He informs me that Dell treats its Canadian customers far worse than they do their American customers, partially just because they're cheapskates and partially because of insane customs laws. He has horror stories about trying to get basic parts to a Canadian customer.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I usually wind up with the American first-level support weenies, though. I learn this because, despite calling the Dell Canada number, when it comes to actually sending me the part I need (because I NEVER call for a software issue), they always tell me "Oh, you're in Canada, This is the US support number, we can't send to you."

Seriously.

And then they transfer me to Venezuelan new sales, or give me the number for Croatian server hosting support, or argue with me about whether or not Canada exists, and then I hang up and call American Sales, who are the only people in the whole fucking company, including the damn IVR, who can get me through to Canadian tech support on the first try.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Actually, a quick quiz. Is it standard to send out new hard disks preformatted, or totally blank?

Because the first-level tech assured me it would be preformatted, with XP and all the other factory-default stuff preinstalled, and that struck me as really weird but very convenient.

And when the drive arrived, it was naturally 100% blank.

So I'm wondering if the tech lied to me, or if they fucked up and sent a blank disk by mistake.

[jl-williams.livejournal.com]

Standard procedure is to send them out blank after the first year of a system's warranty. If it's within that frame, they *can* send out imaged drives... but it's not a foolproof thing. Things change hands several times before getting to the client, but we try to do what we can do. I can't really go into too much more detail than that.

No one lied -- there was probably an oversight somewhere.

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

I just got this Dell, right? And well, I wouldn't have the slightest clue if it has everything in it that it's supposed to. But I went to control panel, and went to system, it says it has 3GB of RAM. I ordered 4. It says 4 GB of RAM on the order. WTF? Is it really there but the comp isn't registering it? What do I do if they really didn't send me all the stuff they were supposed to?

On top of this, the damn computer can't run Black and White 2 without it slowing down so bad that you can barely move the mouse.. I thought having massive amounts of RAM would fix that problem. Black and White 2 is a few years old now, a computer like this should be able to handle it...

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

If you've got a laptop, try setting the power settings to "Desktop" so that it doesn't ratchet your clock speed up and down to save battery power. When I installed Deus Ex on mine, the ingame speed would vary wildly, as it relied on a when-the-game-starts measurement of the processor's clock speed for its timing. Black and White 2 may be doing something similar.

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

Nope, I got a desktop this time cause getting a laptop for gaming turned out to be a stupid idea.

[jl-williams.livejournal.com]

Do you have Vista or XP?

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

XP

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Does it actually say 3.0 in the computer, or does it say something like 3.8?

Because what's likely happened is that you've got a bad stick of RAM, and so your 4x1GB is reading as 3x1GB. That's warranty replacement, easy.

And Black And White lagging like that sounds like it's likely a graphics problem. What graphics card do you have in the machine, and are you running the latest drivers for it?

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

no, it says 3GB of RAM. How do I see what graphics card I have and if the drivers are updated? This is what I ordered (I cut some of the excessive stuff out):

Order Detail

Qty Part # Description
--- -------- ---------------------------------------------
1 222-3550 Intel 2 Duo Processor E6700 (2.66GHz,1066FSB) with 4MB cache
1 311-5122 4GB DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
1 320-4945 ATI Radeon X1300 Pro 256MB DVIVGA, TV-out
1 341-3190 320GB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive (7200RPM)
1 341-3867 Dell 13 in 1 Media Card Reader
1 420-4834 Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition,Service Pack 2,English
1 313-4427 56K PCI Data Fax Modem
1 313-4424 48X Combo and 16X DVD+/-RW
1 313-2758 Integrated Audio
1 412-0905 Norton Internet Security 2006 15 Month
1 950-9797 No Warranty, Year 2 and 3
1 960-2800 Warranty Support,Initial Year
1 412-0359 Soft Contracts - Qualxserve
1 984-9287 Dell Hardware Warranty PlusOnsite Service, Initial Year
1 980-1740 Type 3 Contract - Next Business Day Parts and Labor On-Site
Response, Initial Year
1 986-4227 Thank you for choosing a Limited Warranty and Service Contract
1 310-8165 IEEE 1394a Adapter
1 466-6667 Thank you for choosing Dell
1 310-8591 You have chosen a Windows XP System

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

1 320-4945 ATI Radeon X1300 Pro 256MB DVIVGA, TV-out

Right there, that's your graphics card. Updating the driver means going to support.dell.com, hitting Drivers And Downloads, putting in your service tag, and telling it you want Video Adapters. Download and run the file that goes with the ATI Radeon X1300 to get the lastest driver.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

PS: See that bit about next-day hardware support? Call Dell and tell them your new machine should have 4GB of RAM, but only shows 3 in My Computer. You'll have to jump through hoops for the phone monkey briefly, but then they'll send a tech out to find out the problem or replace the bad chip.

[jl-williams.livejournal.com]

The problem isn't one of ram, necessarily. Not if you're running Vista.

Vista shows, in Control Panel, the AVAILABLE memory, rounded to the nearest gig. If you've got 4GB of Ram in the system, it will only report as 3 because Vista needs at least 1GB just to run smoothly.

[jl-williams.livejournal.com]

Which doesn't really apply here... in which case yeah, go call Dell and get your ram.

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

yeah, I guess I'll have to call them. I just went and updated my driver like you said. Unfortunately, I didn't see that the service tag was right fuckin in front of me, so I pulled the computer out of where it was sitting and accidentally unplugged it *headdesk* this has been a stupid retarded day.

[goose-gumshoe.livejournal.com]

if u wanna see your grfx card, right click your desktop background, scroll down and hit properties. Under the settings tab, after display: should be your card. Clicking the Advanced button should pull up the cards options, which you should be able to also access through your display icon in control panel. Also you can right click on My Computer and hit properties, then in the Hardware tab hit Device Manager which will allow you to check drivers.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That will tell you what's *installed*, but not what the hardware is.

In this case, the hardware is the ATI Radeon X1300.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

Is it a 32 bit or 64 bit processor. More importantly, is it the 64 bit version of windows? Because if it's the 32 bit it can't access 4 gigs of ram, that's why all the 64 bit stuff (ok, not the only reason, but a big one for personal computers) came out in the first place.

[chaosrah.livejournal.com]

oooh, really? well, it's xp, not vista, i assume that's 32 bit, right? why the hell would they sell you a comp with 4 gigs of ram if it can't use all of it??

[zenten.livejournal.com]

There are 64 bit versions of xp. As to why they would sell it, you can use it, if you get the right OS.