November 2006 - Posts

• Consumer Reports Says…Dell to Miss Numbers

  I need to vent here a bit after having yet another really bad experience with tech support for my Dell Laptop.   I thought that I would do a bit of searching around to see how the industry regards Dell support and I found some interesting links (shown at bottom).  I was wondering if I was alone in this or if other folks are having the same bad experiences.  I guess that the source of my frustration is that Dell proclaims superior customer service as their biggest selling point. In fact, when the salesholes at Dell were telling me about how great their service plans were, you would think that if anything went wrong with my laptop, that the service technician would leave their house on foot if need be and run to my office to fix it.  So I bought in hook, line, sinker and credit card.  I got their best plan.  The next day, On Site service plan.  Once I started to actually need service from Dell (usually once every 6 months or so), I got slapped in the face by reality.  About 90% of the times I have had to use their support, it has been nothing but a really trying experience.  In the most recent experience, they refused to send a technician out at all.  My only option was to send my laptop to them.  Fortunately, I was able to convince them to send me a keyboard that they allowed me to install myself, which fixed the problem.  Even that took me well over 5 hours. Five very long hours.  As a result, when anybody asks me what company they should buy a computer from, my answer is "Anywhere But Dell".  Has anybody had similar experiences? Regarding the Subject used, "Dell to Miss Numbers", it is not a real headline or based in fact at all.  Unfortunately, it seems like Dell is doing better than ever, no thanks to my small protest.  However, I found it in a blog entry here and thought I would share it.  Maybe one day... A frustrated Geek can dream, right?  I guess this is how rumors get started. With a little bit of Googling, I see that  I am not completely alone in this.  Here are a few other sites with evidence of other unhappy people. Scores of them, in fact.  The saddening thing is that in the recent article, it appears that the other companies offer equally bad support, with the exception of Apple, which lead the pack at around 80%.  CNet News on Dell's poor customer support Dell Sucks Dude IHateDell.net Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! Posted Nov 19 2006, 07:07 PM by DavidSilverlight with 5 comment(s)

• According to Billy Hollis, I am a Code Addict

  As part of my role in approving community credit submissions, I review the entries that people submit.   This often leads to many hours spent actually reading the articles, blogs and other submissions.  This is not actually required, I just can't help myself sometimes because some of the entries are just too good to simply pass by.  As a result, I often find myself spending hours reading and reviewing some really good content. In the last few days, I came across two entries that I have to share with you.  The first is a video by Billy Hollis about "Code Addiction".  It was posted by Lou Vega, who also recently posted 3 really funny articles by him on the discussion board that point to tongue and cheek histories of C, Basic and MicroProcessors.  Who really knew that these topics could be covered in such an offbeat way.  They are all very funny and very clever! The second article that I came across recently was "Axes and Imagination".  It is not a technical article per se, but it is 100% relevant to anybody who spends 24 hours in front of the computer on a regular basis.  I guess that we all get into those ruts every now and again where you work and work all day, but when you look to see what you accomplished at the end of the day....nada. Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! Posted Nov 09 2006, 08:45 AM by DavidSilverlight with 4 comment(s)