So I have a Dell Inspiron 5000 that has been a fairly decent machine up until yesterday. Turned it on and there is some dll error. Walk through the machinations to “repair” the windows xp operating system only to have the system get stuck in loop while trying to boot up. Long story short, I have my pc at a service center with tech trying to “recover” as much information as possible. Ok fine, we should get most of the files back.
Big problem, at best the hard drive will have to be re-imaged. With that everything will be wiped off of it and there is no guaranty that will solve the problem. In the re-imaging process I will lose MS Office Professional, which was installed by Dell at the time my pc was manufactured.
So I call Dell Technical services, I am on hold for more than 30 minutes only to be told that they cannot look up my account with out my customer number from the invoice (don’t have it any longer as all waranty has expired), or the service tag number (which I wrote down) that they say does not exist. I offer the serial number and their response is “we cannot look up your information using a serial number.” Then we get to the best part which is that Dell Technical Services says there is nothing they can do for me since they don’t offer replacement software since this was not a hardware failure and it did not happen during the warranty period. I further explain that I understand and am not asking for anything special I just want disks for the MS Office Professional software as I want to restore what was there, and they did not provide me disks when the system was manufactured. Their response “sorry we cannot help you” end of call.
I hate Dell and I will NEVER purchase a Dell product as long as I live. Sorry for the rant, but I needed to get that off my chest. Ok now I have something to use to fuel my long run tomorrow.
Oh forgot to add, after the run tomorrow I am going to purchase an Apple, no more windows based pc’s for me.
understand completely. dell has gone in the toilet, especially in the customer service department where it used to get high marks. my father has a dell with on-site warranty service. since march, the computer’s hard drive failed and the power supply went bad(causing the hard drive to be wiped clean again). calling tech support is a joke and it’s so annoying to have purchased an on-site service plan only to have to jump through a half hour of hoops so that dell can do everything BUT send out a technician. after the first hard drive went bad, there were several problems getting the software installed correctly. they WILL NOT send out a technician to help with that–have to do it over the phone or not at all. i was so frustrated i just said screw it, and muddled through it on my own. so long story short, i can empathize with your frustration. after the past couple incidents, i wish my dad could move on to a different brand of machine…
I think you miss my point. I did not say it was Dell’s fault that my pc crashed, nor did I say that it was Dell’s fault that the warranty ran out.
What I did say was that they would not help me with the fact that my pc had to be reimaged and thus all software would be wiped out. Including the software installed by Dell at the time of manufacture. Normally not a problem but MS Office installed by Dell (at the time of my purchase) did not come with “set-up” disks and as such cannot be reinstalled.
And no I did not send it back to Dell, it is here locally being worked on.
As to backing up data, you are absolutely correct. We do back up but apparently weekly is not enough. Anyway enough said. Just not going to be a Dell customer again, nor a pc customer. I am back to Apple, at least for home use. Work, can’t do anything about having to use a windows machine.
I am glad for you and your experience with Dell. I am saying that mine has not been positive.
Dell is the WORST in business critical applications…HP shines…that is why where I am from ALL of the large business that have an educated IT staff buy ONLY HP gear…and a very high percentage of mission critical places use only HP…such as medical and NYSE…NASDEQ and yes, even dell.com comes from an HP server…LOL
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I’ve owned Dells, Toshibas and HPs. By far the best computer I’ve owned has come from Dell. The worst have come from HP…I guess that’s why HP is going down the toliet…fired their CEO…and restructuring.
Never had a lot of interaction with Dell service because mine have pretty much always worked flawlessly.
When you bought your machine from Dell they didn’t give you a system restore disk or the media to office? All of the PC makers are playing this game of not giving the actual media to office or other apps. My suggestion for any company would be to buy the machine without that software and buy it off the shelf if you can’t get the media in hand.
As for Dell we run over a 100 Dell and have very little issue witht them. I understand Records comments about mission critical in big business but I can tell you that in small and medium size businesses Dell is super popular. Good luck with your MAC
Is the rumor true that Mac is converting future PC’s to intel based chips. I coudl have sworn I heard a blipvert on the radio about something like that. Haven’t seen anything though.
Very interesting. I wonder if this will hurt or help Apple in the long run. Seems that the differences between the main OS’s are lessening and the hardware is now the same.
After this was announced Apple took a poll from it’s AppleWorld readers and the vast majority said they would buy an older Mac over a newer Mac once the new chips are used. Seems pretty silly, but Mac people have always seem to have a problem with processing speed. It seems they would rather a machine be slow and work. As opposed to Windoze where they can be slow and not work l:)
The new Intel machines will run the same OS as the old machines. The only difference the users should notice is lower prices and better performance. Powerbook users will see the biggest difference.
