That's what I've asked twice before in the thread but no magic answer so far....

I guess the holy grail of computers doesn't exist :confused:

That seems a reasonable assumption. You pays your money and you takes your chances. :8

Well, I wrote to Dell Customer Services at County Wicklow a month ago. Last Thursday, 28 days later, having had no reply of any sort from them - not even an acknowledgement - I wrote a letter direct to the CEO in Bracknell asking him to intervene personally......

Today a chap from Dell rang and after I recounted my tale of woe for the Nth time, he promised to send me a new laptop to replace the old one which their repair centre had killed.

Fingers crossed for a satisfactory outcome - shall find out very soon! He also promised to replace the MS Office software as well....

BEagle,

I hope that what they send you works properly this time. ;)

Richard

Time for an update.

They have my money. I do not have a new pc.
The situation is fast deteriorating - it'll be lawyers at dawn...

I think a computer assembled by enthusiasts using quality components is the way forward. I have two friends with excellent experiences down this route.

One used http://www.meshcomputers.com and the other used http://www.evesham.com/

I myself am tempted by http://www.bestpricecomputers.co.uk who seem to have a popular fanbase and universally good reviews on the usual review sites.

Buying a new Dell seems a bit like going into a Ford garage and buying a new one at list price. Its alright - but there's a lot better out there for the money.

Cheers

WWW

Wee Weasley Welshman,

Do let us know the specs of the machine you are thinking of before you buy. We might be able to tweak the specs before you are locked in. ;)

Take Care,

Richard

First Dell I bought was in Feb '97, cheapest of the cheap as I needed it for (gulp!) school. £899 +VAT. P233MMX and 32M of RAM....remember those days!

Lasted for ages, even survived Gulf Air chucking it around their LHR and BAH baggage systems but eventually 5 years after birth smoke started coming out of the motherboard and it was decommissioned....

Second Dell bought was for the little brother; didn't last long before some +uckwit nicked it.... :(

Third Dell I bought in Dec 1999, laptop (Dimension 3700) absolute peach of a machine. Slight problem with the RAM initially, but settled down. Motherboard replaced in early 2002 as the PC cards were buggered. At the end of 2003 something horrible happens and Windows vanishes. It only boots into DOS and I'm trying to think of a way to get 4 years of data off it! Currently resides in a drawer....

Fourth Dell bought was a desktop for the parents, it's a beast and no problems so far (apart from the usual that can be attributed to William H. Gates III)

I now run a Mac powerbook. Battery was dead on arrival, only problem so far is a creaking hinge (but I'm waiting for the Apple Store in Regent Street to open so I can go and chat to a genius about that....)

Computers: Expect the worst, hope for the best.

Dealt with the Dell call centre in India (is it Bangalore?) by e-mail with no difficulty. (except when they wanted £730 to fit a new screen which costs £300 in the US)
Writing this on an old Dimension XPS D233 which has had upgraded memory, HDD, CD-RW, OS etc and still struggles along.

(Ref call centres, called bank in March and thought I may be speaking to CC.
Me: So what's the weather like with you?
CC: Oh goodness, it is very hot.
Result!)

Long past the stage of being of any use to anyone I suppose, but credit where credit is due. Had problems with Windows XP on my Dell laptop, looked up the manual and found a toll free number for support.

Loaded up the fridge, got in a couple of DVD's to pass the time and rang the number. One automated query, to which I replied yes, I'd like to speak to a tech, and bugga me if 20 seconds later I wasn't speaking to a human!

She took me through the whole process, decided a clean install was the best move and insisted on staying on the phone while I started it in case there were any problems. Once it was going, she said she would ring me back in an hour to supervise the installation of the drivers. And she did! My gaster was flabbered!

Hats off to Dell from this satisfied customer; yes, she was in Bangalore, but she spoke English a hell of a lot better than I speak Hindi!

Binoculars,

Was this the notebook that had the two viruses in the other thread:

Windows cannot find.......

by chance?

If so, I am glad you were able to sort out the install.

Take Care,

Richard

Yes it was, Richard. I couldn't interrupt the boot sequence to boot from the CD which is why I decided to try the support line. My description of the problem led her to believe that a repair wouldn't work, and she didn't like the idea of a reinstall over the top, so I did a full clean install. Not a major problem since it's basically a network computer and all files are kept on the host.

All up and running fine now. thanks for your suggestions as always.

Binos

Binoculars,

I just hope you did not lose all your data. :eek:

Take Care,

Richard

All's Dell that ends well!

Today I received, totally free of charge, a Dell Latitude D400 together with external media drive with DVD and FDD bays, plus MS Office 2003 SBE to replace the Latitude LT which Dell's repair people broke.

So it woud be remiss of me not to mention that a letter to the UK CEO had the desired result and I now have a good back-up computer to use.

Thank you, Dell!

Way To Go BEagle! :ok:

Richard