Re: Help with Mobile Laptop Audio


Arny Krueger wrote:
> Gateway isn't the high-flying organization they were 10
> years ago. IME their hardware is competent and generally
> servicable.

That sounds pretty much like anyone else.

> You get what you pay for.

I priced out a Dell Insprion 6000 that Mr. Maki likes - pretty much
stock but with the 2 GHz processor, big battery and 60 GB 7200 RPM disk
drive, and it's over $1500. My current Dell Inspiron 2650 cost a few
cents under $1,000. I thought this stuff was supposed to get cheaper.
<g>

> I do well providing tech support
> for Dell and Gateway clients, even during the warranty
> period. Dell's hard drives fail just like everybody elses.
> Their XP catches viruses and spyware as well as everybody
> else's. Users have the same device integration and
> procedural issues as everybody else.

I can usually deal with things like that myself, it's the oddball stuff
that I go to them with that I think they should have more brainpower
available (and also accessible). One example early on was (and I'll
admit this was naive on my part - I just followed the menu prompts as a
first time WinXP user) when I was using AOL on dial-up and tried to set
up Internet Connection Sharing with another computer. They didn't have
a clue as to why certain things that I needed to select were grayed
out. Finally I got the correct answer from Microsoft. Then there was
the recent issue I described here about not being able to use a
Firewire disk drive through the PCMCIA adapter. Eventualy they told me
that it just wouldn't work with my motherboard, but that took a while,
and I'm still not sure why. And all too often it loses its power
management control, at least what I can see of it, and doesn't blank
the screen after the set period of time. They don't have a clue about
that either.

Maybe all Windows computers do this. It's just frustrating that to get
an answer to a question about something that my computer is doing, I
have to fish around in several ponds for an answer, even a not very
convincing one. But I guess that's why people pay money to have
someone else support their computers.

> Recently, I've solved some problems for a Dell user that
> their phone support should, IMO been able to handle. For
> example, they produced a bunch of higher end desktops whose
> BIOS seems to default to a non-bootable state if the boot
> drive isn't a RAID array. That could be mitigated over the
> phone but it should have never happened.

So what's the answer to that one? Get another computer? It could be
that Dell actually knew the answer but didn't want to tell the customer
that it was their mistake. Could it be fixed with a BIOS upgrade or
some other user-installable fix?

> Every once in a while I talk a client through some recovery
> or other technical procedure over the phone. It's very
> limiting compared to actually being there.

For sure. I try to help people with problems with their Mackie
recorders on the Mackie forum, and it seems half the time they report
that they've fixed the problem, it had nothing to do with what I
suggested, but something else that they never mentioned. I have one
like that right now on my own computer system. I have two computers
(the laptop and the desktop one that I'm working on now) both plugged
into the same DSL modem/router. They used to be networked to the extent
that I could move files from one to the other if they were in allowed
directories. Now I can access the laptop (WinXP) from the desktop
(Win2000) but the laptop can't see the desktop computer at all.
Something changed and I don't have any idea what. I've turned off all
the Firewall protection in the router, I've turned off Zone Alarm on
both computers, I don't know what else to do. But I'll bet that if
someone who understands these things were here, it would be fixed in a
few minutes. However, I have a suspicion that the "fix" wouldn't be to
find the one thing that's set wrong and restore it, but rather, to
re-install the whole networking setup on both computers. I haven't
tried that yet. At the moment it's just an annoyance (though I can no
longer print from the laptop since the printer is connected to the
desktop) but I sure wish I knew what happend, and even when. It's just
something I discovered one day.

Anyway, I guess the conclusion is that whatever computer I buy, I'll be
on my own to find support resources.

.