NBC: mild technology rant: Windows Vista and Dell...
- From: "ropeyarn@xxxxxxxxx" <ropeyarn@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2008 13:57:24 -0500
Completely NBC. If you have a working PC with XP (or a Mac!) consider yourself lucky. Or warned.
Windows Vista:
If Vista tells me one more time that I don't have permissions --or have to give permission to delete, rename, move, copy or execute a file...
then something really really bad might happen. I'm used to having my machine locked down by tyrannical, paranoid sysadmins at work. I don't need one embedded into the OS at home.
Dell:
We've purchased some midrange machine for our parents (who are hardly power users...as I discovered when my mom put a 3" CD into the floppy drive because they were about the same size) and never had a problem.
We are 10 days into our personal ownership of a Dell. Not a midrange machine. Not a bottom of the line machine. For what this thing cost: well, I could have had a Mac.
Today it's up and running fine. Zippy and happy (well, except for the nonsense describe above). It was not that way out of the box. Things were so bad, that I actually have a return/refund authorization in hand. The sequence:
-Phone sales guy assures me the video card has dual-DVI outputs. This is important because my monitors are DVI.
-Computer arrives a week later. On the video card: one DVI and one VGA connector. A VGA-DVI adapter does not go that way to support two monitors. I have one working display, and one dark. The working one won't run at its optimum resolution. I complain loudly to Dell customer care.
-Dell agrees to send me an ugraded video card. Guaranteed to have dual DVI outputs. Overnight FEDEX. No extra charge due to the sales/customer "miscommunication" at time of order.
-I install the new video card (after removing the OEM drivers from the machine).
-Audio goes toes up. RAID goes toes up. New video card drivers won't load. The BIOS and operating system stop communicating with each other. New video card fan sounds like a roulette wheel. Oh yeah: new video card form factor includes a massive heat sink that seriously obscures the plastic release lever at the rear (front?...the end farthest from the I/O shield) of the PCI slot. Like a roach motel, this card is going in.,..but coming out is a different story.
-Dell feels bad that a such a new, expensive machine is giving us so many problems. They very nicely offer to ship a replacement machine. Very nice of them.
-But: their "system" requires an *identical* machine. Therefore, they can't ship one with the upgraded video card. Even if I agree to pay the difference in cost.
-I suggest that they instead go to the "in-home" component of their warranty. They would, but: the in-home tech is not permitted to work on "third party" hardware. This is what Dell is now calling the upgraded video card...even though they sent it.
-We can't find any common solution after talking with three layers of customer service folks. So, before we get to Day 21, I tell them to send me the return authorization. I begin pricing Macs.
-Before I ship it back, I want to wipe it clean of my apps and data (which I did manage to get loaded during all of this). I use the restore DVD and take it back to it's factory state.
-Suddenly: the sound is back. The RAID had returned. The BIOS and OS are happily sharing their naughty bits again. And: after getting the latest drivers from the Web, the video card is running two monitors in perfectly.
Go figure.
.
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