My New Dell Laptop Amusment Or Frustration

I am both amused and frustrated by the new Dell laptop I purchased less than a month ago. The following is my journal on what happened....


26 June 07: My New Coming Notebook


After many days of procrastination at the seemingly good offer by Dell for its 12.1-inch, XPS M1210, notebook, I finally decided to order it online this evening (Last day of promotion at $1699).

I was hesitant because I heard and read so much about the bad services offered by Dell and also personally experienced it when I called up Dell Sales Line to make some enquiry on the product I thought of buying.

What prompted me to buy then?
1. I have been wanting to buy a 12-inch notebook for a long time, since 2 years ago, but the price was too high.
2. I just dropped my laptop and and broke a brand new wireless lan. I know my laptop will give way soon (2.5 year old).

Well, I need to pray that all will be ok with my order.

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15 Jul 07: My New Dell Notebook (1) - Vista Trouble

Although my new Dell notebook arrived on 2 Jul 07, I did not have time to play with it till yesterday.

I should be writing a review instead of posting it here right?

Well, my conclusion is I don't like Vista at all -- so slow in loading, can't add or remove program easily like XP and other older versions of Windows OS. Lots of unnecessary program installed by Dell too and I can't uninstall them. I installed a software LogMeIn but couldn't uninstall it after that. Dell's technical support staff tried to uninstall it by accessing my laptop remotely but also unsuccessful. At the end, he asked me to do a recovery of my laptop. Now I have to find somebody to reconfigure my wireless network again. *sigh*

Though my laptop is a 12-inch, but it looks more like a 15-inch due to its wide screen design. I kind of regret buying it, or maybe regret for installing Vista. :(

Out of the blue, a Dell's customer advocate came to comment at my journal...

19 Jul 07: John commented,

John here, customer advocate at Dell headquarters.

I read this and wanted to make sure that you've gotten your Vista problems resolved. If you haven't, feel free to let me know, and I'd gladly help you myself...

customer_advocate@dell.com
"ATTN:John"


19 Jul 07: I replied,

Hello John,

Thanks for dropping by to comment. I have to say that my new Dell laptop has become an white elephant to me, due to those problems I mentioned above. I still prefer to use my 2.5 year-old Acer laptop on XP with RAM of only 512Mb (half that of my new Dell laptop) which runs faster even though I have installed many softwares and program.

All things said, I must commend the attentiveness and assistance Dell's staff had offered me so far, though not fully resolving my problems. It could be a Vista problem rather than the Dell's laptop problem.. I am not sure. I asked Dell if I could get it changed to XP OS (if the problem is with Vista) but was told that Dell is no longer carrying license for it. So I have to live with this problems. *sigh*

If you have any solution for me, please let me know.

23 Jul 07: John commented,

You have 1 GB of RAM? 1GB is the minimum requirement for running Vista with Aero, and that's with a dedicated video card with 256MB of VRAM. I would recommend either turning Aero off or getting another GB of RAM to improve performance.

That may seem like a hefty amount, but lets remember that the minimum recommended requirement for XP was 128MB in 2002, 256MB for decent performance. In the computer world where Moore's Law rules (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law), 5-6 years of R&D should mean that normal memory requirements for a modern OS should be in the 1-2GB range if the OS is taking advantage of hardware advancements.

To disable Aero (if that's the what you'd like to try):

http://www.windowsvistaweblog.com/2007/04/26/tips-tricks-disabling-windows-vista-aero/

Notice the blogger agrees with me: "You will notice a big performance difference when disabling Windows Aero.The color scheme is great but with limited hardware, it would be best to keep a low maintenance Windows Vista PC."

Let me know if that helps. I'd personally bump the RAM up a bit, because I like Aero. Of course, it's just fluff, though.

24 Jul 07: I replied,

Let me tell you what happened during my purchasing process...

A day after I placed my order and paid for my laptop online with Dell, a friend told me maybe I should ask for 2 Gb RAM instead of 1 Gb. So I called Dell's customer service officer to check if I could change it to 2Gb RAM and just pay the difference in price. However, the customer service officer told me I need to pay an additional shipment charges on top of the additional RAM price. Wow! Isn't that too much and practicing poor customer relation?.It's just so unfair to ask for that when I would only receive my laptop 6 days later. Then I asked if I could have a 1 Gb RAM instead of 2 x 512Mb RAM, so I could just buy another 1 Gb RAM to add on later, if I am not satisfied with its performance. My request was rejected. :( This means that if I want to upgrade it to 2 Gb, I would have to buy 2 brand new RAMs and waste the 2 x 512 RAM instead of just adding 1 Gb more.

Anyway, I didn't expect it to be that slow in loading when I have not even installed any of my usual programs yet (about 10 or more of them). Imagine how slow it will 'crawl' should I start to install them.

Well, I guess I won't buy another Dell pc/laptop unless it can change my opinion. Thanks for sharing that link with me. I shall try that later.

25 Jul 07: John commented.

Installing your programs shouldn't have any effect on the speed the system loads, unless those programs are configured to start automatically. How you change that depends upon the program.

I tell you what, though. If you want, send an email to me with the original order number, and I'll swap out those 2x512s for a 1Gig for you, free of charge.

Hmmn... does John's offer sound good? Is that really an "upgrade"? I will still have only 1 Gb after the swap, so what's the point? If only Dell was willing to do that for me at the time of ordering my Dell notebook it would be great. But now, it will not make much of a difference unless Dell swap for a 2Gb instead. *sigh*

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28 Jul 07: My New Dell Notebook (2) - My Frustration

This post is a continuation from My New Dell Notebook (1). This time round I like to share more experiences I had with Dell's customer support service.

I was surprised and glad that Dell has a team of "customer advocates" to help attend to its customers who complain about Dell through blogging. I didn't know about this when I posted my first entry till John, Dell's customer advocate, came to comment at my blog. Though this effort is commendable, but I am not sure how much John can help me since I bought my Dell's notebook from Dell Singapore and not from Dell USA. I would expect continuous 24x7 support (at least during my 1st year of complete cover warranty, as stated in Dell's warranty package).

(click image to view)

This morning (Sat). when I clicked on the "Chat Online with Technical Support" at Dell website,
https://supportapj.dell.com/support/index.aspx?c=sg&cs=sgdhs1&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn I got the reply above. Isn't that misleading and wasting customers' time?

When I tried to call Dell technical support hotline subsequently, the automated voice said it only operates between Mon and Fri. What happen to my 24x7 complete cover warranty support stated in the Svc Contract and Warranties? How can the warranty begins before I receive my laptop on 2 Jul 07?

Service Contracts and Warranties

Description	Provider	Start Date	End Date	Days Left
COMPLETECOVER COVERAGE PROGRAMME	DELL	6/28/2007	6/28/2008	336
NBD (Next Business Day on-site)	DELL	6/28/2007	6/28/2008	336
POW (Parts only Warranty)	DELL	6/28/2007	6/28/2008	336
XPS 24x7 Phone Technical Support	DELL	6/28/2007	6/28/2008	336

Then I told myself to try one more last time to get Dell's technical support by email. However, the form which I was made to fill with all my data didn't work when I clicked on "submit". *sigh*. At this point, I felt like throwing away Dell's laptop. :(

This is my 4th laptop, and I have never ever had such problems with my last 3 bought from Acer and HP. I was always eager to use my brand new laptops when they arrived, but not for this one, Dell XPS M1210. Ever since I received it on 2 Jul 07, I have not really started using it because of all the unresolved problems I faced with Dell's product and services.

Can you imagine how frustrated, angry and regretful I am feeling now?