Okay... After owning 4 Gateway computers I jumped ship and purchased 2 Dell laptops this past June. Unfortunately they both run vista (that is actually an overstatement). Since powering them up just over 1 1/2 months ago, my laptop has crashed 3 times and my daughters 1 time. So for purchasing more than $4K worth of hardware and software and customer service, I'm advised that I should purchase an external hard rive so that when the system crashes in the future my data will have been constantly backed up.... WHAT!!?!? The best they can advise is that I should count on it continually crashing so I should prepare for it by BUYING AN EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE! I don't even know where to begin with the mounting lack of confidence I have in DELL.
They also suggested that I don't allow automatic updates (even though the system default recommends automatic updates. That I should review and choose the updates that I want to download on the system (huh? Not sure I'm qualified to know when Microsoft sends me a recommended update, that they really shouldn't have and I should just opt to not install it... after expressing that to the tech, she said I could just call customer support - or what I have come to think of as "customer runaround"and they'd be more than happy to tell me if I need to install it.) So I should plan on calling Dell and waiting on hold every day or so??? They also suggested never to put the laptop on sleep mode or hibernate, just shut it down every single time I need to close the lid because Vista doesn't seem to support shutting the lid any other way. Or I might try to only shut the lid (hibernate mode) only on occasion (WHICH OCCASION?!?).
Finally, they suggested (okay I raised my voice a bit... quite a bit) that I might want to PURCHASE Windows XP and have that installed as my operating system, but I should keep in mind that doing so will void my service contract (of which I paid extra for) So, I spent 45 minutes last night troubleshooting and then ultimately restarting Jaymie's computer to the factory setting, losing all of her data, and 1 1/2 hours this morning talking to no less than 8 technicians to arrive at that advice. DON'T BUY DELL.......... DON'T USE WINDOWS VISTA.... I'm on a mission to save a few people from a whole lot OF UNNECESSARY FRUSTRATION. Live and learn. xo
