Dell's Helpless Desk

Friday morning before work I attempted to make an order to Culinary Teas. I was on my Dell laptop and noticed that the numbers weren't working. So I switched over to my HP Desktop and made the order.

On Saturday I figured out that only the 5 and the 6 worked, and it was asking where I wanted to boot from. When I looked, booting from the hard drive was not first on the list. So I changed that. It didn't help.

I got on chat with India where the guy kept referring to me as Sir. I could not get on chat on my Dell computer because it required your service tag and mine has an 8 and a 1 in it. So the guy couldn't figure out why I wasn't on the Dell. I informed him I was on the HP that always worked.

Previously I had contacted Dell because when I put CDs into iTunes they would skip. Of course the solution was to take out my DVD drive and put it back in. The next time I contacted them I was told it was a problem with iTunes. Funny, iTunes worked fine on my HP desktop. So I downloaded Yahoo music (formerly known as Musicmatch) and guess what? Same problem.

So I'm not feeling good about talking to the guy calling me Sir. I told him it would take too long and I would have to take out my keyboard later. I then find out the screws will not come out. But it is bothering me that the 5 and 6 don't work. I google this and find that someone else had the same problem. Of course they didn't post what fixed it. So I download SP1 for vista, that didn't fix it. I try to do a bootrepair, but that needs you to enter a 1 to do the repair and I didn't have 1 to use. During all of this I discover if I leave the battery out, the computer works, till you turn it off and back on. Then the same problem. I dug out the vista repair disk and it tells me there is no problem. Then I just try to reload vista and it gives me an error. So it's back online with India.

The guy tells me it's the keyboard. I tell him it's not. So to humor him, I tell him that the keyboard won't come out. He asks if I used to bigger screw driver, I said yes. So he says, good, now take the cable off and put it back on. I said, I told you the screws won't come out. He says if he sends me a new keyboard, I'll have to get the screws out so I can put the new one in. I said there is nothing wrong with the keyboard, that there is a boot problem too, and that I had found this problem on the internet. So he tells me it's the customer's responsibility to put the new keyboard in. I tell him there is nothing wrong with my keyboard. So he asks if I spilled wine or cola on my keyboard. I told him no. And explained again that if I take the battery out it works fine once.

Finally I get through to him that I just want to reinstall Vista and that I couldn't do that. So he tells me what to do so that I can do it on my computer without the disk. Of course he tells me to do this without the battery in. As I recall my computer doesn't work without the battery in.

Funny thing is now my computer works just fine and I didn't have to take out the keyboard or get a new one. I wonder how many keyboards Dell sends out for perfectly good keyboards. And this is from the people that are taking away jobs from Americans! It took 2 chats sessions and I told the guy what needed to be done. He just read his script, oh, key doesn't work, means bad keyboard. He didn't listen to me about the boot problem too. He said that was because the F12 key was stuck down. Why would it stick down only if the battery hadn't been removed.

I bought a Dell because I could get a pink one and could configure it. I hear they are stopping the configuring. I should have gotten a pink Sony. It's a prettier pink anyway.

I worked at HP for 2 years on a contract and loved it. It's much closer to my house than my present job and I would have stayed if they had given me a permanent job, but Mark Hurd took over then and cut the program I was working on.

So I will not be buying another Dell. I love my HP desktop. It's great!!