Dell

Some of you may know that I bought a new laptop before heading out. My last one was on its very last leg (Windows 96 anyone?) and so I researched and asked around and decided on a Dell. I ordered it at Christmas and February was the original shipping date. That changed to March without my notice (a back ordered part) and I was a bit nervous because I was leaving at the beginning of April. It did arrive and I spent an entire weekend putting all my documents, pictures and music on to it - no time to back things up. I don't know if it was the transit or that the original parts were faulty, but upon my arrival in Hawaii, I have had nothing but problems. Telephone access is not easy because we are in a new building without phones, far removed from a lot of the campus (including phones that we can use). I spent many hours on the phone trying to get everything sorted out. Originally they thought it was my motherboard and RAM, but once that was replaced, I still had the same issues. I was able to get the computer to work enough to back-up all my documents, which was a miracle. I had to change my address to the U.S. to receive an imaged hard drive (versus a blank one and having to start from scratch), which was the actual problem. The drive came blank though and so I had to get some help to get everything going again (thankfully I brought along all the disks).

Needless to say, it's been "a bit" frustrating. I only had mail in warranty, so parts were shipped to me for free, but any work that I had done out here was my own bill to pay. Thankfully, I've become great friends with one of the computer technicians here on the base, but he still has to live, so that left me with about $150 of expected and unnecessary bills because they were just not getting things right. I called Dell this morning and told this exact story 3 times - the 3rd time was to the manager himself and he approved this payment directly, noting that this was a very special case. If it had gone any other way, this would be a "don't buy Dell" blog (though that may be your thought anyway after reading my story), but I appreciate their step of good faith today - they did not even ask for a copy of the invoices. BUT, I also went out today and bought a portable external hard drive - we're traveling for a year and if I've learned anything, it's to be prepared for the unexpected and BACK EVERYTHING UP!