The Dell Experience

Let me tell you about my Dell experience. And as expected, it can't be good, unfortunately. It all began when the Wifi switch on my company laptop failed. Whenever I flicked the switch to off position, the wifi would intermittently turn on and off, and the on-screen display will also appear on and off. After keeping the switch at the 'on' position (which sort of eliminated that problem), I couldn't hold it anymore and called Dell.

I was impressed that the second day, a technician came and changed it. I was also amazed that he took the whole laptop apart and changed the motherboard just because of the Wifi switch. Anyway, all seemed fine until I went home and started playing this very old game (approximately 5 years or so old). It was smooth for the first... ummm... 5 seconds, perhaps, and then the laptop fine started to spin and sounded louder than usual. The whole game became jerky until it was unplayable. It was considered graphics intensive during its time but nowadays, any laptop with integrated Intel graphics would be able to play it. And mine is a nVidia 7400 Go.

Sigh... so the next day, I called Dell again. The following day, another technician came with cooling pads and a new fan with the believe that previously, the technician did not replace the pads which caused contact of the processors (Intel Core 2 Duo and nVidia) to the heat sink to fail. The technician could not scrape off the old thermal pads, so he stuck the new ones on top of the old ones (!!!). After assembling the laptop again, I held my breath and we tested. The system diagnostics were fine but the game was not.

He called some tech support and came back to uninstall and then reinstall the graphics drivers. Surprisingly, it worked fine... but after the tech left, the problem came back. For your info, I tried playing the game in air-conditioned and without air-cond environments. Previously, I never had this problem.

So, what do I do? I called Dell again (yesterday). This time, the support guy said he will send a senior tech and a new motherboard. He suggested that it would be best that I send it in but it was not possible as I need the laptop for work. To my disappointment, the senior tech did not show up today. I called again and the reason was Dell ordered a lot of parts (horrors!) and that caused the delay. The support assured me the senior tech will show up tomorrow.

We shall see...