it’s unix, not eunuchs

Microsoft is still moving forward with plans to stop selling XP on June 30, but in the meanwhile Dell has found a loophole in the contract that will allow them to sell XP as a downgrade license from Vista. Infoworld wrote about it in their Save Windows XP blog here.

This is a good deal for Dell, but seeing as how Dell’s support structure appears to be going downhill, this isn’t really the answer we need for our solutions. My employers usually give me a laptop to support their operations and for a few years now they’ve been Dell’s. But for my home systems, I just refuse to buy complete systems from integrators like Dell.

This is primarily due to the fact that I refuse to spend time with horrible customer service troubleshooting issues. I’m not commenting on Dell alone at this point, as all desktop support has become a great way to ruin hours and hours of time that you could be earning money, cruising the web or playing computer games. Plus, I require redundancy on all of my filesystems at home which means that as soon as I’m on the phone with tech support I’ve got a problem that they’re incapable of supporting.

Now I’ve already discussed in previous posts that this will be my last install of a Microsoft operating system. Ubuntu has finally produced a decent desktop out of Linux and I plan on building a solid desktop that can do just about everything my current computer can do. But what about games, you say? Well I’ve held out against game consoles for long enough. It’s time for me to bite the bullet and pick up a wii or something else that I will enjoy. And now that vista is so outrageously expensive, the argument is so much easier.

But if you’re in a position where you need to buy desktop computers for a business setting, you probably should consider Dell and their downgrade license.

Dude, I wish this lady had been sleeping in my car recently when my laptop was stolen out of it. Here’s the G4TV post about it: linkage

G4tv mentioned that homestarrunner will be putting out a wii game. I haven’t picked one of these lovelies up yet, but this may be just the thing that pushes me over the edge. Plus I got rid of satellite TV, so I don’t watch near as much TV anymore.

I’m off to kill nazi’s in Silent Storm…etc. I’m sure I’ll check back in before I hit bed around midnight or so. Yeah it’s a late night, but mostly because I can get away with it. I’m getting my satellite dish fixed tomorrow morning so I don’t have to do much but get up and drink coffee in the morning.

more insansity.

Called them tonight. After only 9 minutes of hold time I got to explain the problem. Then I got to hold for a while then explain it again….to the same person… She finally got the idea(it’s hard when English isn’t your first language) and ordered what I needed. Then she wanted me to hold so I could talk to her boss in order to evaluate her performance.

I held for 45 seconds or so to talk to someone who had a poorer grasp on the English language than “Kelly” did… His first question was if Kelly was an expert on the computer system I now own. I explained to the dude that this was a repeat call and no analysis was required on her part. He persisted…was she an expert, somewhat of an expert, ok, not so great or a hideous tech support analyst. I informed Joe or Harry or Oliver that I had answered his question and was now going to hang up. He cheerfully wished me a nice morning(I wonder what time of day it is where he works?) and I succinctly hung up on his butt.

I must again repeat ALIENWARE SUCKS.

these idiots never stop amazing me. They keep sending me surveys about how good their last service was. But the last service sucked. Hell their computer sucks. I bought two of their systems and when I want service they can’t pull up the computers via the serial number. They need my purchase order number…what in the hell is that all about?

My recent comment to them during a survey is listed below:

A) Ship the stupid part to the technician. The idiot started calling me every day, sometimes multiple times a day, after you opened a ticket with him. The part wasn’t even here yet. Then he finally decided he wasn’t going to come out and replace the part. My computer is still broke. You guys suck. I can’t tell you how fed up I am with your god-awful service.

And this stupid questionaire sucks. I have to answer question 9 positively even though I think both the on-site idiot and callcenter numbskull both suck?