• Vista Wallpapers
• Windows Wallpapers

Then I found an incredible deal online through Dell last September. I realized that for under $1000 I could spec out and build a machine that would cost me a few hundred more to build myself. At that point I should have remembered the old adage, "if it's too good to be true..."

However, being the sucker that I am for a good deal, I ordered the PC. A Dell XPS 410 with Intel Core2Duo E6600 (x64 CPU, this will come into play later), 3GB of RAM, 500GB of HD space, and all the usual other accoutrements. The Dell site stated that the estimated ship date for the item was late September. Great, a 2-week lead-time shouldn't be a problem.

Then came the order detail e-mail. In the e-mail I was told that my order was to be delayed by a month. The earliest ship date was now mid-October. So I e-mailed Dell wondering why their site shows one date, yet their instant Order Confirmed e-mail showed yet another.

The response I received was as follows:

Quote - "Thank you for contacting Dell Online Customer Care.

I understand from your e-mail that you want to check the credit status of your order I would like to inform you that the order lies in the hold status as the authorization from the dell prefered account is still pending. I would request you to kindly wait for 24 hours so that status will change."

My question at this point is who is reading my e-mail? I had asked why the site shows one status and the e-mail another. Never did I ask anything regarding my account. I wrote support another e-mail trying to be more clear. Once again I received a somewhat canned reply:

Quote - "I would like to inform you that I have checked your records and found that your shipping date for this order is Wednesday, October 11, 2006"

Now I'm really wondering if any at Dell Support reads anything before they reply. I already knew the estimated shipping date. My issue was why their site was still giving false dates for shipping newly ordered systems. I wrote Dell a few more times and they ended up giving me a $100 Dell coupon & upgraded my shipping. The system ended up being delayed one last time, but finally shipped on October 13 and arrived on October 18.

Why all the fuss over a simple PC you ask? I test software for multiple companies and needed a testbed for both 32-bit and 64-bit software. To me this was a mission critical PC and Dell was failing to deliver, especially since the XPS line is supposed to be their top end systems.

Now before anyone gets upset and states that I should have ordered from the Dell Small Business site I'd like to point something out. The Dell Dimension 9200 & the Dell XPS 410 are the same machine with a different label on the top. The XPS systems are supposed to have the top-tier support out of all of the Dell systems.

Now flash forward almost 1-year. I haven't had a single issue with this system until August 2007. It seems the DVD-Burner has decided to stop working properly. It randomly drops out of Explorer, and sometimes doesn't show up during POST. I run through the usual diagnostics (checking my connections, changing power leads, etc.) and it still doesn't work.

At this point I decide to call XPS Support and they make me re-run through the diagnostics while I'm on the phone with them. The XPS Support tech thinks a firmware flash will fix the issue. So I do the flash and sure enough, the drive is alive again, for a month.