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About LinkBacksA backlit keyboard wouldn't be a deciding factor for me, but one that works would be. This is why I would never buy an Acer laptop.Originally Posted by peterb
A backlit keyboard wouldn't be a deciding factor for me, but one that works would be. This is why I would never buy an Acer laptop.
This one's easy. Indifference does not mean they are against the idea. So unless the idea end up having a negative impact on most user's experience you would not lose those customers even if they are still not bothered after seeing it. Is there a risk implementing something people are not used to? Sure. But innovation does not come from doing the same as everyone else. I am sure plenty there are many ideas that had made people go from apathy to something they wouldn't do without once they actually had a go at it.
That's bull****. As a Dell tech who on a few occasions dealt with systems blowing up, the procedure was pretty straight forward, and involve me apologising, then gathering some details, and then putting you on hold for five minutes whilst I auth'd a safety capture with my manager. We'd then arrange the sending out of a whole new system to you, one of present-day spec, and one that you'd be asked to approve the spec of before we had it built up and sent out. It'd be delivered a week or so later, and then your old system would be picked up. All in all, the total time taken from you should be no more than about thirty minutes, including call durations and dealing with the courier when he comes. For that minimum outlay of hassle, and in exchange of your blown-up system, you get a totally new machine, regardless of the age of the previous one. How does that constitute bad customer service?
Zak33 (17-08-2009)
good postwell worded and true to my experience too.
Agreed. I was staggered when my Dell desktop came back with a geforce 3 ti500 in it for free when I had a Geforce 2 blow up back in the daygood post
Because in my experience they persistently try to blame you before reluctantly taking in warranty claims. EG. Mates laptop kept bluescreening and posting STOP messages which points me to faulty ram or Hard drive, but formatted and reinstalled to see what would happen, still the same. Phoned dell on my mates behalf and they kept telling me it was a software issue and not covered by warranty. Ended up taking it back to comet to let them deal with the hassle.
Dont get me wrong I'm sure theres lots of good customer service stories from happy dell customers, but in my experience Ive heard more bad than good
You'll hear more bad than good in 99% of manufacturers. It's just the way things are. People generally don't praise, but give them the opportunity to rant, and they'll seize it with both hands.
The exceptions are the likes of Logitech and Kustom PCs. Companies who you'll rarely hear anything negative about their customer support.
Another customer who's had excellent Dell support. I've also had fantastic support from Acer every time I've used it, and they've got a terrible reputation.
Ah, BSODs. That does explain your point of view, since they have always been a nightmare to handle. Correct procedure there really should be to get you to rule out software by swapping in a known-good harddrive from an identical sytem, or reformatting and reinstalling (i know...), or trying a Linux live CD in the sytem for a while, and from there, it should be the Dell built-in diags to try and identify what hardware is failing. When that fails to pick anything up, things do get rather tricky.
I think I can actually show you you what the problem is directly. Basically, if you go to the Dell Support website, look around, and you should see a link to a troubleshooter. This troubleshooter is essentially a stripped-down version of the DSN, or the Dell Solutions Network to give it its full title. When you phone Dell with a tech issue, that's pretty much the script that every agent has to go through. Those of us in relationship or business support can be a little loose with it, we can phrase things however we like, and a lot of us tended just to totally forge its logs in whatever way suited us when it made the most sense to do. For instance, if your DVD drive wasn't working but then was after you swapped it with one off another system, I wouldn't waste your time getting you to look in the BIOS and Device Manager and testing boot CDs and all that rubbish, I'd just say "Oh, that's excellent, thanks for doing the testing there yourself, it's saved us a lot of time here. Now, if you just give me two minutes, I will arrange to have a replacement part sent out to you", and that two minutes would be me lying relentlessly to DSN to contort it into giving me the answer I want. The Indians at the Home support department don't get that luxury, and have to read every line like robots. When DSN's BSOD tree goes into loops, so do they.
Next time you need to call Dell, you can save yourself masses of time by doing a 2-way swap first (or just lie to them and say you did), and also running Dell's built-in diag test. Also, try using the online chat service. I don't know if it's available to home users, but I find it to be great. Can be so much more straight-forward to do these things with text, I find.
Well, heres an update.
I bought the Macbook Pro 13", no regret whatsoever, especially with student discount, total £772, bargain
Stayed up late the first night tweaking OS X stuff, fell asleep with my hand on the keyboard, laptop on battery power, woke up 8 hours later, laptop still ticking no problems. Battery life win
Using the laptop in dim lounge environment, automatic ambient light sensor dims the screen to good levels + backlit keyboard. Really nice to use, also, absolutely no keyboard flex, and the contrast of the black keys Vs silver body makes each key easy to pick out. Win
Loud, competent speakers + mini-woofer and no distortion at highest volume.
Super bright, LED, instant-on display. Really enjoying that they've upgraded the screen on the 13", much nicer than the first gen.
Bootcamp windows install is...well, better than ive ever seen any Windows install! Which is embarrasing for Windows a whole. XP installed quick, all the drivers installed with literally 1 click, super smooth. After a quick restart, everything works smooth, even two-finger scrolling, and right click by two finger press. Volume, brightness, keyboard brightness all work fine with the right keys too. Actually, speaking of brightness, windows looks insane on such a bright screen, i literally have to go down to less than half brightness for it to be even with my windows laptop.
Well, i could go on, but basically, Windows/PC is embarrasing now, especially the hardware, mac is easily a whole generation ahead in all the things that matter
This is probably down to the different Gamma values and their handling between the two OS's.
Colour reproduction is very different on Windows and Mac OS.
Mac just moved to Gamma 2.2 too, so Windows and Mac use the same gamma values, assuming you're running the latest OSX that is.
What graphics card is it running?
9400M
Integrated but im impressed with the way it handles all of the OSX visual effects, iphoto & photoshop editing, and even video editing with ease.
I was making a relative PC-Mac joke, referencing the negative Apple news at the time. I've had nothing but good service from Dell. I could have chosen any PC manufacture but it happens I was typing that on my favorite laptop, a Dell.
....but at the end of the day, you paid more then double what you would have paid for a similar Windows laptop with no doubt similar specs, that could do all of that on Windows 7. I bought a Dell Studio 17, and it is pritty much as you described, minus the metal body, battery life (2 hours 45 on a 6 cell 17"...) speakers & some very minor keyboard flex.
edit; All for a saving of £270 & an extra 4".
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