It was a dream come true for me when I settled for a DELL Inspiron model for my residence which got delivered and installed last week. I also signed up for the DELL Care Premium (you pay more here), being aware that machines can betray the most dedicated human being anytime. True to my belief, within 48 hours I faced an issue with my DVD/CDROM drive when Windows Vista was unable to load the drivers for the optical drive. Soon after, Vista began ‘checking’ for a solution on the Microsoft server but returned with zero results so I started finding answers on my own. I went to the device manager and uninstalled/reinstalled the driver and so on in vain. I had perceived that behind Vista’s fabulous ‘WOW’ inteface, would also be a ‘thinking brain’ (ala Macintosh) which would take care of the problems with the PC in real-time, thus negating the intervention of a service vendor. I know It’s a far fetched idea but I am always thinking positive. Coming back to my problem, on one website I found an elaborate step-by-step instructions on the issue but the fear of cranking up a machine still under warranty, kept me away from doing anything silly.
You might be thinking I am crazy for being a DELL Care Premium customer and not calling them up for assistance. Unfortunately for me this incident occured on a weekend and DELL India serves its Inspiron customers only between ‘9am To 6pm, Monday To Friday’. Yes, it sounds insane and it’s difficult for me to understand the reasoning behind such a strange regulation. Isn’t it apparent, that a customer who affords a DELL, is expectantly slogging out in the corporate world between those weekday time frames? However for obvious reasons, DELL begs to differ for the buyers of their expensive Optiplex and Precision models – these high-end workstations catering to the business customers, have been provided an exceptional 24/7-365 days maintenance schedule! On the contrary, my expectations from DELL are meagre, in that I want them to provide me service when I am around on weekends or late in the evening on weekdays.
I do not know the quality of DELL services in the rest of the world and its customers are likely to differ in their opinion on this. For the India region though, it feels like DELL is following a policy of blatant ‘class’ differentiation and I want to appeal to the management to rethink on this subject. Meanwhile, I have contacted DELL and I am awaiting an email from them with the step-by-step instructions for resolving the issue on my own. Things will be set in motion when I reach home in the night and I am keeping my fingers crossed for now!
Edit: DELL sent me a detailed email and I resolved the issue quite easily. It turned out to be a Vista registry problem in the end.
