Dell and the final straw

For the past few years I have seen myself slipping more and more away from Dell computers. PC's entirely for that matter. Admittedly I had been building my own for several years, but Dell had my loyalty especially in the laptop market. With Vista now more than a year old, their is little to no excuse for the most lowest end Dell ( HP, TOSHIBA, LENOVO, WHATEVER) machines advertised not to be fully capable to at least run Vista Home basic smoothly. Especially when they come from the factory labeled Vista ready!!!

While the picture to the left is certainly a statement of sorts, and not meant to be directly defamatory towards anyone, it is quite simply an accepted perception these days of tech support services. After all it was found among a series of many pictures and articles and passed around, just as I am writing now. Tech support (another story) is at an all time abismal state. And it appears to be needed now more than ever. Now, when PC's should be much simpler than they were, say in the Windows 95 days, or even earlier. But enough of that. My grief is with Dell.

My father, on my suggestion purchased another Dell, in the past month. Brand new, barely a sub $1000 PC but by no means minimally powered machine. A very Good 2+ Gig AMD Core Duo proc, 2 Gigs of Ram, and 300+ gigs storage space. One week into his ownership, after I'd set up his wireless and downloaded the 30+ minutes of Vista Updates (shame on you Dell, this should be up to date at ship time, don't you build to order???) he was off and running. And all appeared to be working well.

I got a call from him not hardly a week later, stating he had been on the phone with a Dell support guy for no less than 2-3 hours uninstalling and reinstalling using the Dell restore disk, only to discover the same problems of Slow boot times, and IE7 taking forever to start after Vista finally wakes and discovers the wireless connection? Also his support rep was barely understandable throughout the process further aggravating and elongating the process through repeated steps due to poor english speaking language skills. So Dell saves a few dollars on overseas labor so my father has to try to listen to some guy overseas read from a useless script?? How is this possible with a brand new machine, not even yet loaded with USER third party software, or even a few hours of internet use to speak of.
Yes we loaded an antivirus, and yes, Windows Defender and Firewall were all in use.
It is simply inexcusable for this type of product to hit the market. While I know my father is not alone, and I too experienced some problems with Dell recently, I felt that Vista had matured enough and with Mike Dell back in the ranks at Dell, these types of issues would be a thing of the past. Folks, take my word for it. If you want a simple easy set up and a great responsive and simply a fun computing environment. BUY A MAC! Nuff said.

Our wonderful Cat Buddy Left yesterday

Yesterday evening I came home to find out what I had known for some time would happen soon. You see, Buddy our Orange Tabby of more than 11 years had in the past couple of years contracted some form of disease that it seemed that our vets simply could not diagnose or treat. However he was put through batteries of tests.

He ultimately lost most of his weight over his final few years and had skin problems and bowel problems due to this. He had an incredible appetite always, and seemingly more so in his final months. Also during this time he got closer to us as well, I am sure sensing his own demise. He was a wonderful kitty we found in a pet store living by himself in a cage. At the time he was the last of a litter and even a bit of a runt himself. This was in Schaumburg, Illinois. We finally relocated back to MD about 9 years ago, Buddy's problems started about 3 years back, and never improved.
I feel horrible that my wonderful wife Tami had to make this decision at the Vets last night as I was out of town on business. Due to his degrading skin problems and infections that were simply worsening by the day, and Buddy's weight was at a ridiculous 4.4 #'s he was a skeleton with fur. We had to put him to sleep. His quality of life was simply poor. He was very strong willed, and tried so hard and long to fight it, and loved us both along with the rest of our animals at the same time. The little guy could simply not go on living this way. Tami made the decision I should have made months back when we were getting no response as to any improvement to his health.
We can say at least that he spent his last days at home, and passed in his mommy's arms.
We love you Buddy, and thank you for 11 wonderful years with us.

Keeping up in Tech

It's hard not to feel old these days. Although I generally feel and often times act like a 15 year old,  it seems that in todays world, whatever you buy this year is OLD next year.  Keeping up with all things new and different may be the difference if you can use or even access your products you have paid perfectly good money for in the long term.  How many of you have record albums? How many of you have turntables on which to play them on? Cassettes? Do you have a cassette deck to play them in? VCR tapes? VCR's? And so on... When your player for these devices is obsolete, it would appear that you are basically out of luck!  VCR's are increasingly more impossible to find.  However we/I  are so caught up in  the latest greatest that all of that perfectly good media is simply piling up dust and not worth using, viewing or listening to anymore. It takes up too much space and is simply no good? Or wasn't when we got it? 

When did this all happen? There was a time when there was 1 TV (if you were lucky), possibly 1 phone in the house, in the same location on the wall, and the same phone for upwards of 20+ years, and it worked great! No connection problems, no dropped calls!! EVER!  The TV only got a handful of channels but at least you knew what you were watching every week.  Of course color TV came along and changed everything,  the remote control came right behind it. (if you were well to do) Those days have all but gone out the window. We are going through a change with media such as TV's and music devices like no other time in history.  If you have less than 50" viewable inches on your screen you may as well be living like a caveman!

 The choice you make today may prove problematic or very dated in a year or so?? Yes it may. 720, 1080i, 1080p, HDMI,  Composite, digital tuners to use this plasma, or LCD's, it is confusing and changing by the day. And all of the media you have recorded your memories on may have no way in which to play them 10-20 years from now?? Imagine that.  How many times will I buy the Beatles "Rubber Soul" album so I can listen to it? Will my mp3/Ipod player I bought this year work in 2015. I doubt it. 

All of this being equal, we now have all of this so called great technology and great ways to crap out a bazillion units, in the time it takes to fart, but they simply don't last. You used to buy a piece of equipment and it lasted. I mean lasted a long time, from cars, to phones. This stuff lasted 10 or more years and took a beating.  Those days too, are long over.  We never used to have all of these so called support services available (which you usually pay a premium for if you want any real service) because things simply were not so fragile as they are today. We expect things to work when we pay for them. Is that too much to ask? It seems so. Businesses look at their products today and see them as a 1 year shot, and then you buy a minimally upgraded if at all(same thing) next year, and the cycle never stops. This way they rarely have to innovate and that way the company continues to grow and shareholders are happy.  The customer is important for all of about 5 minutes.  And when the sale is over, that's it.  If it breaks, well return it if it's within 15-30 days for a full refund depending upon what it is or what we deem the problem to be. Think about it. They actually possibly expect their product to break within 15-30 days?? Are you kidding? 

Back in the day there used to be a term which is rarely used anymore "Lifetime warranty".  I recently bought an Iphone. I did so the day after it came out. I am as bad as all of the rest of the lemmings that stand in line, but I sit back as I am now, while on a vacation of sorts and say,, how long till I need another phone? Hopefully not for awhile. I actually love the Iphone I have and it's been several months now that I have owned it. Usually, by now something else has my attention. This is the first piece of hardware that I can honestly say is not the case.  But will it last a year? Will the battery give out? Will the hardware lock up? Like everything else out there, I am sure ver 2.0 will be out by or before June 08.