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AmazingJuly 12, 2010 Morgana, the first of that name, was a Leading Edge Model D. I had her for nine years. Since then all the Morganas have been Gateways. Way back in 1994, when Morgana II moved in, I was very impressed with Gateway tech support. Getting through on the phone was easy, and once I established that I knew enough to check my cables and plugs and reboot the computer before I called, they treated me like an intelligent human being. My Gateways have been very reliable and my various science fiction and editorial colleagues very helpful, so I had little need for tech support over the years. Morgana V, however, has been temperamental. Between October 2008 and April 2009 I had three major crashes: the kind where you have to reinstall Windows if you ever want to see your files again. Two weeks ago I had another one, and my Internet connectivity still hasn't recovered. In between there were numerous software crashes and "Microsoft Windows has recovered from a serious error" messages. My attempts to figure out WTF was going on have not left me impressed with either Gateway and Microsoft. They'd suggest it had to do with the addition of new hardware -- when I hadn't added new hardware in months. Run Memory Diagnostics, they'd advise, but Memory Diagnostics would turn up no problems. Maybe your hard drive is crashing? Make up your effing mind, people. I'm not going to shell out $150 for a new hard drive unless I know that's the problem. In the 16 years I've owned Gateways, Gateway has gone from having impressive tech support to having a reputation for the worst tech support in the business. This is one reason my new laptop is a Dell. The other reason my new laptop is a Dell is that I found the Toshiba website too Byzantine to be borne -- I was gonna get a Toshiba, but it was easier to get a Dell. Everything arrived when it was supposed to arrive, except for the upgrade from Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional, which was included in the deal. Saturday afternoon I went to the Dell website to investigate. Customer Care said they'd get back to me within 24 hours. They got back to me this morning, which I consider "within 24 hours" because yesterday with Sunday. On their advice I contacted Dell Tech Support's chat service. My chat session with Saumya_215434 went on for about 50 minutes. S/he was cordial to a fault. Dell didn't have a record of my upgrade. I, however, had the printout I'd made of the order right after I placed it. I quoted purchase IDs and item numbers. Finally I won over Saumya_215434 and his/her supervisor. My upgrade, I was told, would arrive by UPS this afternoon, and here was the tracking number. They must mean tomorrow afternoon, I told myself, as I logged off, quite satisfied. Maybe Saumya_215434 is in India or Indonesia and it isn't the same day there as it is here. But around six p.m. the UPS truck arrived -- Travvy let me know, of course -- and wonder of wonders, it brought my Windows 7 Pro upgrade. The return address is in Nashville. I know for sure that until about 11:30 a.m. EDT there was no upgrade en route to me. But here it is. How the hell do they do that? My UPS guy couldn't figure it out either. |
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