For those of you who have seen my Vonage post, this is not the same thing except with Dell. In fact, it is almost the opposite experience.

I have a Dell Inspiron 9100. It’s a little thick and the internal fans have the sound of a Boeing 777s, but it is a screaming machine. It isn’t really a laptop (unless your thighs can handle high temperatures and a lot of weight for long periods of time) but I didn’t buy it for its portability. In all, I am happy with the puter.

The only drawback to the machine is the power supply. It takes 120 Volts of power from my wall and converts it into 19.5 Volts at 150 Watts. It gets warm. I’ve been told my Dell tech support guy that the reason the case is so big and warm is that due to its need of being waterproof, it can’t have vents so it uses the case’s size to dissipate the heat. Again, I didn’t buy it to travel (although I do.) I can handle the size.

What I can’t handle is the every 4-6 month process of calling up Dell tech support and getting them to send me a new power supply.

I’m now on #4 and unfortunately, I’ve lost confidence in this computer. It seems that when the Power Supply dies, it doesn’t always transition smoothly into battery power. This has caused a hard drive failure in the past due to the power outage while it was reading and writing to the drive.

It was my lack of trust in this box that led me to ask the support guy to escalate up the ladder to talk to someone who could do more than just deal with the symptoms. I wanted to either get a different box or get them to admit there was a big problem and do something to make me happy.

I didn’t get a new box or my other option (not that I actually expected either.) What I expected was a “Sorry, that’s our policy” and “we’d rather lose a good customer than keep him happy even if is our fault.” I’ve received that treatment from FORD Motor Co. in the past and I expect it from big companies now.

Instead, dealing with Dell was an example of how to treat a customer. I was called by the supervisor when they said they would call me. The supervisor was able to recognize that I was not just a whiner, but I had a legitimate issue. The supervisor did everything they could to see if they could figure out the problem and not just the symptom.

We’re guessing here but it seems to make sense and if it works, I will be more than happy. The battery is the problem, not the power supply. It seems that the original batch of batteries for the 9100 have a defect that causes other problems with the computer. So they are sending me a new battery.

Why can’t more companies recognize that if there is a defect with a product, admit it and fix it. It makes the customer happy.