tanas's dashboard

I keep getting the "DocVerse failed to save mydocument.doc because it was updated by another user".
There's no one else editing it, of course, and though I have granted editing rights to another user he has stopped accessing the file a long time ago.
So I have, several times now, re-downloaded my file from the site, which is apparently enough to re-initialize access rights ; but as this bug keeps popping up I am getting weary...
I have also never been able to get an online preview of my .doc file, only a warning message saying that it was being calculated, then nothing.

Still, DocVerse looks like a very promising app... in beta !
:-)

Until recently I have been the proud and happy owner of a Dell XPS 1330 that I bought in december 2007.

Then, about two weeks ago, I have started to experiment weird crashes : one or two times the screen went totally black, then came back a few seconds later with a Windows error message stating that it had recovered from a driver failure.

Yesterday it went worse. The screen froze with strange colors and I rebooted only to get a screen of vertical lines with slowly changing colors. Pretty interesting for a paperweight, but not quite I had expected from a supposedly high-range machine costing over 2.000€ and that I am still not done paying.

After doing a bit of research I found out that this problem was fairly common among XPS1330 owners and that it all came from a defective series of Nvidia graphic chips.
I have also found this, a blog post from Lionel Menchaca (in his own words "Dell's Chief Blogger") explaining that the Nvidia issue would exceptionally be covered by Dell by a complementary one year warranty, even for machines that are out of warranty...

"Again, the limited warranty enhancement is specific to this issue and will extend coverage by 12 months from the date the original warranty term for the laptop expires. For example, one-year warranties will be extended to 24 months for this issue only. The maximum combined period for the initial warranty and the limited-warranty enhancement is 60 months. Systems purchased with 60-month warranties will not be extended. Customers whose warranties have expired will be eligible for this limited warranty enhancement from the date the initial warranty expired."

I called yesterday the Dell XPS support. And, not only were they slow (wasn't the XPS support supposed to some kind of top-notch thing ? Gosh, does that mean that regular support is worse ?!) but the guy I spoke to played the "A well-known Nvidia chip problem ? Sorry M'am never heard of it." tune. And he tried to sell me a 2 years warranty extension, argumenting that he could "as a favour" try to cover my current issue with this warranty... Needless to say, I declined.

So, Dell, I am talking to you here :

- Do you consider it normal performance for your machines to last one and a half year and then die in a matter of few days ?

- Do you consider it fair to your customers to (rather discreetly) advertise a "Warranty Enhancement to All Affected Customers Worldwide" on one site, and then to totally fail to inform of this the technical support service ?