One of the best purchases I made in 2004 was Kensington’s unusual and incredibly well designed notebook holder. It’s a simple platform that contains USB, keyboard, and mouse ports. You slide your notebook PC into the bracket, plug in one USB connector and a power cable, and you’ve instantly transformed your notebook into a desktop. The bracket hides the notebook keyboard elegantly, and the notebook screen ends up at a perfect height, just as if you had a separate flat-screen monitor.

If you own a notebook, check it out. Amazon has this item for an excellent price, with free shipping and a $10 rebate.

I used to work with Jeff Prosise years ago, although we haven’t seen each other in a while. So I felt a little extra twinge of sympatico when I read his account (via Scoble) of Dell Hell:

A few weeks ago I wrote that my system was mysteriously rebooting itself from time to time. Little did I know that that was just the beginning of the biggest PC pain I’ve ever experienced. I’m finally back up and running tonight after three days without my primary PC. Here’s a summary of what happened–and a word of warning to anyone who buys an on-site service warranty from Dell.

The thing that surprised me most about this story is that it wasn’t the power supply on his Dell 4600 that went bad. I’ve had lots of reports from people who had their systems mysteriously die shortly after the warranty expired. They’re especially unhappy that no one in Dell’s worldwide support empire seems to understand that this is a common problem.

Anyway, Jeff’s story is yet another illustration of how difficult it is to work with Dell’s support bureaucracy. He was persistent, and got what he needed. And the same thing happened to me recently. Remember my neighbor Jerry’s Dell 4100? Its case fan (a proprietary part) died, and I couldn’t find a replacement anywhere. Way more than a dozen calls to Dell turned up no help and only frustration. Until I finally connected with Diego, a “case resolution” specialist who works out of Dell’s Buenos Aires office. Diego listened to my story and promised he was going to see it through and make sure I was taken care of.

Sure, I said. I’ve heard this before. And then guess what? Diego came through. It took a week for him to track down the part I needed. Every morning I got a phone call in which he informed me of the status of the search. When he finally found the part (at a third-party company), he gave me the details, told me to order it, and promised that he would have my charges reimbursed. And he did exactly that. Parts arrived, computer fixed, charges reimbursed. I got one final call this week from Diego, just checking to make sure that everything was OK.

If anyone at Dell is reading this, please make a note. This is how customer service is done. I shouldn’t have had to call so many times or lost my temper to finally reach someone who could solve the problem. But I’m glad I stuck with it. Thank you, Diego.

I have an office full of PCs, and the noise from various and sundry fans sometimes gets a little annoying. So I’m intrigued by this completely fanless PurePower Power Supply from Thermaltake.

The heatpipe with glowing copper fins for thermal dissipation looks pretty cool, too. (Or maybe it just looks hot. I’m not sure.) Anyway, at $150 retail this is pretty pricy.

Anyone tried one of these things?

Update September 2006: If you’re having a problem with a Dell product and haven’t been able to get satisfactory service, Dell has established a special group to help you. See my follow-up post, Dell rolls out Cluefulness 2.0, for more details. Comments are closed here.

CNET News interviewed Dell CEO Kevin Rollins:

How’s Dell doing on customer service these days?

Customer service has been a challenge, but I think if you watch the scores now, we have hit the trough, and that’s now coming back up. The whole company is focused on the customer experience, first and foremost. So we think we’ve got that one now under control.

Memo to Kevin: No, your customer service problems are not under control. Not even close. Do you have anyone at your company reading blogs like this one? I didn’t think so.

Yesterday I offered Prof. Michael Froomkin my services as a Windows adviser. Today, he takes me up on the offer with this question:

I’m never one to pass up the chance of free advice from a real expert. So, Ed, here’s a question that’s bugging me:

My home computer runs WinXP, with RAID 1 provided via the ASUS motherboard [for the non-techies, RAID 1 is when your hard disk is mirrored by another identical hard disk]. The machine came from the suppliers with XP on one huge partition, and I’d like to repartition my hard drive(s) into several smaller
partitions — not necessarily all for Windows — without losing any data.

I had thought to use partition magic to do the job, but apparently Partition Magic 8.x doesn’t’ support RAID 1.

Can it be done? How about if I

1. 1. Turn off RAID mirroring.</li
2. Use Partition Magic or something else like it.
3. Start RAID mirroring from scratch (will it catch all the partitions? will it faithfully copy all the changes to each one?).

I did a Google search, and all I know now is that I’m not the only one who wants the answer to this one…

That’s exactly how I would do it. Caveat: I don’t currently have a computer in my lab here with drive mirroring enabled on it, so I can’t physically test these steps. But the procedure is fairly straightforward.

First, note that the article you reference is referring to RAID volumes created using the software tools in Windows NT/2000/XP. It’s possible (but hardly guaranteed) that Partition Magic will recognize your hardware RAID volume. Have you tried?

Hardware RAID solutions work by creating the illusion that your two physical drives are a single unit. The array is managed by the hardware controller. You need software drivers in whatever operating systems you plan to use so that the operating system can work with the RAID array you create. As far as Windows is concerned, you have a single drive; the hardware hides the individual members of the array completely. (The same is true for other operating systems.) After you load the correct driver, you can partition the drives however you want.

The first step, of course, is to make sure you’ve got a really great backup, just in case something goes wrong.

Your hardware controller should allow you to break the RAID mirroring. Doing so should leave the data on the first drive intact. If so, then you’re good to go. Re-partition that disk as you please, using Partition Magic to shrink the main partition and create new ones from free space. Then create a new array. If you’re using a Highpoint controller, choose the Duplication option to copy the data on the source disk to the mirror disk. The hardware RAID controller doesn’t care what’s on the disk; its job is to mirror the content from one disk to the other for reliability’s sake, and it works at a very low level, independent of operating systems. All of your partition information should be intact. When you view it from an operating system that has the correct drivers, it looks like a single disk, which you can manage using whatever partitioning tools you like.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of hardware RAID. I would rather use that second drive as a backup device, using Norton Ghost or a similar disk-imaging program to keep compressed copies of each partition on the main drive. If you have a problem with the original drive, you can restore a backup of one or more saved partitions easily. You don’t have to mess with low-level utilities, and you have more flexibility, including the option to save your backed-up images to another medium (such as writable CDs or DVDs) for offsite storage.

I guess when it rains it pours. I’ve previously chronicled the saga of my neighbor Jerry’s Dimension 4100, whose case fan has failed and can’t be replaced. Yesterday, he called me to tell me that his just-over-a-year-old Dimension 4600 won’t start.

We hauled the PC over to my office, where I plugged it in and took a look. Yep, it’s dead, Jim. I made the obligatory call to Dell’s support line, where I spent 15 minutes on hold before a cheerful tech told me that Jerry’s account was from the Large Systems division. Ha! While I was on hold waiting for those techs to pick up, I surfed over to the Dell Community Forum. And wonder of wonders, I read this thread, and this one, and then hit the mother lode on this one.

In short, lots of people have been complaining about a sudden rash of power supply failures in the Dimension 4600 line, typically just after the one-year anniversary. After I read through all the threads, I decided not to waste any more time waiting for a tech to pick up and tell me the computer was out of warranty. Instead, I’m heading for CompUSA to pick up a generic power supply and swap it with the defective one.

I’ll give kudos to Dell for having a Community Forum, but it’s a double-edged sword. This is one of three problems I’ve experienced with Dell products and support in recent months, and thanks to the forums I’ve learned that I’m not alone. Unfortunately, Dell doesn’t seem to have invested any energy in capturing the feedback on these forums to identify and fix common problems. I can only imagine how annoyed and angry their customers are who are getting the run-around from a support tech and don’t realize that there’s a place to share information and horror stories with other customers.

In general, I think Dell makes good, solid computers, but their support is troublesome. If you’re a Dell customer, do yourself a favor and start in the message boards the next time you have a problem. You might save yourself a lot of pointless aggravation.

Update: Yep, the new power supply fixed the problem.

Update: I’ve closed the comments on this post. They’re now read-only. A lot of people are asking for detailed help with their computers that I can’t offer, and the comments section isn’t really set up to work like a bulletin board or forum. A better suggestion is to go to the Dell forums.

Thanks for all the great feedback. – Ed Bott, February 2006

I’ve bought at least two dozen computers from Dell in the past five years. Three of them are still here in my office, including the PC I’m typing this post on and the server that runs my home network. I’ve lost count of the number of PCs I’ve bought from Dell for friends and neighbors.

In the past year, though, I’ve become increasingly disenchanted with Dell, thanks to support policies that have turned practically hostile. Last year I had to fight for months to get a $200 rebate that I was entitled to. I ordered a PC with this rebate and received paperwork indicating a purchase date that was several days after the actual date on which I bought the PC – and, not concidentally, after the date on which the rebate expired. I was one of many Dell customers who experienced this problem, a fact I uncovered thanks to the excellent Dell support forums. But Dell’s customer service representatives didn’t seem interested in this problem, and it took at least 10 phone calls, my blood pressure rising a few points with each one, to get the rebate. On the last call, the outsourced Dell rep tried valiantly to talk me into settling for 25 cents on the dollar. Nice try.

Last week I had another run-in with Dell. A good friend has a four-year-old Dell Dimension 4100 that still does everything she wants it to do. The trouble is, it has a case fan that sounds like it could qualify for a Nascar event. It’s so loud that you can literally hear it two rooms away when the door is closed. Needless to say, she now turns on the computer, does her online tasks, and then shuts down.

This is a known problem with the Dimension 4100, I learned from the Dell forums, and many people received replacement fans when they complained. Good for them, because the fan is a proprietary part, consisting of a plastic bracket containing a standard 92mm case fan. I have a spare fan, but there’s no way to remove the defective fan from the bracket without breaking the bracket into pieces, and there’s no easy way to attach a standard fan to the case (except by using duct tape or Super Glue).

I found the part number and tried to order a replacement from Dell. After hours on hold, I found that the part was out of stock. Three different reps promised to check on the part’s status and get back to me. None of them did. The last one I spoke to told me I was simply out of luck.

On my 12th call, after complaining loudly, I was transferred to a customer service representative who searched Dell’s worldwide inventory, found the part, and agreed to ship it to me, free of charge. That should have been the response on the first call.

It’s unfortunate when a manufacturer uses proprietary parts instead of standard parts. It’s worse when they don’t keep those parts in stock for the tens of thousands of customers who own those computers. And it’s practically unforgivable when they treat those customers like a nuisance instead of an asset.

I used to recommend Dell enthusiastically. I’m not sure I’ll do so again – and I know I’ll look carefully at my friendly local PC builder first.

John Walkenbach has some excellent observations based on his personal experience Setting Up A New Computer.

I agree with about 98% of it. Glad I covered most of these topics in my new book.