Dell

A quick update about my Dell Latitude saga.  I called customer service today at 7:00 a.m. and had a pleasurable and productive, albeit lengthy, exchange with their representatives.  I have managed an exchange for the ill-fated Latitude XT, and the process is everything that it should be.  They are sending a replacement laptop, and when I receive it, I'll just have to send the broken one back.  Hopefully they will ship it overnight, but that is doubtful, and I still haven't received any confirmation e-mails or phone calls that the exchange is going to actually happen.  I am cautiously optimistic.

Quick Update (2/10/2010):

I have heard back from Dell, and everything appears to going well so far.  I will say that I was dismayed that the standard laptop exchange takes 10-12 days to process.  They have assured me however that my exchange is a high priority and will be shipped overnight when it is ready.

Another Quick Update (2/18/2010):

 So, I received the replacement laptop as of yesterday, and everything works.  Well, pretty much everything.  The battery it came with was near dead, and while I did receive two CD-ROM attachments, one doesn't fit the CD-ROM, and the other, which does fit the CD-ROM uses e-SATA instead of USB, which the laptop doesn't have available.  So 8 days, and overnight shipping means it wasn't too bad of a wait for exchange, and just as I was about to call Dell about the not quite right bits I received a call from them.  They were OK with me swapping batteries, and tech support should take care of getting the right CD-ROM bit to me.  All in all, it took about three weeks to get everything straightened out, which was a tremendously long time, but on the plus side everytime I interacted with Dell's customer support staff, it was delightful (minus the call about the original shipment of the first laptop).

Dell has been the primary provider of commodity hardware in my current and last job.  At the NITC they were our primary provider of commodity servers, but the more exotic kit such as SAN, switching, and routing gear were left to field leaders in those areas.  I was extremely happy with their servers, we had great support, good pricing, and rock solid reliability.  At the KU School of Engineering Dell is the primary provider of all our IT systems including desktops, laptops, some switches, and all of our storage gear.  Again, I have been satisfied for the most part, though the prices and features for some of their re-branded storage kit has been painful.  The point of all that is that when it came to purchasing a replacement tablet for my girlfriend choosing a Dell Latitude XT series tablet seemed like a no brainer.  Wow, was that a mistake.  The entire experience has just been a nightmare.