I have been a home PC owner since 1987 having such brands as IBM, Compaq, and HP. I needed a new PC and decided to buy a Dell Dimension 4100 computer. I was totally happy for 6 months. Then the problems began.

What Mine Has

Pentium III processor at 866 MHz

20 GB hard drive

128 mB SDRAM at 133 MHz

48x CD Rom

3.5" floppy drive

Harmon/Kardon HK speakers

"SB Live" sound card

32 mB NVIDIA TNT2 Mb4 APG graphic card

Microsoft intellimouse

Quiet keyboard (which is not quiet)

17" E770 monitor

V.90/56K telephony modem

Problem 1: My modem would not disconnect. I had to unplug the phone; then when I tried to connect again, the modem claimed it was connected. I called Dell's technical support and after waiting on hold for over 1 1/2 hours, I finally was able to explain my problem. To make a long story shorter, I will tell you that Dell will make you jump through many hoops in order not to replace any hardware, even though I kept telling them that I had a bad modem.

First, I had to run a system diagnostics test which took over 4 hours to complete. Then I had to delete and reinstall the modem with windows with several technicians. Then, I was ordered to open up my tower and remove the modem and reinstall it. Then, I had to lose everything on my computer that won't not fit onto a diskette and reformat my hard drive and reinstall everything to prove to Dell that it was not a software conflict and that it was in fact a hardware modem problem. The only time they stayed on the phone with me was when I was forced to open my computer and play with the modem. Otherwise, the tech would not stay on the phone and you would have to call back when finished with the task given to you and again wait on hold even though one time I had 2 minutes remaining to finish a task. You even have to call back to put the Dell Resource Disk back on after you reformat your hard drive since they have to record in their notes that you are putting back on what they tell you to put back on. There were several times that I would call and after a long wait, the Dellware music stopped which means someone is about to get on the phone, but they hung up instead. I asked many times to speak to a supervisor but amazingly none were available or I was put back on hold and never gotten back to. I even left my name and number and was told a supervisor would call me within 72 hours, but that never happened.

Well after all that, my modem still did not work. After two weeks of this and Dell also tossing me back and forth to my internet provider, which is Dellnet, I was finally granted a new modem. I was asked for my charge card number for them to send me a new modem for me to replace and to send back the old one. I told the tech "Wait a minute, I have On-Site, Next Business Day Parts and Labor". I had to be put on hold again, to get authorization for someone to honor the warranty as stated for someone to come out and put the modem in. Forget the next business day as stated, it won't happen. It took another week because they send it to a computer repair place that they contract with and then you wait for that place to be able to schedule you in.

I do not like opening up my computer tower and handling sensitive components when I have always been told not to touch them while standing on carpet and you should wear a static wristband. When I expressed my concerns to Dell about opening the tower with the phone in one hand and a screwdriver in the other while sitting on carpet, Dell didn't care about my concerns regarding ruining the other components. In fact, I was told if something happened they would replace it. REALLY??? Somehow, I'm not too comforted.

Problem 2: Two months later, my hard drive went bad. Everything that I was put through in Problem 1 happened again except more this time. Obviously, they have a book of steps they make you go through before admitting hardware failure. This time after reformatting 4 times, that's right 4 times they made me do it, it still was not working. They had me reformat with and without various cards inside the tower. After the 4th time, the Windows ME CD stopped functioning midway so I asked for a new CD. I was told that software is only warranted for 90 days and I had to contact Microsoft. Microsoft told me that Dell has to supply me with a new one. Dell told me that I had to buy a new one. Finally, I was able to get a new one without charge by calling Customer Service and spending a long period of time on the phone about everything I had gone through. You would think they would apologize, but no one did. After I received the new CD, my computer still did not work. So after 5 times of reformatting and installing the software, I finally got hold of a tech that said that it looked like everything had been done and he would send me a hard drive to install again asking for my charge card number. Again, I had to wait for authorization to have on-site installation. This problem took 3 weeks to solve.

Final Impression

The lesson to learn here is to buy a computer with good customer and technical support. Parts are going to fail, but you don't need to go through the type of hassle I went through with Dell to get replacement parts. That is why I bought an IBM a few months ago.



Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 1226.00
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium III
Processor speed: 801-900
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20