Speaking of warranties and Dell.
My uncle had the full warranty (where they come to your house). The hard drive had died, as well as the DVD drive.
The tech came out, replaced the hard drive and DVD drive, turned it on to make sure it POSTed, and left. He didn't even bother reloading windows onto it.
He called the support when his computer wouldn't boot (obviously as it no longer had an OS), and they told him the warranty wouldn't cover reinstalling the OS, he would need to do that himself. Totally retarded. Anyone, even my grandma, can plug in a couple wires. But installing an OS properly is far more complicated.
So anyway, I walked him through using the restore CD, and installing all the drivers again (which I should mention, the driver CD had 2 drivers that didn't even work, had to go online). Once he got done with that, he tested his new DVD drive (he had been using the CD burner before), and naturally it still wasn't working.
Another tech comes out to fix that. He opens it up, and sees the IDE cable isn't plugged in properly. He reinserts it, checks the PC POSTs, and leaves.
Except, you know, it doesn't work. Still. One final, angry call to get a tech out there, and this tech bothers to actually look a bit deeper, and finds that the IDE controller on the motherboard was flaking out. He replaces the motherboard, plugs everything back in, makes sure it POSTs, and of course, leaves.
I then have to walk my uncle through changing the clock, something he'd never had to do before, as well as enable DMA for the DVD and CD drives (the other motherboard's faulty IDE controller had caused windows to force PIO mode on them).
I'm sorry, but what my uncle had to go through just says a helluva lot about the company as a whole.
