The harddrive in my less than 3 month old laptop bit the dust today. Being the good guy that I am, I called Dell Support myself instead of burdening the overworked hardware guys, and all I can say is Wow.

• Entering my Express Service Code actually routed me right to the correct support chain. This is new. I was asked for the info again, but at least I wasn’t shuffled around another time.
• The woman that I got on the line asked the standard questions, and didn’t put up a fight when I said I’d rather not give an email address.
• She also didn’t argue when I said “My hard drive has died.” I described the symptoms (not found in BIOS, laptop won’t boot, makes loud clicking noise) and she said: “I’ve got some bad news, we’ll have to replace your hard drive.” I then say that’s fine, and she replies: “But, you are supposed to cry. Am I going to have to kick you in the shins?” I explain that I support users all day and I don’t put anything important on desktops or laptops. She is not amused, still wanting a response.
• My next statement is “If it is important enough to save, it should be on a server.” She says that sounds just like her brother. I am confused.
• Five minutes later, after all the address information has been collected, she asks if I’ve seen any good movies lately. I tell her no, I don’t go to many movies. She says I should see National Treasure, but she’s really waiting for The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy to come out in 2006. When I say I didn’t know that was coming out in 2006, she responds that I’ve earned massive brownie points for knowing what it was. When I say that I wasn’t that impressed with it and it was long, I lose all my brownie points. And all future support calls will require me to jump through every hoop possible.

The moral of the story? I called Dell Technical Support and got someone:

1. Who spoke english as a native language.
2. Was female.
3. Had a clue. (This is not gender related, some Dell Techs are just reading the scriptbook without knowing what any of it means.)

There should be a replacement drive here tommorrow or the next day. Yay for good parts service, boo for crappy quality/low MTBF.