Mostly about my amusement

Tag: computer (page 1 of 1)

Finished Valve’s Portal and the Cake is a Lie

Remember when the platform was sliding into the fire pit and I said ‘Goodbye’ and you were like ‘NO WAY!’ and then I was all ‘We pretended we were going to murder you’? That was great!

I usually don’t play current games on my PC so I just got and completed Valve’s Portal.

It’s a first person shooter without the shooting. It’s all puzzle solving and your opponent is a computer that runs the “Enrichment Center”. The dialog from the computer is great and at the end the computer treats you to a song.

It’s a great game, lots of fun.

Dell XPS 700 still no useful ETA

This morning checked my Dell XPS 700 status page. Originally it was supposed to ship last Tuesday July 25th but on that day it got bumped to today August 1st.

This morning I checked and the status now says August 8th. Any bets what it will say next week?

Still no call from Dell regarding the offer of a free upgrade to a Core 2 Duo.

Here’s the time line:

  1. Ordered the XPS 700 on June 18th.
  2. ETA was originally July 25th shipping.
  3. Updated July 25th to new ETA for shipping August 1st
  4. Update August 1st to August 8th

What’s really funny is that there is that the new status requires me to click on a “I agree to this delay” link for FTC reasons. The link does not work; it gets a nice error page of 404 – File not found.

Dell is not the company they used to be (Updated)

Dell XPS 700 from CNET's web siteAfter pushing my old PC up hill long enough I ordered a new kick ass Dell XPS 700 with a 24 inch wide LCD panel. I’m getting the black one.

I had received an e-mail about how to check the status online and the estimated ship time was set for over a month when I ordered it. As the time went by I had contacted their customer service and asked if the system was going to be built. I was told that as far as they could tell they would make the date.

I ordered the Dell June 18th Father’s Day. The estimated ship time was today July 25th. As of 10:10AM today Dell’s system sent me the e-mail notifying me that I was in for a disappointment.

So I called the Dell customer number and after 2 minutes of informing the system that I did not know my customer number or order number (I do but I have learned to hate the machines). Eventually I got a real human being.

The call was professional. Phrases such as “Parts are hard to come by” and “if you’d like I can expedite the order” were said. The rep was able to upgrade to next day shipping for me so I am placated for now.

I am on for shipping Tuesday August 1st but unfortunately I expect to get another e-mail. I know that I am getting a new to market system but Dell should be able to gauge availability based on the fact that they have been doing this for a long time.

Dell XPS 700 image from CNET’s web site.

Update: In this day and age, you’d think I’d check via Google or Engadget before calling Dell. Per Dell’s Blog (see item number 2) I expect to be able to upgrade from my ordered Pentium D to the Core 2 Duo.

Core 2 Duo, that’s a bad name it trips up the tongue. On the web site it says “an option of either a free upgrade to a Core 2 Duo processor or a Dell gift card” so naturally I am going for the upgraded processor.

The blog site clearly states that you should wait for Dell to call you, but reading the comments from the customers I figures I would get pro-active and call them. I waited until lunch time and called the number for customer service number.

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