Service With a Smile. Not.
Sports Night last night was a good one. If they keep it up, it may become my new, favorite show on TV (after Ally). The writing and acting are excellent. Which of course means it will be cancelled.
Work on the legislation I am revising is progressing slowly. I've checked 20 states so far. 30 to go! Unfortunately, this morning will be eaten by meetings on the budget and to finalize what will be included in our legislative package.
Saw on InfoWorld that MS has confirmed a February 17 launch date for Win2000. As soon as I can get my hands on a copy I will load it on one of my PCs (Right now I have three. None of which are exactly state of the art but they do what I need them to do).
I will, of course, have to upgrade the target PC first. But I have time to do that. I figure a Pentium III running at 500MHz should be enough. 256MB of RAM. 10GB drive. DVD. And as Dr.Keyboard would say, "All the twiddly bits."
Tomorrow I'll give a run down of what I am using at home. Today, I'll tell you about the Dell OptiPlex GX1 at work. It's about a year old and is a Pentium II - 333MHz. 128MB of RAM. 6.2GB drive. CD-ROM and built-in Crystal Sound card and ATI Rage Pro video (8MB). I have Win98SE on it. The only problem I've had so far was when my Maxtor HD started to make very bad noises. It would sound like the heads were trying to bash their way out of the case. Dell sent out a Wang technician and he swapped the drive.
While I do recommend Dell PCs, I have a bone to pick with their "On-Site" service. It isn't. At least, they try mightily to do everything except provide on-site service. They will talk to you on the phone for hours, but send someone out to service your PC? Only if the problem appears to be in the box itself and you are unwilling to open it and replace the suspected part yourself. If you have a bad monitor or keyboard they will express to you a new one. But you then have to box up the old and ship it back to them (otherwise they charge you for the new part).
This level of "service" may be OK for people who are comfortable with PCs. But what of the great majority of Dell's customers that are not? Of course, I doubt the other manufacturers are any better but perhaps there can be levels of service, each with a different cost structure. "Regular" service like they have now. "Premium" service for those who are willing to pay a couple of hundred dollars extra per year for real on-site service. That is, you call and tell them the suspected problem, and they come out within four hours to diagnose and fix it.
More tomorrow on what kind of PCs I have at home. See 'ya.