Re: how long Dell is taking - unfortunately that is a long and sordid story and really needs more than one or two adult beverages to tell properly. Suffice it to say that although I have been a many-times in the past satisfied Dell customer, given my current experience this will alas be my last Dell system, assuming I ever get it. Dell customer service which, to my mind at least, used to be the exemplar of the industry, has sadly scraped the bottom of the barrel for me this time....
Short version: my original order was placed on Nov 1 and shipped on Nov 19. Arrived Nov 24 except what arrived bore no resemblance to what I ordered, despite the fact that my name was on the box, and the packing slip attested to my order. My XPS 9000 machine continues to be lost in transit, untraceable apparently. Instead I have a Precision T7500 workstation that I neither want nor ordered. XPS replacement order was entered by Dell Nov 25 - told it would be in "priority" sequence since the screw-up in delivery was Dell/UPS/Purolator - anyone but me. I am still waiting. So far, the machine is still in production - so much for priority - and has not been shipped. I have spent way too much of my recent lifetime (literally hours and days) on the phone to everyone in India at the Dell call centers trying to get some definitive answers from Dell as to what the hold up is (no idea), was it REALLY in any priority (no idea) when will it be out of production (no idea), when will it be shipped (no idea). You get the picture.... And the worst part is, that up until I managed to get a tech support person in Manila of all places to really "own" the case as he put it, no one was really on my side. But mid January is now floating around as a possible delivery date. That would be a full 2.5 months since the original order.... Ahhh, but they wanted me to send the Precision T7500 workstation (the one they sent me in error) back BEFORE they would ship my replacement out. I have told them there is no way I am letting that baby out of my hands until mine arrives. That's the only leverage I have right now. They have my money, they have my machine (somewhere, maybe) but I have an expensive XEON-powered 24 G RAM workstation that they should want to get back. After all it lists for about 3-4x more money that the one I ordered so they should be motivated for me to send it back, but it does not leave my sight until mine has arrived. But they have at least given me permission to use it until that time, just to compensate in some small way for the crap they have put me through. Hence the original questions about OS installation and drive swapping. Thanks for letting me vent <smile> Michael ________________________________ From: Tony B <ton...@gmail.com> To: COMPUTERGUYS-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM Sent: Tue, December 15, 2009 9:05:00 AM Subject: Re: [CGUYS] Swapping Boot Drives Actually, I ran the Win7 RC from an external USB dock and it seemed fine. I don't have esata hooked up, but all my USB peripherals seemed fine. eSata is mostly controlled by the bios, not the OS, so I would imagine it would work. I didn't even notice a slowdown or a bottleneck, presumably because I have enough RAM (4gb) that disk access was minimized. No question in this case external would avoid any hassles with sealed cases and warranties. But none of us was convinced Dell would take so long to ship the new system that we thought it worth the hassle of a temporary OS install. On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 1:21 AM, mike <xha...@gmail.com> wrote: > The problem is, even if you do install it externally, I doubt you have FW or > ESATA on that machine, USB isn't made to be used to run an OS on an external > drive. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** ************************************************************************* ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
