Personal Dork Assistant

Pennywise

Sam borked his computer so that Windows wouldn't boot. The Dell tech support guy (complete with Indian accent) quickly decided to overnight him a new hard disk. Unfortunately, that doesn't help him recover his study notes for the board exam. Not that I was much more useful initially, making him download a Linux boot-CD when it doesn't even support the Centrino chipset yet. Fuck Linux. Yes I know it's a bunch of people writing code for my benefit for free. Fuck 'em anyway.

Anyway, a brain-dead reinstall of Windows barely resurrected the dead machine long enough for him to burn all the important data to CDR. I use to think that the Windows reinstall was SOP for tech-support, but now they aren't even competent enough to suggest that, even when it's the appropriate solution for once (i.e. Windows boot process stops with a message about some missing file). Instead, the cheap, outsourced tech guy ships a new hard disk overnight at Dell's expense, which would've costed Sam his data in the process. Unfortunately, having a tech talk someone through a Windows install process probably costs more than slapping in a newly imaged hard disk. I guess if doing support right actually helped their bottom line, they would be doing that instead of the crap they're pulling now.