The bitter irony of the story is that Dell spent much more time arguing why they should NOT help Acadia than it would have cost to actually help her. Talking someone through a basic WinXP installation shouldn't take more than half an hour, fixing up drivers maybe another half an hour, that's it. An hour's worth of actual support. 

My personal experience with Dell support is much better, probably due to two facts:

1. I'm in another country, so I had to deal with another support team;
2. I represented a business that had ordered 20 workstations plus a server, which is a significant order. Hinting at the possibility that more, even larger orders might follow if customer support was good enough... You get the idea.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

My gallery   My freestuff