OMG! I ordered a Dell with huge reservations! And I should have listened to my gut. Originally the sales guy said that I could get help partitioning my drive by calling tech support. Upon receipt of my computer I called tech support only to be told that they don't help with partitioning of drives because of their "PC Restore" feature. After an hour of me arguing with them and fighting with them and inisting that I was promised that it would be done, the supervisor made an exception. The tech was helping me but I kept getting some error message about not being able to boot from the disk due to drive configuration problems. Based on that and 4 hours of troubleshooting the tech figured that it was a bad CD ROM so they reshipped. I got the reship and discovered they had the wrong OS on it... Vista instead of XP Pro. I called Dell to get help with the partitioning and to have my XP Pro OS installed (Dell customer service told me to keep my disks from the original computer). Again the same song and dance about not supporting partitioning. After 90 minutes of arguing with the tech and a "policy and procedure supervisor"..... yes, they have a whole department dedicated to just policy and procedures! .... I was left with "I'll try and send a message to the tech from last week and his supervisor and let them know you are still waiting on a resolution of your issue". Now wasn't that a huge amount of help! I called the next day and talked to Dell again and this time I got someone who actually couldn't understand what the issue was with helping me the day before because it was already approved and would have been done had the computer from last week worked. So he managed to get my XP Pro on the system but ran into problems with the partitioning because it kept going in circles instead of partitioning, so I ended up with XP Pro on the whole hard drive on a working computer which is more than what I had last week. I called to get help with my DSL Connection only to find out that the Dell guy forgot to help me install the drivers! I called Dell customer support tell them to just send me out a new system with XP Pro on it like I asked for. I asked to speak to a supervisor. The girl refused to put me through to one and kept telling me that I'll never get another computer shipped to me from Dell with XP Pro on it. I tried to explain to her that it was what I ordered and what I originally got, but she wouldn't hear me. She quickly put me on hold without giving me a chance to say anything and never came back. I hung up after about 15 minutes and called back. The next guy I spoke with was super dim. He refused to put me through to a supervisor until I told him what this was about. I was pissed off by this time and I'm sure I was yelling by now. He went to make his notes and came back and again asked me to go through it again because he missed some of it. I was livid!!! I told him that I was tired of being screwed around by Dell and he replied "Let's keep this civil!" He put me on hold to finish his notes and came back and said "Can you tell me what it is that you are upset about?" Like OMFG!!!!!! I finally got put through to a supervisor who said that they don't ship with XP Pro anymore and that they only have Vista as of January 31st. It didn't seem to matter to them that I ordered my system in January with XP Pro and that was what I got initially and the reorder was done on January 30th. According to her their policy is that effective January 31st no computers are being shipped from Dell with anything but Vista with NO exceptions even if my system was ordered previously! I was so sick of hearing about policy and procedures that I was ready to shove their policy and procedure binder down their throats! I got put through to tech support again! I was on the verge of tears by this time. I was choking back tears and had tears welling up in my eyes and when the tech asked me "can I have your service tag number?" I sighed and nearly broke down crying....actually I did break down crying, but I didn't think it was adudible over the phone but it must have been. Anyway, he read through everything and he couldn't believe all that I've been put through and he said he would help me with the drivers and if I wanted he could also help me with the partitioning of the drive. I agreed to let him. 1 hour later I had a partitioned drive with XP Pro on it and he even helped me with my DSL connection. He told me to not bother calling the regular tech support number anymore and to just call him or one of his team directly and he gave me the direct line to him as well as his home phone number in case of emergencies. I was so happy to have a working computer with the specs that I ordered. I spent the next 7 or 8 hours installing software stuff and then I powered down my system at 2:50am on Saturday only to find that when I turned it back on the computer screen was black. Another call to Dell and and a trial of a different monitor and I am told my graphic card is gone and needs to be replaced. He suggested a new CPU be sent. I told him to forget it and that I wasn't going to go through all of that "we don't support partitioning" etc etc etc etc again. He put me on hold and came back and told me that he will have a new graphic card dispatched to me and either they can help me install it or have someone come in and do it. I told him that I'm sick of paying for do it yourself tech support and that someone can come in and fix it. He then tells me that I'm running a pirated version of my OS!!!! and that my warranty is void because of it and anyone at Dell who helps me will be breaking the law and will hang up on me as soon as they hear that I have XP on a system that was shipped with Vista. I asked him if that was the case how was he going to have someone come out and install a graphic card for me? He said "What OS? I know from your symptoms that it's the graphic card and I didn't have to go into your system so I don't know what OS you are running." LMAO Anyway, I have the system that I ordered with the OS I wanted and I'm being called a thief!!! All Dell had to do was transfer over the License for XP Pro to me which they apparently refused to do, so now according to Dell I'm a thief even though they told me to keep the disks and 11 people at Dell never once said anything about this license stuff to me despite my having gone on and on about XP Pro, and Dell even helped me put the OS on the computer! That was the real straw that broke the camel's back. I'm returning the whole damn thing to Dell and buyiing from Powerland Computers locally like I had considered before. As a matter of fact I'm writing this from a lovely MAC in their office while waiting for them to box up my Dell monitor for me (I through out the box because I never dreamed that I would be returning the thing to them. Plus I have a quote for a new computer with a 22 inch monitor that is substantially less than what Dell was charging me....and that's with a 5 years parts and labour warranty. So I'm off line for a week or two more while a new system is built for me.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi