Every time I use Dell Technical support I write up my experience both good and bad. Hopefully this will help potential customers of Dell’s equipment get a feeling for the aftercare that is on offer.

Link: You can read other reviews here

I have a customer with a Dell XPS M1210 Laptop, this is used for presentations and gets plugged into lots of things like projectors and the such.

The customer reported a problem when connected to their Dell LCD monitor over the VGA out. The picture contained lots of interference. Eventually the Laptop could no longer use the VGA out.

Tips: for diagnosing a Video Out problem.

1) Try another display, see if the problem is with the laptop or the current display.

2) Update/re-install the video card drivers

I was lucky because the Clients laptop dual booted another operating system (Vista) so I quickly launched Windows Vista to see what the video out was doing. I got the same result. No Video out.

Time to call Dell Technical Support

I contacted Dell Technical on their main telephone number the user agent took my Dell Service Tag and passed my call into a holding pattern for 15 minutes.

When the support agent eventually picked up my call they had to re-direct my request to the dedicated XPS support line. This is something the original user agent should have spotted and saved me 15 minutes of waiting.

Eventually they called me back on site. The call online took about 30 full minutes to complete and for them to agree to send an engineer to site.

They booked their engineer between 9am and 5:30pm the next day.

On the day the engineer turned up at 4:50pm with a new motherboard. However due to a small dent in the users laptop case he was going to have to order an additional part to be able to fully complete the motherboard replacement.

The next time it is convenient for the client to meet the engineer on site is in a week. So the case is still open.

The engineer on site did dismantle the M1210 and turned off the onboard WiFi on the switch at the left hand side either intentionally or by mistake.

Either way the switch was not turned back on and an out of hours technical support call was placed to help identify why the laptops WIFI wasn’t working.

I will update this post once the original Video out problem has been resolved by the motherboard replacement.

Tip: 3 years next business day on-site warranty is always a good idea. Especially for the business user.