When I had a Dell I had good success with tech support. When my computer died, a guy talked me thru the diagnostics which pronounced it dead then he talked me thru the process of removing the entire motherboard.
When I got the replacement motherboard, they talked me thru the reinstalling process.......
I have a Dell laptop (bought new), a Dell netbook (bought from their refurb store), two used Dell desktops and a new desktop now 4 yrs old.
The laptop (for which I got a service plan) required a new motherboard. The tech came within one day and did the repair. No issues since. The netbook developed a defective video card within the warranty period and they handled that quickly. No complaints with them at all. No issues with any other Dell product.
Consider yourself lucky. I spent 1 week talking to techs in India whom I couldn’t even understand. And they never fixed the problem, just tried to sell me upgraded service plans.
I will never buy a Dell anything again.
Nice that someone has the guts to same something positive. We run a IT support business for small businesses. We are vendors for Lenovo and Dell. I prefer Dell for three reasons: (i) I can get tech support from real English speakers located in the US (just by the pro support package); (ii) I can find drivers and other updates online just using the Service Tag (instead of clicking through various products to get to computers and then to the base model name and then to the complete model name (if its in the list) and then sometimes as far as the S/N); and (iii) I can get direct vendor support. Also for servers, the 4-hour support is very reliable in our service area.
Some of the computers have been good and some of them not so good, but the average is more than good and for a business, anything that lessens the down time is a money saver.
Lenovo builds good machines, their tech support is frustrating and getting pricing is frustrating (spreadsheets and phone calls) and hands on support is through third party vendors (with varying skills sets and delays getting parts). These things add up.
Apple makes great laptops, they are just do not integrate into a Windows environment very smoothly and the vast majority of businesses run in a Windows environment.
I recognize that most people on this board view their computers through a personal prism, but the business world is a pragmatic world and I would be a poor provider of services to my customers, if I did not look for ways to lessen their downtime and decrease their frustration.