The Dell is back and the 103-inch plasma

The courier arrived this morning with my Dell, which was repaired in Sydney last week. Firing it up I was relieved to find it back to its normal frame of mind, no more blue screening, no weird pixilation.

The problems which I outlined in a title="previous post">previous post, weren't due to a Windows Vista update or a dodgy driver from Nvidia, but a failure in the Nvidia graphics card. That required the motherboard to be replaced because the graphics card is attached to it.

It's a relief to get the problem fixed and I'm just glad the error happened while the machine was under warranty. Dell doesn't have a local servicing agent which seems staggering for such a large PC vendor. If your PC breaks down it will go to Sydney on a courier too, if you're out of warranty, things get a little tricker, as Pat Vincent discovered recently when the power supply in his Dell Inspiron notebook kicked the bucket.

"I asked Dell to refer me to a notebook repair company, but according to Dell it doesn't have an authorised repairer in New Zealand or Australia for repairs outside the warranty," he wrote in a letter in the April issue of Consumer magazine.

Consumer responded: "Like every other business in New Zealand, Dell is obliged to meet its obligations under the Fair Trading and Consumer Acts. This includes parts and service availability. If you can find a repairer you could send Dell the bill, but there's a risk with this if Dell doesn't agree to reimburse you. We suggest you take Dell to the Disputes Tribunal if you don't get a satisfactory response."

It seems like a harsh no-mans land post warranty and I'm not sure Kiwi PC buyers are aware of what they face if they need a repair outside of their warranty period. Dell lets you extend your warranty through its website, but it seems you're on your own if you are not in the programme once the warranty has expired. You'd think the volume Dell is doing here a local service agent would do a steady trade, but it seems in the days when we're trying to reduce our carbon footprint, it's more efficient to put a laptop on a plane to Sydney rather than fix it here. Anyway the Dell is back and I'm happy!

The 103 inch plasma

The official Freeview launch at Te Papa museum in Wellington on Tuesday night had the Prime Minister and several other Government and TV bigwigs in attendance. But what was attracting most of the interest was the massive, 103-inch Panasonic plasma screen dominating the room.

The high-definition screen is absolutely massive and was showing some nice high-definition documentary footage from the Dunedin documentary makers Natural History. Panasonic tells me there have been a handful of the screens sold here, mainly to wealthy individuals. You'd need a big room to do this beast justice.

While several TV vendors were there, none of them had any firm dates for the arrival of flat-panel TVs with integrated HD digital Freeview tuners. One of these types of sets would be the ideal option for anyone jumping into the flat-screen market in the next few months as it would avoid the need to buy a Freeview set-top box. There were some murmurs about models being available before the Olympics but nothing concrete. Maybe it is just that the TV makers don't want to give away release dates to avoid killing their existing sales as people hold off buying the current line-up of flat-screens. With retail sales sluggish at present, you can understand the thinking. But the sooner integrated digital TVs come on the market the better. Here's hoping the Olympics proves the starting point.

UPDATE: Dell has come back to inform me it does have New
Zealand service agents to repair its customers' computers. In fact, Dell claims
it will send someone out to fix a warranted computer "generally the
next business day" after discussing with you the fault on the phone. It
seems my computer had to go to Sydney
because the problem with my Dell XPS M1330 was considered a "new, as
yet unseen" problem that Dell believed was related to Vista SP1.

But,
as I wrote in a previous blog, I never managed to get SP1
onto my computer because the machine kept blue-screening. It's also
despite the symptoms and the nv1ddmkm.sys problems I wrote about being well
documented on the web as an Nvidia graphics problem. So I didn't get to talk to
any Dell technician on the phone about my problem. The upshot is that my
computer went to Sydney
for two weeks for a routine repair which could have been carried out by a
technician at my house in an afternoon! Thanks Dell – for nothing!

Dell also pointed out in relation to the letter in Consumer
that its local agents will fix out of warranty computers if you pay for the
parts first. Dell said it only runs into trouble getting parts for computers
that are five years old or more.