I’m on the phone now to Dell, trying to find out about the technician who’s supposed to be here today. Dell’s website is useless; I received an e-mail giving me explicit instructions for getting a status update from it, but when I jump through all the hoops, all it says is “Error retrieving results. Please try again later.” Same as last time.

On the other hand, their XPS technical support is superb. I’ve never had to wait to talk to someone, the few times I’ve had to call — I just enter the “express service code” from the sticker on the bottom of my machine and I’m connected directly to someone with both the knowledge and the resources to help. That’s a VERY refreshing change from most computer companies I’ve dealt with.

It looks like the part was delivered to the local guys this morning. He gave me a contact number for them… they say that I should receive a call within the next hour, and if I don’t, that I should call this same guy and he’ll “escalate the issue.”

I love dealing with truly professional companies. It was well worth the extra money I paid for this XPS machine. 🙂 But I really can’t wait any longer, so I’m going to pull the hard drive out and put it in an external case I’ve got, so I can access the information on it. Even if I can’t compile much on Mini-mEee, at least I can get to the source code.