Good news
Keyboard arrived today (July 30th) just before 13:00. Spent lunch swapping out keyboard. Can now type Quality again without pausing….
….received phone call at 14:00 from Dell tech support to confirm that I’d received the keyboard and that I’d been able to swap it over without difficulty.
Excellent ‘within-warranty’ customer service – my only issue is with their on-line form and the processes that support it which changed my name and required me to re-enter a lot of information Dell would (should?) already have about me.
Bad news
The question I’m left with now is why has it taken Dell 5 months to address the other more substantive issue, the one where the laptop wasn’t built to specification and they have not yet remedied that situation?
The time and cost clock on this instance of non-quality is still ticking. The number of Dell staffers I’ve dealt with is still growing. The root cause of this whole issue is an information quality problem which could easily be avoided. Ergo, the costs involved and time-hassles involved could have been avoided if the relevant information process had functioned correctly and, failing that, if the corrective processes had operated efficiently.
On the subject of Information Quality, I’ve attached a copy of the article Common Law and IQ Governance. It’s a break from a series I’m writing based on my experiences with Dell with regard to my graphics card. I’ll be presenting on this and related legal topics in Information Quality (or should that be related information quality topics in law?) at both the IDQ Conference and the IRM UK Conference and will most likely be using this whole issue as a case study, highlighting the various legal issues that it raises (compliance with EU Distance Selling Regulations, Data Protection, Contract Law, Negligence etc.). To read the rest of the articles in this Quarter’s IAIDQ newsletter go to http://www.iaidq.org and join the IAIDQ (if you aren’t already a member).
As I have had no further substantive contact from Dell (John was well meaning but nothing seems to have come of it) and as it is over a month since graphics card number 5 was supposed to have been sent to me I’ll be meeting my legal advisors this week to discuss next steps.
Daragh-
I wrote this post in response to your assertion that this machine wasn’t built to specifications. I would first like to examine your own screenshot here:
http://obriend.info/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/graphics_card_details_assettag_6q0gs2j.png
As was explained to you by my counterpart, Rick, there are only 3 video cards available for the Inspiron 6400/e1505 series:
128MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON® X1300 HyperMemory
256MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON® X1400 HyperMemory
256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7300 TurboCache
The screenshot shows that you have the second card, the Mobility Radeon X1400. The ATI offerings use HyperMemory, and the NVIDIA offering uses TurboCache, which are essentially the same thing. Here is a Wikipedia article that explains what this is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperMemory (note the link to TurboCache, which is essentially the NVIDIA version of the same thing)
To paraphrase the above article, both TurbCache and HyperMemory are technologies which allow the video card to sequester a portion of the system’s RAM for use by the video card.
In effect, the catalyst control center is reporting the video memory on the card itself, and is not reporting the 128MB potentially being used by the video card that is on the system board, i.e. your system’s RAM.
Essentially, the system appears to be built to specification, and no video card available for this system has any more dedicated video memory than what the X1400 has. It appears that you are trying to get a video card from us that doesn’t exist. I understand the way that ATI and NVIDIA markets this technology may be confusing, but I can say with 100% certainty that the 256MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON X1400 HyperMemory card only has 128MB of memory on the card itself. I can say with equal certainty that the 256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 TurboCache also, like the ATI X1400, has only 128MB of memory on the card itself.
Feel free to email me if you have any questions, or if you have any specific reasons to believe that I may be incorrect regarding this.
John
Dell Customer Advocate