On 26/07/2015 18:06, Jc García wrote: > 2015-07-26 9:33 GMT-06:00 Todd Goodman <t...@bonedaddy.net>: > >> I like and use VirtualBox a lot (and agree it's easy to use.) >> >> But the performance and USB handling mean that I need Windows or other >> OS' on bare metal most of the time. I don't know how well Dell's crap^W >> support stuff runs in a VM. >> > The contrary experience here, USB has been the thing that got me to > use VirtualBox many times, I have put usb drivers, printers, 3g > modems, even adb trough the pass-trough feature of virtualbox, with no > problems, in fact for some years for printing purposes I had to use a > VM, and Virtualbox was the fastest to get working(click conect usb > printer, install the windows drivers, print). I'm suspecting you also > didn't run it with a very new computer, a server 2012 could run fine > for testing some stuff, with 1 core limit and 512M RAM over here, > using the virtualization capabilities of the processor. but I haven't > dealt with DELL hardware. > > BTW, to Alan, I have never had to call to support for any laptop, but > do they really have someone that could know more than you to help? I > would seriously suspect most cases you are just talking to a call > center agent whom clearly isn't doing a job that requires much > knowledge about computers, that may be just reading some general > 'reboot your pc' type instructions, and would likely suggest you to go > to a professional technician at the arise of the slightest seemingly > serious problem. But I might be wrong, and dell support could be > awesome(I hardly think so, I know a lot of people who give support at > call centers). >
Is that "Alan" as in me? I agree with you, getting call-centre people to help resolve a computer issue usually doesn't help much. In a few cases I have had proper help to find the magic undocumented keystroke on boot that does some useful function. My proper experience with call-centres has always been on corporate accounts though, the ones with 5-year next-day or 3-hour warranties. These are very different from phone-a-number-and-go-to-New-Delhi. With these accounts, there is no fooling around, no messing about with switching it off and on again, you describe the symptom, detail the tests done and because these are usually valid a replacement part ends up on it's way to arrive next day. This happens because the respective corporate overlords signed SLA contracts that says it will happen this way. In that sort of setup, Dell and HP both give very very good support. I've heard anecdotes from others that IBM does too. These big bys take their SLAs with other big customers very seriously, no-one can afford to annoy bug customers. -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
