On Friday morning my notebook's power adapter died suddenly, leaving with a heavy paperweight on my table. This also meant that I couldn't charge my machine with any other cable although we have many Dell laptops around - none were compatible with my particular model - the Dell XPS M1710. I called up a local repair guy to check whether he could do something about it. He called up after an hour to say that the adapter was completely shorted out and no way it could be repaired.
Since I had wisely taken a 3-year complete cover international warranty when purchasing the machine last year, I called up the local Dell toll free and was quickly redirected to the XPS exclusive line. This line happens to be serviced out of Malaysia (I think) and the tech support guy was very friendly. Once he heard my problem, he took almost no time in assigning me a a temporary reference number for the call in India (since the notebook is still registered in the US). He then said that the adapter would be delivered the next working day - meaning Monday.
I got a call from the local Dell office in an hour or so, confirming that I'd get the adapter on Monday. Which was quite ok. I did spend the weekend starting to get notebook withdrawal symptoms but survived.
Today, while sitting in office and working on a desktop - after ages (yuk!), I got a call from the delivery guy who had my packets. A quick jump back home and I picked up not one but three (!) boxes. I had to return the burned out adapter as replacement. Now imagine my surprise when I opened up the packets.
The first two contained a completely new set of power adapter and power cable - much smaller than the one I was originally using and with an Indian plug. The last one had a replacement for my original brick adapter. I first quickly plugged in the big brick to the original power cable and turned on my notebook. It worked fine. Curious about the new set, I connected them up and checked out my machine and it was working fine even then - except for a small popup that suddenly appeared on the screen. This informed me that I had plugged in a 90W adapter and to use all the features of my notebook I should be using the 130W adapter. The brick is the 130W one I guess. Well, now I have one that gives me the full power of my notebook as well as a spare that even if it doesn't let me play games or use the higher end features will at least let me check mail, browse and use my notebook for standard stuff.
As always, I've been very happy with Dell's service and their commitment. I sure hope they keep this up.
Tags:
rave,
gadgets
Categories:
Gadgets |
Rave