Dell is the only brand computer my office buys, so I have spent many an hour on Dell's Customer support line. I have not been able to confirm this, but it seems to me that since they moved their support to India all of their tech support uses the same first name depending on the department. For instance I get "Paul" when I talk to somebody in the replacement Parts dept and I get "Chris" when I order memory from a different dept. The last names that appear on my invoice seem pretty ethnic, but the first names are always western. Has Dell stripped the actual first names from all of their employees in India?

On average the support from Dell has been as good as before it got shipped to India, except that I find myself yelling into the phone and talking like a ham Radio operator. Half the battle is won when you've successfully transferred the Service Tag Number. If Dell insists on hiring people with barely adequate English skills, then they should at least strike out all of the b's d's p's m's and n's from the service tags.

-Steve G. (hasn't a clue about Linux except how to properly pronounce it)