My Dell support odyssey continues this week with an attempted resolution that only makes matters worse. To recap: My Inspiron XPS M1710 had multiple failures (battery, display, memory). Dell initially stuck me with a "Parts Only Service" response which, after considering the number of failures, I found to be unacceptable. Then late last week - and in an obvious response to my previous blog post - I was contacted My Dell support odyssey continues this week with an attempted resolution that only makes matters worse.To recap: My Inspiron XPS M1710 had multiple failures (battery, display, memory). Dell initially stuck me with a “Parts Only Service” response which, after considering the number of failures, I found to be unacceptable.Then late last week – and in an obvious response to my previous blog post – I was contacted by one of Dell’s “Customer Advocate” representatives. The fellow, Larry, was quite sympathetic and offered to exchange the entire system. He even expedited the order to accommodate a planned business trip to New York City. Tuesday came and my replacement system arrived. Not having time to fiddle with a migration, I grabbed both it and my old unit and hit the road. That evening I swapped the hard disk over from my ailing M1710 and allowed my well-tuned Vista install to adjust to the new config (including reactivating Windows – always a nail-biter).Then the fun began. It started with a hard lockup. The system had been running for perhaps an hour before it froze solid – i.e no cursor movement, a true hardware hang. Assuming (wrongly) that it was a driver configuration issue from the migration I simply cycled the power. It then locked-up again while checking email. I powered the unit down and allowed it to “rest” overnight. The next day it worked well – right up until the 3rd major lock-up which, as fate would have it, occurred in the middle of my presentation to the new Windows Platform manager at one of my largest customers (hint: A certain global financial services company – the name rhymes with “organ manly”). The final straw was when it locked-up a 4th time while I was posting this update (forcing me to retype nearly the entire entry – grrrr). Note: All of this occured on a brand new, fully tested XPS from Dell leading me to conclude that the company is simply incapable of delivering a quality product with any degree of consistency. Bottom Line: Buying a Dell – especially from their consumer/small business line – is a veritable “crap shoot.” RCK Software DevelopmentSmall and Medium Business