What is wrong with these people?!

Sunday, 1:29 pm

By KateC

For about the last year, I’ve been doing routine maintenance on a friend’s computer. Not being all that interested in learning how to do that stuff herself, she was more in the “I want to turn it on and just have it work” camp. And that was fine. I enjoyed the tinkering.

When I started, I’d never seen a computer so infested with viruses, adware, and spyware. The computer had virtually come to a standstill. It took several days of diagnostics and cleaning before it was back up to speed and completely clean. I installed spyware killers and adware killers and two different virus checkers and killers. As well as a Mozilla browser and mail program. Everything hummed along very nicely after that. She was able to turn her computer on and just have it work.

And then, a couple of months ago, lightning struck (literally) and fried her modem and router. When it came time to set them up, she called Dell Computer. They informed her that she must remove all that third party software or they wouldn’t help her. She had to uninstall the adware and spyware killers. They didn’t like one of her virus protection programs. And, they wanted her to get rid of Mozilla. They took her through the process of doing all that removing.

And then the problems started again. I urged her to let me re-install the safety nets, but she was reluctant because Dell told her they would not honor her warranty if she had all that crap on her computer. I think that’s a bunch of malarky, but that’s what Dell told her repeatedly.

So, the end of that story is that her computer is so laden with viruses and adware and spyware once more that her computer is nearly inoperable. And yesterday she finally gave up her transcribing business because of the constant crashes and loss of material that made meeting deadlines simply impossible.

Thanks Dell. I cannot believe they advised her to stop protecting her computer. I cannot believe that her warranty would be voided because she had third party software on her computer. But that’s what they told her. I heard them tell her. No amount of arguing seemed to get through to them.

Her take on it? “I’ll never buy another Dell.”

I am so completely astonished at all of this. Completely frustrated, too.