The list of speakers looks rather impressive, and don’t worry if you don’t recognize their names, just look at their titles and the companies they work for. If they don’t have experience in modern media, then who would?

Jacob Blackstock – CEO, Creative Director and Lead Designer, Bitstrips
Richard Bernstein – S.V.P. Managing Director, Arc Worldwide, A Leo Burnett Company
Lisa Charters – SVP Director Digital, Random House of Canada Limited
Colleen DeCourcy – Former Chief Digital Officer for TBWA Worldwide
Douglas Edwards – CEO, ES3
Sabrina Geremia – Head of Agency Relations, Google Canada
Gavin McGarry – President, Jumpwire Media
James Milward – Secret Location
Siobhan O’Flynn – PhD, Transmedia Consultant, Narrative Now
Steve Pratt – Director CBC Radio 3, CBC Radio 3
Chris Van Noy – Chief Strategist, Akamai
Pete Watson – Senior Business Development Manager: Consumer Partners, Research In Motion Limited (RIM) / BlackBerry

I’ve been invited to the event to cover it, and will be publishing posts on a variety of different blogs thanks to the friendships I’ve made over the years. I will hopefully give those unable to attend a good rundown of all that is happening. Check back here the night of the event, as well as the day after.

And if you are interested in attending, you don’t have much time left, so jump over to the Cross Media TO website, and purchase your tickets today!

The laptop got sent back to Dell again to get fixed. Soon after, it was back and the screen was working fine. Unfortunately, they didn’t take any time to look at the other issues we’ve been complaining about since the start. It seems Dell can only fix one issue at a time, and have a one track mind. Despite the display issue apparently being fixed, they’ve ignored the other stuff.

I mean, my wife can now see as the computer automatically deletes text she’s written, and tries to print things out no matter what she touches. Or when she moves the mouse and the browser increases the text size, despite her not touching any of the keys. “But wait”, you’ll say, thinking that such settings can be configured within the operating system. I’ve turned off all the special features of the track pad, and not only that, what special feature makes it press the windows key at random times? Or highlight strings of text at random times?

At this point, my wife and I are now adamant. We want a replacement machine. We got a “lemon” and want a replacement of comparable features.

My wife is not able to use the machine to complete school work, and she is feeling very stressed, and frustrated. When paying thousands of dollars for school, the last thing we want is for her grades to drop over computer problems. I really don’t think I am crazy to be asking for a replacement at this point.

They want to send out a technician to look at the machine, but have pretty much stated that the issue they are still trying to help resolve is the screen issue. This isn’t the issue that is plaguing my wife now, and would be a waste of time for him to come out if he isn’t going to help with the main issue. There is something wrong with the hardware of the keyboard and palm rest area.

I don’t understand why Dell can’t be more helpful in these cases. I am not trying to screw them out of money or anything, and think that at this point, it would have been cheaper to send out a replacement machine. Even if they gave a slightly smaller or less capable machine, as long as it worked perfectly, reasonably quickly, and efficiently, I am sure my wife would be more than happy.

At this point, I am so angry that no matter the resolution, I probably won’t buy anything from Dell again, even third party products they sell, nor will I recommend them, solely based on the fact that anyone that buys from them will be out of luck when it comes to hardware support that may require more than one replacement. Shame really, as I still think the people that I’ve met that work there are good people, but how can they push out a message of change regarding Dell when I am living through the fact that they haven’t?

So, five more days have gone by, and due in part to my special circumstances of not having a home phone line, I haven’t been able to talk to the representative they’ve set up to help me with the problems my wife is having with the Dell laptop that I bought her.

I have since bought a cell phone, so that should help. And I’ve been contacting them as often as I can through Skype, but every time I call, Sunny is on another call.

I am getting more and more frustrated, and each time I talk to my wife, she mentions about how quickly the laptop is degrading. Now, the screen is dim most of the time, with it only going to a normal brightness when she presses on the frame near the hinge. She just told me today that we should send it back, and they’ll be able to see the issue no matter what this time but she forgets how narrow minded the technicians are at Dell. They’ll fix the cable for the back light display, but probably won’t look to fix whatever is shorting out on the wrist rest area or the other weird quirks that her laptop is quickly picking up.

I truly believe that we received a lemon for a Dell and that we should receive a replacement with the same features. The laptop isn’t very old, and so I assume they still have one sitting around. My wife wouldn’t even care if it had slightly less hard drive space, or was slightly slower, as long as it was mostly comparable. The goal of course is to get a machine that is built right and that will make her happy.

The longer this goes on, the more layers I am exposed to within Dell’s corporate structure, the more frustrated I get. I still believe that Dell has good products, but that they do sometimes have build quality issues that need to be resolved quickly. The reason why Dell gets so much bad press isn’t because their products suck, but instead because their support in dealing with products that don’t work is poor.

Had Dell been wise enough to vigorously test the laptop when we sent it the first time, I am sure they would have come across our issue and been able to fix or replace the components with issues. Then all of this fall out, and negative press that I am working so hard to write, would have never occurred, and I would have continued to sing their praises.

Skipping over that, if Dell had been wise enough to put me in touch with someone that could instantly just ship out a replacement unit of similar specs, and taken back the one that I had issues with, they could have reconditioned it, and sold it as a discount. Their loss on this exchange would have been noticeable, but the good will would have been huge.

Now, I am sitting here, frustrated that I still don’t have a working laptop for my wife, and she starts school in a week, and all of this goes back to Dell not being able to solve an issue that was brought to their attention more than a month ago.

I had to go with Eastlink, apparently a well know ISP in the east coast of Canada.

I was hoping to go with Rogers, but they don’t service this area, since it is too sparsely populated I assume. While the cost is fairly comparable, the speed is about half of what I am used to. The technicians came and set it up fairly quickly and were nice. The support personnel on the phone have also been very nice.

Honestly though, I am just glad to have Internet where I live again. Working from coffee shops and whatnot isn’t ideal.

If you live in Bruce County, Ontario and are looking for a decent ISP, check out Eastlink. So far they get my vote, despite the crummy install timeline.

After using Twitter to contact Lionel Menchaca, the chief blogger for Dell, as well as someone I’ve run into a few times at various new media/blogging related events, I was told he would contact someone in Canada to help me get this resolved. Without Lionel and others like him in Dell, I fear the company would long since have died.

Lionel wasn’t able to quickly contact someone in Canada, and I waited patiently for almost a month, messaging him on Twitter nearly every week for any status update.

Eventually, I received a call at home when I wasn’t there. Sunny Sharma then e-mailed me to let me know that they tried to get in contact with me via the phone.

Here is the full text of that e-mail.

Dear Mr. David Peralty,

This is in reference to your email received at Dell. First of all, I would like to thank you for taking time to make us aware of this issue, Also I apologise for the inconvenience you had to go through in this regards. I tried calling you today to discuss the issue and as you were not available I left a voice mail for you. Please provide me with the alternate contact # and so that we can discuss this issue. I can also be reached at the number mentioned below.

Regards,
Sunny Sharma

Ph: 1-800-387-5757, Options 1,1&2 Ext 53 – 75193
Working Hrs : Mon to Fri (9:00am to 6:00pm EST)

Finally, I might have someone that can help me resolve this whole mess. Since this whole thing began, the issues my wife has been complaining about for months have worsened. The screen issue that I originally sent the unit in for comes back from time to time, especially when opening or closing the unit, and when you rest your palms on the area below the keyboard, it causes strange things to happen when you are typing, as I mentioned in my previous post.

The computer has also become very finicky about wireless Internet connections. Overall, the angry comments from my wife have been getting worse, and my own use of the machine has caused numerous explicit words to be shouted.

I feel like we were sold a lemon, and thus far the support has pretty much ignored us, only making the situation worse and souring us on the brand.

I am looking forward to seeing what Sunny has to say about the whole thing, but I am worried I will be dealing with another technician that will think I am just another customer with a bad case of PEBKAC.

Someone mentioned to me recently that it is pretty shameful that I have to contact specific people within Dell to get a reasonable response to my problem, and to them, I just want to say that the only way to get a potentially satisfactory resolution as a customer when you are unhappy is to hound a company until they either give you the answer you are looking for, or teach you to never be a customer of theirs again.

Since purchasing a laptop for my wife from Dell (Order Date: 01/26/2009), we’ve had nothing but problems. I don’t use the machine much, so I haven’t really notice them, and with her only using the laptop from time to time, she’s just lived with the issues, growing ever more frustrated.

About a month ago, she came to me complaining that her screen was dark, and flashing. The next day, while she was at work, I opened it up, turned it on, and didn’t see anything wrong with it. I closed the machine, thinking that it was one of those errors that she’d never be able to replicate with me in the room. (I don’t know how that happens.) She was also complaining that when she was typing, the keyboard would do crazy things and that her mouse wouldn’t always move correctly. Having used a Dell before, I knew of the poor quality track pads they put in their machines, and constantly tried to tweak the settings for her, never getting it to work correctly.

The next day, while home, she complained of the issue again, and I looked and sure enough, the left hand side of the screen was noticeably darker than the right. It then also began to flicker wildly, going lighter and darker.

I called up Dell technical support, and talked to a nice representative about the issue, and he had me do a variety of software based tests, changes, and even remotely connected into the laptop. Of course, during the time I had him on the phone, the machine, which had been closed and powered off for some time, wouldn’t reproduce the issue, and I was casually dismissed.

When it happened again, I had my camera ready and switched it to video mode. Of course, even at 30fps, it couldn’t capture how bad it was, but I had video proof. How could they ignore me now? I contacted them, e-mailing the URL of the video. They complained they couldn’t open it, but were willing to send a box out to ship the laptop to them.

I did so, making sure to put the URL of the video on the issue sheet, in hope that the technician would have a better suited computer and be able to see the video. I also made mention of the various typing and mouse problems we were having, in hopes that they would fix those as well.

Sending off the laptop, they held onto it for a while, and then I got a call saying they couldn’t reproduce the issues I was having. I asked them if they saw the video, and of course, the technician had not. I told him that I had put the URL on the information sheet I sent in, to which he replied that he didn’t have that information.

I gave him the URL over the phone, and he said he would check into it. Today, I received a box that contains my wife’s laptop. Inside was a repair report. The report said that “after performing numerous functional tests, we have found no faults with your computer”.

Here is the video of the screen issue:

Every time I called, I was treated poorly, like I was trying to trick them, or lie to them. Sure, lots of problems are due to users making mistakes, but when I explain that I’ve built over a dozen desktops and have a degree in Computer Network and Tech Support, I think I can tell when the issue isn’t software related, and shouldn’t be told to update drivers when half the screen is flickering.

I think it is pretty plain to see what was wrong. It is most likely a loose connection between the base of the laptop and the screen, made worse due to the heat of the machine. Since receiving it only twenty minutes ago, I haven’t been able to replicate the screen issue, but the issues with the keyboard and touch pad still remain.

As I am typing, it will randomly act as though I’ve hit the CTRL key and when you hit Ctrl plus certain other keys like S, you’ll get a save dialog box, or make text italic. Sometimes, it will even highlight the current line of text, and so if you are typing at a fast pace, it will delete your writing. This is only made more frustrating because sometimes the mouse pointer won’t move, despite trying to move it to the edit and undo.

Most likely there is some kind of short with the keyboard, or issues with the build quality that are leading to these problems. In the end, my wife’s laptop acts like it is possessed, and therefore is a lemon. It isn’t even a year old, and I feel like an idiot for spending over a thousand dollars on a Dell.

Now, I’ll have to find a way to record the issues I am having with the keyboard and track pad, contact Dell again, and see what they say. Not that they even checked out my previous video, as the only video plays, according to Vimeo’s statistics, come from those I showed when I first took the video. Pretty sad when even video proof isn’t checked by support, technicians, or anyone at Dell.

With the way I am being treated, I doubt I will make that mistake again. Why can’t Dell give high quality service and support to non-business customers? If anyone reading this works at Dell, and would like to help set things right, my wife and I would really appreciate that. I want to continue to tell people they can trust Dell because they have products at a reasonable price, but if their support can’t handle the brand they are trying to build online, then they’ll still fall flat and be unable to compete over the long term.

Update as of August 14th, 2009

So a friend of mine in Dell has said he would help me get a “better” resolution to this issue, and I’ve been bugging him since then, but haven’t heard anything back. I am also going to attempt to contact the support department via the phone again soon to see if I can get a better fix for the issue. I thought things were going to be resolved, but it looks like the fight with Dell continues. Wish me luck…

I have since switched to NeoOffice, which does run natively, but it has always felt like I was using the little brother. So I am happy to announce that Open Office has been massively rewritten, and other than adding new features, they have finally made the software run natively on the Mac platform.

With Aqua being integrated, Open Office 3.0 for Mac not only feels and behaves like a regular Mac application with all the usual bells and whistles, it also is nicely integrated with OS X’s Accessibility API – which results in much better accessibility support than what is offered by most other Mac applications. The re-written code and a native execution environment deliver noticeable performance and reliability improvements.

From TG Daily

Of course the site hasn’t been able to handle the tidal wave of people wanting to get the new version and has been either slow or down all day so far. There are many people trying to mirror the software everywhere, and in two or three days, I am sure it will be easy to get the latest version of Open Office, a great competitor to Microsoft’s wildly overpriced office suite.

Locking down your wireless Internet connection has always been relatively easy, but could it soon be a waste of time? A great report that I recently read talked about how graphics cards for computers could be used to crack the highest security connection passwords on wireless Internet connections in one ten thousandth of the time it traditionally takes to do so.

A dedicated person with the right equipment could access your wireless connection in minutes or hours rather than the previous assumption of days or weeks. The barrier for entry is also getting lower with the equipment costing less and less as new releases cycle out nearly every quarter.

David Hobson, managing director of Global Secure Systems has recently said that, “brute force decryption of the WPA and WPA2 systems using parallel processing has been on the theoretical possibilities horizon for some time – and presumably employed by relevant government agencies in extreme situations – but the use of the latest nVidia cards to speedup decryption on a standard PC is extremely worrying.”

If you are not using a VPN for your business based wireless Internet connections, then you might as well consider yourself open to attacks and data mining.

Maybe it is time to go back to using wired connections, or finding ways to strictly limit wireless connections by making them only available inside of buildings, and using only computers with certain MAC addresses among other basic security implementations that go above and beyond just enabling one of the types of encryption.