I use this blog and my twitter account to complain when my Alienware computer fails, and I feel Dell isn’t listening. So I must use it to tell you that Rafael of Alienware Tech Support positively ROCKS!!!!!! I was VERY bitter Tuesday evening when my “repaired” M17x came back and promptly failed in SL again. Armed with a glass of wine and a few unscheduled evening hours, I called Alienware support on Wednesday evening.
Rafael took my call. Yes, I DO know his last name and I’d be thrilled to tell all of you and even more thrilled to tell his management. But I did not get his permission to publish his name, so this will have to do. Rafael – you are THE BEST!!! He was upbeat, positive, and determined to fix my machine. We were on the phone for at least 90 minutes, probably more. In that time he ran a test or two, but mostly he LISTENED to me and he READ the account log. What a concept. Listening to the client. We talked about the problem, we both agreed it was the driver. I had 2 new graphics cards but the same old drivers. The error message had been saying “driver” all along.
Rafael researched, searched and downloaded the latest drivers for my cards. It was my very good luck that nVidia had just published new drivers the week before. Getting that driver installed, however, proved to be a bit trickier. Suffice it to say that Rafael stayed the course, double-checking with his peers, and working diligently to get the drivers updated. He came inworld with me to watch me push the SL settings to the max and begin throwing continually changing video information at the machine. We encountered my good friend Greg at the Fogbound. Greg chatted with me and Rafael. I felt VERY good about that because not only was Greg knowledgeable and articulate, but he was backing up everything I’d said to Rafael earlier and all of Rafael’s own conclusions.
So – Rafael is a STAR!!!! My beloved Alienware M17x is in working condition yet again. I have my full pixel count – 1920×1200. Things are rezzing quickly and beautifully. I have shadows, reflections and depth. Yay Rafael! Yay Alienware Tech Support! Okay – I’ll even give a shout-out to Dell – that’s how happy I am to have my Alienware M17x back and running. *HUGS* to all!
Ahuva's Blog 
Wait wait wait, the AlienWare tech support guy CAME INWORLD WITH YOU? That’s astounding. 🙂 It’s unusual enough that someone actually reads the incident log, and listens to you, and cares about actually fixing your problem, but this is the first time I’ve heard of a support person going into a virtual world with a customer…
(Did he have a hot Latin AV? 🙂 )
@Dale – He came inworld with me via a shared screen. He didn’t create and rez his own avatar. But since the video had crashed in less than 10 minutes the prior evening, he stayed with me via screen sharing as I rezzed inworld and jumped about. It was the first time a tech had ever agreed to do that. But it was near the end of his shift, I was his last call basically, and so as he was tying up the “paperwork” I headed inworld and showed him about. It was a good test to see if the video cards could handle the constant flow of information. 🙂 As I said – Rafael is a star!