RAVE: Dell Technical Support

I had a power supply go out in my home computer that I got last Christmas and through some general troubleshooting steps with Dell Technical Support over their chat option, we were able to determine the problem and they are sending me a new power supply. All I needed to do was to enter the Service Tag number from the side of my case and they were able to determine the length of my warranty and help me from there. It took a few emails back and forth to confirm some tests and my new parts were already shipped.

Actually, there's a funny little story about the length of my warranty. At first one of the tech reps emailed me back and typed something to the effect of...

Your warranty has already expired as of December 18^th, 2008.

Considering that this date is still 3 ½ months away, I wrote back politely that of course the problem would be covered. The tech promptly and humbly apologized for the confusion. I really think that he meant to type "will expire" as opposed to "already". Simple mistake.

An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube

Found via Twenty Sided

Google Chrome

This is big news. Google has released a much anticipated new browser to rival Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox.

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

I'm itching to download this right now and give it a whirl. Download Google Chrome.

DivX DVD Players

I'm likely dumping my satellite service soon and going to rely on more movies and recorded stuff for our family entertainment. In talking with some coworkers about this, an interesting idea came up to use a DivX DVD Player. This device would allow multiple movies on one blank DVD-R that we could set up with menus and so forth. It can hold a lot more video than a standard format and could be more easily stored both physically and technically.

Standard DVD players like the one I already own have come down in price quite a bit from my perspective. I saw one advertised at the local grocery store for $24.99! I was even more surprised to DivX devices for between $50 and $100 at the link above. At the same time I'm looking at DivX features, I may also be looking to add DVR capabiliites. But this appears to add up quickly and bring it closer to $200, which I'm not quite willing to pay any time soon.

Learn more about DivX: