Part of the hardware upgrade will include tossing out my Buffalo TeraStation and attaching the IDE drives to the new motherboard. I bought a RAID controller that will do RAID 5 using IDE drives. The TeraStation was just a bad purchase. Currently, when I connect to it with my Windows laptop, it will work for a few minutes and then I lose the share. I suspect that Samba is dying on the TeraStation, because, if I go and do a disk check, it works again for a few minutes and then dies. I called Buffalo twice. In both cases I just did not feel like I got the support that I needed. I have the feeling that this is a closed box that they get from some OEM in Japan and they can’t access the machine’s internals either. And I felt that Buffalo just did not give a damn. Once the support person said, if you still have the receipt for the box and it has not been 12 month, then I could just send it in and get a replacement. But, what if I had it longer than 12 month? SOL? Like I said, I have just decided to dump the TeraStation and am now recommending to all my friends not to deal with Buffalo. Just not a good experience.

But, speaking of good experience, I have to say, I have only had good experiences with Dell. I needed to get a new Windows XP install disk for my Laptop that I had bought from them 3 years ago. I used the online chat/support feature that they have. Talked to a guy and 5 minutes later he was sending me the disks. Another time I had a problem with my motherboard’s power supply. After going through the usual tests they ask you to do, they send me a box and I was able to send them my machine. Within 10 days I had my laptop back. I was impressed. Now, I did buy the extended warranty and maybe that was why I was getting good support. What impressed me was not only how easy things went, but after they were done, they followed up to make sure everything is OK. From, “did you get the box”, to “is everything working now”.

BTW, I love Firefox 2.0’s spell checker. Comes in real handy here.