Oh, Dell

I'm not sure if many other med schools do this, but as a way to make things as *easy* and *stress-free* for us as possible (and possibly make a ton of profit)they peer-pressured us into buying these crappy Dell computers before our 1st year started. They only charged us $2500 though! what a steal! Ha.

They never point blank stated that we had to buy them, but made it sound tempting with promises of free tech support and whatnot. Well - it's a good thing, because I've needed every bit of it. My hard drive crashed during October 2008, after using the computer 1 year, and had to be replaced. Fast forward to 2010 and 2 weeks ago my computer got a terrible virus. I took it in last week. Here's the discussion that went down with our school's tech support today.

Me: "Hey, how's my computer doing? I haven't seen it in a week. Any progress?"

IT: "Yeah, you see what it's doing here... It's been stuck on that same screen since Friday. I think we're going to have to replace your hard drive. I'm going to have to call in a specialist from Dell."

Me: "Awesome. Well, I have a question for you... I have to put this program of practice questions on my computer that costs around $300 and my computer needs to be functional for at least 4 months so I don't lose it. Do you think I should put it on there once you get it fixed?"

IT Lady: "Hmmm... This isn't something you could backup on a disc is it?"

Me: "No, it's highly copyrighted. You can't copy/paste any of it."

IT Lady: "Yeah, you're better off putting that on your husband's computer. You only need this computer to last until next year though, right?"

Me: "Ugh, yeah, I guess?..."

IT Lady: "Good, good. You know, these laptops have actually held up pretty well!"

Oh mercy, y'all. This does not look reassuring. What if I went to do surgery on someone and said - Hey, you only need this colon to work for the next 4 months, right? Methinks I'd be getting sued for sure.