Jarvis revistis Dell, likes what he sees

Finally getting around to posting about Jeff Jarvis' new opinion that Dell Hell has turned to Dell Swell. As you might recall, Jarvis went on a one-man jihad (although of course, he soon gathered an army of outraged Dell owners) against Dell a few years ago when the company proved at best, inept in handling the matter of his melting laptop. Now, he admits in BusinessWeek, Dell gets it, having honest dialogue with its customer base and also taking concrete, real-world action that resolves customer issues more quickly and more pleasantly. (Jarvis went down to Dell's Round Rock, Texas headquarters and interviewed Michael Dell in a video accompanying the story.) Like millions of other people, I've recently experienced this first-hand, when I took a flyer at calling Dell when my desktop PC, way beyond warranty at 5-plus years old, simply stopped one day. (Don't use it much except for my vast iTunes collection, but wanted it to work anyway.) What amazed me was that they actually stayed on the line for me twice, in two free phone calls of at least 45 minutes, as we troubleshot the thing, and even opened the CPU and started fooling around with the hard drive. So far, it looks like the computer may be destined for the great beyond, but it isn't dying for lack of interest on behalf of Dell. Impressive.