The trick to getting decent tech support from Dell is to do it by email, not by phone. Whenever I dealt with them by email, (I had to have the motherboard replaced on a laptop, replaced several optical drives, etc.) it all went very easily. They will often send you a generic reply first, attempting to use heuristics to determine which generic reply to send you (ie: keyboard problem, disk problem, etc) the first email will contain some instructions to try to help you either further identify the problem, a list of possible fixes and instructions to contact them again. The next email will get you connected to somebody that will also try to help you work through or further identify the problem. And it goes on from there, if you can't convince them what the exact problem is .. usually I could so then you get instructions on how to return it for service, or an offer to send somebody to the house .. which I decline .. or send you the hardware to fix the problem with instructions for returning the original hw. The online manuals are pretty good for describing how to remove and replace send user service-able hw.

The XPS lines have their own tech support. I don't have an XPS, so I don't know how it compares to any other part of their tech support.

These days, basic support doesn't include sw support. You have to pay extra for a contract that includes sw support. The problem with this is that if Dell decides the problem is a sw problem, you would have to pay extra for support if you don't get a contract that includes sw support. I imagine that if you per incident, you can get a refund if it turns out to be a hw problem at the end of the day.

-David