Dell doesn’t mess around on repairs. I stalled forever before requesting service on the Inspiron laptop, ‘cause I figured it would be gone for 4 weeks and come back with a note saying “could not find problem” and nothing repaired.

Nope - they sent a box to pack it in, DHL shipping prepaid, it was at the depot the day after we sent it, and on its way back to us a day after that. Dunno if they reproduced the error successfully (the keyboard was sending code “141” repeatedly, which basically only interfered with Alt-Tabbing), but they replaced the keyboard regardless. Diana just tested it, and everything’s working. (So it really was the hardware; I was starting to doubt myself.)

Anyway, except for the scripted tech support, Dell gets a big thumbs-up on customer service. (And Acer, whose Aspire died on us one month out of warranty, still gets the finger.)