It's Not Stupid, it's Advanced.

For those unclear of my means of sustenance, I do tech support. Everyone in the industry has got some funny "ha ha" tech support stories, and some funny "not so ha ha" tech support stories. I have many, and after yesterday now I have one more, the categorization of which I'm not quite certain of. Read on.

8 days ago MS Vista was released, meaning it's that time of the support cycle when I write a whole new set of training docs for newbs & customers and teach myself a whole new spate of blue language. My company purchased a new Dell computer at the end of last year for the purpose of installing Vista once it's on the market so we can use the system for a testbed. Toward this end we purchased it under a special offer from Dell for a free upgrade to Vista post-release.

I attempted to perform the upgrade via their automated process and hit a snag, my computer's make/model was not shown on the list of units eligible for upgrade and the automated system would not allow the process to proceed. The Dell sales rep and I parted the system out with compatibility in mind, but it is a custom model. No big deal, says I. It's a new process, they just haven't ironed out the bugs yet. Sure.

One gold medal for the hurdles event of the ol' telephone olympics later and Dell eventually gets me to the Vista upgrade dept, he's how our conversation went.

Moi: "Hi there, I purchased a new system listed as Vista compatible in late October and I'd like to perform the free upgrade to Vista now. My customer number is ________"

He: "Oh, um sure. Let me just ask first: this is a test machine, right?"

Moi: "It's not my workstation if that's what you're asking. I'm just installing the new OS to test compatibility with our existing products and start writing our new training docs."

He: "Oh, OK then. Yeah, I was worried it might be your workstation. Didn't want to screw you up. So what exactly is the problem?"

Moi: "Well when I punch my ID tag number into the upgrade page it just tells me that my system isn't on the compatible list, even though when we parted out my system we did so with compatibility in mind. My system's ID tag says _______"

He: "Yeah, when I try that it doesn't work.... hmm, looks like none of my part numbers listed here work."

Moi: "So the page itself is broken?"

He: "Looks like it. To tell you the truth you're the first person who's tried to upgrade."

I had to hit my mute button so I could howl with laughter. I guess that means it is "ha ha" funny after all.