I would really love to love my Alienware laptop, however, Dell is making it really hard for me to love it. My laptop once was out of service for several weeks and Dell had to replace major components like the mother and daughter board and several other components and this was only within the year I bought the laptop.

Yesterday, I was excited to have an online meeting and was disappointed that I couldn't without significant delay.  I should have tested my webcam before this meeting and I regret that I didn't because I lost time with diagnostics and not realizing it was my webcam and not the other services we were trying to make it work that was causing the issue.  I ended up breaking out my Mac which has been always successful in Zoom meetings etc. to have the meeting.

Now I have to figure out what's wrong with my webcam and some instructions require going into the Bios.  I really don't like that.  My daughter says forget it and go to Amazon and buy a webcam and be done with it.  What to do...what to do?

Thank you for your advice @Lady X.  I did go ahead and buy a webcam.  It's bigger then I thought it would be and I'm not sure if it will work on my laptop and I may have to use it on my desktop screen instead?

You're so right, tech support is a pita.  I went through a lot to get my laptop repaired months ago and I'm not looking forward to the phone call again and making the on site appointment for repair. 

It just aggravates me that I've spent so much on this laptop and it's had so many issues.  @Mark Ransome posted a link on why stuff doesn't last long anymore.  I'll have to find that link.  It was so true.

I will get the webcam out-of-the-box tomorrow and see how chunky it is on my laptop...though I think, it's obvious it's going to be too big.  That's okay, I could use it on my desktop since there's isn't a camera at all on the monitor. 

I've yet to call Dell back.  I did their diagnostic thing, sent them the results with a screen shot, now they want to set up a phone appointment time.  Personally, I'd rather have the directions and move forward on the diagnostic, but okay, at least they are trying to get it resolved.....unlike my experience with Dish Satellite today.  Oy vay, that was a painful 50 minute tech call and 50 minutes of my life I will never get back.

Indeed, it's pretty rare to get someone competent on the line that's not sifting through a manual or not putting you on hold often to go get someone else that may know what to do to fix your issue. True, very little competition left since the pandemic.  All of the small business that thrived on the personal approach and customer retention are mostly gone and all you have left are the big conglomerate stores.

The plight of even mediocre customer service has down graded even more since the pandemic. Those companies that are choosing ESG over doing what's right for their customers are also having a downward spiral.  I just read some grievous management program that Best Buy is offering and it's racial exclusionary.  Another company to boycott.