A bad Dell experience!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

oh...ma...gah...

Dell are not responsible for Internet Explorer, they are responsible for the laptop, their position if fully understandable.

For the future, I would recommend downloading an alternative browser such as FireFox or Opera so if Internet Explorer goes wrong you've got something else which can get you online so you can get assistance from a forum like this for free.

John

If you get a virus or install crapware such as the Google Toolbar on your computer and it breaks it, why should Dell or Microsoft fix it for free? You should educate yourself on how to remove spyware and viruses from your computer. There are many free tools available that can remove most spyware and if you don't have anti-virus protection you should purchase that.

wow....just wow...

dell should be investigated for this

Problems with internet explorer are not the responsiblity of Dell and NOT covered under your warranty so why be upset with dell?? Maybe you should have asked us here at the forum, we probly could have helped you. NO ONE other than Microsoft is going to give you support on internet explorer or windows my friend, c'est la vie et la vie est salope.

Jerry,

I apologise. I am not trying to be rude and I shouldn't have assumed you didn't check for spyware. My point is that Dell shouldn't be expected to repair user inflicted problems for free. It might have taken the tech 5 sec to identify that you have Google Toolbar installed and that is what was breaking Explorer, but I think it would have take much longer. I would be willing to bet 80-90% of the desktop problems called into them are spyware or virus related, and some of them can take a long time to identify and remove.

Tom

Also, was the $239 for just that incident or for unlimited support for a year or more. If it was for the latter, that is not such a bad deal.

Jerry,

If you get through the first three months without a hardware problem, you probably won't have one. Virus and spyware problems are a constant threat. Software support is also a lot more labor intensive than hardware support and takes more training and knowledge. If you spend only ten hours on the phone with them in the next three years that is only $24 per hour you are paying. I own a computer support company and we charge more than $239 for 3 hours of support. Granted that is for onsite support instead of phone support and I like to think we are better than Dell tech support, but $239 still seems like a good deal for unlimited support.

Tom

The google toolbar is_not spyware, and someone with access to your computer installed it.

Honestly I am not aware of many OEM vendors that cover software issues 'for free' and consider it part of their standard warranty.

While I have never seen the Google Toolbar break Intnernet Explorer and I am surprised removing it fixed Jerry's proble, it is spyware. It reports back to Google with every web page you visit. That is by definition spyware. Also, applications such as the current version of Winzip and Realplayer bundle and install Google Toolbar. He could have installed it himself without realizing it.

Tom

From time to time, someone asks why the Google search bar is not targeted as spyware. It works similarly to other toolbars which are targeted as spyware (Comet Cursor, Search-Explorer, Alexa, etc) by Ad-aware, Spybot, Aluria, and other spyware removal tools. Jamie Rosen, founder of Cometsystems (Comet Cursor) had this to say about it while trying to make the case that Comet Cursor should no longer be targeted by Ad-aware:

Google has a feature in its toolbar called page rank that ranks pages as you visit them. Not surprisingly, it requires the software to send every url you visit to google. That sounds alarming. But so long as you can turn it off and so long as the company makes it clear that it's not saving this information to profile you, it isn't necessarily an insidious thing. Some users want these so-called connected services -- they can be quite cool and useful.

Let me explain what is different about the Google toolbar that keeps it from being targeted as spyware like many other third party toolbars. Google uses its page rank system to make its search engine more useful, as opposed to using it to gather information about you to sell you tailored advertisements. You are not a source of income to Google.com, except as a site visitor looking at the same ads everyone else sees, toolbar or no toolbar.

Google goes to great lengths to explain that, in their own words, there may be privacy issues with some of the features, and provides an alternate download where those features are disabled. You have to go out of your way to find and activate those features. Contrast this behavior to some other toolbar makers who use activex to spread like trojans, gather statistical data on the user to present them with "more relevent special offers", forcibly reset browser settings, and make it damned hard to remove.

Google does make money on it in a roundabout way, because these features make their search engine more accurate and useful, which makes more people likely to use it and click the ads they sell on the site. The ads, by the way, are determined by the keywords you search for, NOT where you've been surfing, unlike many of the other toolbars. You'd see the same ads with or without the toolbar installed.

So, is the Google toolbar spyware? No, it is not.

Do you really believe that tripe? If you have the advanced features enabled on the toolbar, it reports every web page you visit to Google. The software gets installed without your explicit consent as a bundle with other software you have downloaded. It then reports all webpages you visit back to Google and reads your cookie unless you disable the advanced features. To find out they are spying on you, you have to read their privacy policy.

So, is Google toolbar spyware? Yes, it is.

In your opinion, and maybe a couple of other anti-google websites it is. However others, including myself, do not feel that it is spyware. Who's right and who's wrong.....whatever floats your boat I suppose.

By this definition every net-related program is spyware: your browser obviously sends information away, your mail client, ICQ, well, even ssh usully sends information (to the DNS server) about the host you are trying to connect to.

I guess that something is spyware if:
1) its main goal is to collect imformation
2) during the installation you were not clearly notified about this

Of course, the google toolbar was made to collect information, but it was not a fine print in some document -- the installation procedure was absolutely clear that the purpose of the software is to collect information in order to calculate pageranks and there was also an option to turn this off.

There are a lot of people (most of them, I guess) who simply don't mind that somebody will know that user number 71523623 today visited some particular website and when goes to some other website -- pageranks are for them.

BTW: If you want to know what information is leaked from your computer you should block all outgoing connections, set a proxy (e.g., privoxy) and review its logs.

FWIW I build and service computers for a living, and I clean roughly 20 pc's each week that are plagued with malware (spyware, adware, viruses). I have never seen the google toolbar cause a problem. However we can see that the OP clearly had a problem with it. This is not uncommon as all software can and will cause random issues at any given time.