If you own a car, you probably don’t give much thought to the need to regularly change the oil and perform a tune-up. Soot, rust particles, dirt, and other contaminants in the oil and filters can cause poor performance, cause unnecessary wear-and-tear, and damage the engine and associated systems.
A PC, like a car, can also accumulate “contaminants” that jeopardize its performance and shortens its usability. These contaminants include spyware, viruses, duplicate and corrupt files, cookies, unused programs, and much more. As a result, your PC may become sluggish, have to be rebooted often because of error messages or applications locking up, and show that your hard drive if full with fragmented files and applications.
That’s why it advisable to periodically tune-up your PC. While you can use off-the-shelf software to help you perform various maintenance tasks, they may be time-consuming to run and not do everything that’s necessary to ensure that your PC is in tip-top shape.
Dell offers two types of tune-up services. The first one is assisted. Using DellConnect to remotely access your PC over a broadband connection, a technician will perform various maintenance tasks, including showing you how to defragment your hard drive. This service is offered through Dell On Call.
The automated or monthly version of Dell PC Tune-Up allows you to choose the day and time of the month you want your PC tuned up. A typical tuneup includes hard drive defrag, removal of unwanted and temporary files, updated security settings, verification of “good” restore points, and other maintenance activities designed to improve PC performance and security. The monthly version is available as an annual subscription and is a feature of Dell Support 3, a complimentary application that provides real-time health scans and information on how to maintain your PC.
Both versions of PC Tune-Up are available to customers in the U.S. and Canada. Click here to learn more about the monthly version and how easy it is to keep your PC running at peak performance.
PC Tune-Up joins another successful support tool in Dell’s efforts to improve service delivery. DellConnect, the remote-diagnostics tool used by technicians to fix hardware problems under warranty, is approaching nearly 5 million sessions with a 93 percent satisfaction rate.
Independent data shows Dell’s efforts to improve service are paying off. Nationwide, the number of customer complaints to the Better Business Bureau (BBB) is down 12 percent this past full year, and some third-party customer-service surveys show some improvement: the 2006 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) published by the University of Michigan improved 4 points to the highest level for Dell since 2004.