Skip to main content

Dell’s SupportAssist takes the ‘technical’ out of tech support

Dell has announced that its automated SupportAssist service will be available for most of its consumer desktops and laptops starting immediately.

The feature has already been available in the enterprise market for a number of years, but now Dell has committed to making the service available to all owners of Dell devices in the coming year.

Recommended Videos

The service will include 24/7 remote administration diagnosis, online chat, and all-day phone support for especially stubborn problems that require personal troubleshooting to get through.

“Consumers want fast and easy resolution of their technology issues and that’s exactly what Premium Support delivers,” said Doug Schmitt, vice president and general manager of Global Support and Deployment at Dell.

“Proactive support completely changes the tech support model because we call customers knowing the problem and how to address it instead of customers calling us to troubleshoot. This level of support is a first in the industry.”

Unlike other technical support systems, SupportAssist actually takes a proactive approach to healing the woes of your home computer. By actively monitoring your PC for any flaws, defects, faulty code, or dodgy installations, Dell’s automated system will fix any problem it spots even if you don’t ask it to first.

“Even the best-designed laptops, tablets, and desktops can have problems: Sometimes hardware simply gives out,” read Dell’s press release. “That’s why Dell has your back with Dell Premium Support and SupportAssist technology. If something goes wrong, Dell’s proactive, automated approach makes it as painless as possible to get your system running again.”

SupportAssist will be immediately pushed out to all Dell machines via an automatic update, and included with all new systems coming off the factory line starting today.

The service will premier at $39 for customers in the United States and Canada, for all products flying under the Dell Inspiron, XPS, Alienware, Venue, and Chromebook brands.

Chris Stobing
Self-proclaimed geek and nerd extraordinaire, Chris Stobing is a writer and blogger from the heart of Silicon Valley. Raised…
AMD’s RDNA 4 may surprise us in more ways than one
AMD RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT graphics cards.

Thanks to all the leaks, I thought I knew what to expect with AMD's upcoming RDNA 4. It turns out I may have been wrong on more than one account.

The latest leaks reveal that AMD's upcoming best graphics card may not be called the RX 8800 XT, as most leakers predicted, but will instead be referred to as the  RX 9070 XT. In addition, the first leaked benchmark of the GPU gives us a glimpse into the kind of performance we can expect, which could turn out to be a bit of a letdown.

Read more
This futuristic mechanical keyboard will set you back an eye-watering $1,600
Hands typing on The Icebreaker keyboard.

I've complained plenty about how some of the best gaming keyboards are too expensive, from the Razer Black Widow V4 75% to the Wooting 80HE, but nothing comes remotely close to The Icebreaker. Announced nearly a year ago by Serene Industries, The Icebreaker is unlike any keyboard I've ever seen -- and it's priced accordingly at $1,600. Plus shipping, of course.

What could justify such an extravagant price? Aluminum, it turns out. The keyboard is constructed of one single block of 6061 aluminum in what Serene Industries calls an "unorthodox wedge form." As if that wasn't enough metal, the keycaps are also made of aluminum, and Serene says they include "about 800" micro-perforations that allow the LED backlight of the keyboard to shine through.

Read more
Google one-ups Microsoft by making chats easier to transfer
Google Spaces in Google Chat on a MacBook.

In a recent blog post, Google announced that it is making it easier for admins to migrate from Microsoft Teams to Google Chat to reduce downtime. Admins can easily do this within the Google Chat migration menu and connect to opposing Microsoft accounts to transfer Teams data.

Google gave step-by-step instructions for admins on how to transfer the messages. Admins need to connect to their Microsoft account and upload a CSV of the Teams from where they transfer the messages. From there, it requires just entering a starting date for messages to be migrated from Teams and clicking Star migration. Once it's complete, it'll make the migrated space, messages, and conversation data available to Google Workspace users.

Read more