Julie Marto of Medfield, Massachusetts, purchased a Dell Inspiron notebook running Windows XP last October. Through a program called Express Upgrade, she was promised a free copy of Windows Vista when the operating system became commercially available. It"s been five months since Vista went on sale January 30. Marto is still waiting and steaming mad.
"I"ve done everything I can to get my Vista upgrade including e-mailing a request to Michael Dell himself," Marto says. She says she never received a reply from Michael Dell. Marto isn"t alone. Since PC World originally reported problems back in March with the Vista upgrade program, people have continued to send us e-mail and post complaints to our community forums citing paperwork nightmares, Vista upgrade disc no-shows, and long hold times when trying to contact vendors or third-party companies handling the upgrades. One company handling the Vista Express Upgrades, ModusLink, acknowledges some problems persist, but maintains most customers have received their Vista upgrade discs by now. Dell complaints have been filtering into PC World, but can also be found by scanning the company"s support forum.