BigTex,
That sucks that you have had a bad experience. In the case of a CD-RW, it may make more sense just to spend $50 on a brand new one than mess with crappy telephone support. Hopefully the problem is hardware related and not some software issue on your PC. It's likely that is why Dell hasn't sent a tech...because they haven't determined for sure that it's a hardware problem.
LT,
I totally agree... HP printers and Dell servers/desktops/laptops are a good way to go. We actually now buy IBM stuff because it was dictated by corporate, but their equipment seems fine too...and actually I like their Thinkpads better than Dell laptops. I haven't messed with IBM server hardware yet, but in some ways it looks better than PowerEdge server equipment, too.