Nicholas Toone

Tech

All computer hardware related info and rants can be found here.

  • Computer Update.

    Got the XPS back from Dell on January 7. It works!

    … except when I plug in the power adapter, then the touch pad stops working.

    Logged a ticket on January 8.

    January 10 I get a reply asking if I want to ship it to the Advanced Resolution Center. “It should only take 3-5 days.”

    I let them know I just got this thing back from the Advanced Resolution Center and asked what other options there are.

    In between all this, the touch pad starts randomly working while plugged in; maybe two out of every five attempts.

    January 12 I get a reply asking if I want to have someone come to the house and replace the motherboard.

    I take a deep breath and reply telling them the motherboard has been replaced twice now and that another motherboard seems like overkill. I tell them I’ll deal with it for now and open a new issue if it becomes completely unusable.

    This is unfortunate because when it’s working, this XPS is a great machine. I just can’t get past the issues I’ve had in the past five months.

    As with everything from Dell, it’s all turning into ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

     

  • The Saga Continues

    I Hate Dell

    I’m worried this page is going to become nothing but an anti-Dell site.

    Current XPS status: The tech showed up. The computer worked fine for him so he didn’t replace the motherboard. He updated the BIOS. We turned it on and off again more than a dozen times. It worked. I thanked him and he left. I worked on it for the rest of the afternoon. Turned the computer off. Later that evening I opened the lid…

    It wouldn’t boot up. Same shit as before.

    Called Dell. The guy on the phone was apologetic. I roasted his company a little.

    Me: “You realize I am now doing my work on a ten year old Mac Mini?”

    Him: “Wow, that must be slow.”

    Me: “Sure, but it still turns on.”

    On Christmas Eve, Dell shipped me a box. I packed up the XPS and dropped it off at Purolator.

    Current Status: “A tech is fixing your computer. One or more parts are Delayed.” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    If I get this thing back and it acts up again, I’m going to take it outside and back over it with my car. More than once.

  • Moving Over

    I’m typing this post on a second, maybe third hand ThinkPad, testing out IA Writer 1 on Windows to see if the experience mirrors that of macOS and so far so good. Reaper and Mixbus are doing their things as the licenses work for both platforms. Hell, pretty much all of the apps I use these days have Windows versions and they all run pretty damn good.

    The dark horse is MainStage which I use quite a bit and is an absolute steal if you’re on the Mac platform. It’s thirty bucks and comes with untold gigs of samples and is, quite simply, one of the most powerful, easiest to use  music performance apps out there. Moving to Windows is going to be super hard without MainStage.

    … Wait, what?

    (more…)