blamblog
About

happycreature[at]gmail[dot[com]

[ BLAMBLOG ]
Ed Locke's Grandpa
Happy Creature
Ms. Johnson


www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from blamb. Make your own badge here.

[ PILOTS! ]

Azerbic
BlaggBlog
Cityrag
Clusterfuck Nation
Daily Muse
Dead Robot
democraticSPACE
Enter the Chapel
estrojenn
50 Most
Finn's Space
John Gushue
Panopticist
Patrick Byck
PezGirl
Simple Splendor
Raspberry Sundae
TBIT

[ A-TEAM ]
AllThingsChristie & BWE
Bill Doskoch
Circadian Shift
Daily Dose
Davezilla
Dooce
Jett Superior
Kitty Bukkake
Sugarmama
Tony Pierce


[ TORONTO ROCKS ]
Accordion Guy
Alan Hunt
Andrew Spicer
Angie McKaig
armchair garbageman
Bacon and Eh's
BlogTO
Bored Astronaut
Cellar Dweller
Chip Tijuana
Chromewaves
Clara*
Consolation Champs
Biker Chick
Dave Howard
Day in the Life
Digifox
Easternblog
freckle stof
Help!
Ice Queen
indigoblog
JBWarehouse
Liz Vang
Luminescent
Lunerose
Maria
Marmalade
moot point
Nug
Photojunkie
Pony
Pshaw
Radio Weisblogg
Raymi
Riri's Braindump
RobotJohnny
Sally McKay
Sarah Pengelly
Secret Storm
ShanghaiM
Squiddity
Ultrablog
United Bingdom
wainbows
Warren Kinsella
Zoilus

[ ALL IN THE FAMILY ]
Merv!
Dad!
Gillian
Kevin!

[ ORGANIZIZED ]
GTA Bloggers
TorontoComic Jam

[ BEACHCOMBERS ]
Confessions of a Monkey
Good, Matthew
Good, Jennifer
Ian King
Jeff Merritt

[ GOTHAM CITY ]
Explananda
Lindsayism
My Blog is Poop
Rocketboom
Yoon!

[ ST. ELSEWHERE ]
Blogebrity
blogumentary
Brett Lamb: Oz
Bunny McIntosh
Dust My Broom
elanamatic
Fred the Blog
Go Fug Yourself
Grrrl Meets World
James Bow
Little Lioness
72hrchik
SKSmith
Shelly
Skillzy
Tom Tomorrow

[ 6 O'CLOCK NEWS ]
boing boing
Cursor
Drawn!
Fark
Garlicster
Metafilter
Plastic
The Register
SciFi Daily
Sexblogs
Slashdot
Space.com
The Smoking Gun
Zeropaid

[ CARTOONS ]
Corrigan
Children
of the Atom
Fiona Smyth
Maakies
MacKay
MNFTIU.cc
Secret Lair
Smell of Steve

[ VARIETY HOUR ]
B3TA
Hoogerbrugge
Milk & Cookies
Mumbleboy
Onion
Rathergood
XE

[ RERUNS ]

[ 2005 ]
JANUARY
FEBRUARY
MARCH
APRIL
MAY
JUNE
JULY
AUGUST
SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

[ 2004 ]
MAY
JUNE
JULY
AUGUST
SEPTEMBER
OCTOBER
NOVEMBER
DECEMBER

[ 2002 ]

[ 2003 ]

Thursday, October 06, 2005

!!! JUMP ALERT !!!

This morning I suffered through another computer incident, the third this year. It looks like Dell has jumped the shark. I've read anecdotes about similar experiences on blogs like Jeff Jarvis' and Maria's. Those combined with my own experience seem to confirm a trend.

From now on, buy Dell at your own risk.

Here's a bit of my history with their machines. My current box is at least the sixth Dell machine I've worked on and the third I've owned as you can see in the pic below:



Several years ago, I worked for a client who used to buy cheap PC clones and those machines were always messing up and having issues. There was a Dell in the office and I started using it and found it extremely reliable in comparison to the others (and what a machine, it had two hard drives with a combined 1Gb of memory!).

After an incident when the Dell survived some serious abuse from a rogue tech guy, I was impressed enough to get one for home. Then a second one a couple of years later. I worked on two other Dells at the client site. My first two machines -- both work just fine today -- took a lot of abuse and but were/are very reliable. I started recommending Dell to clients and when they'd ask me about their tech support, I would tell them that I bought those machines so it would be less likely that I'd need tech support, 'cause they were so tough. And reliable. All I care about is reliable.

This third machine is a different story. From the very start, something about it seemed off but I couldn't put my finger on it. Keyboards would stop working ... then start again, the cd drives seemed unstable ... the computer just 'felt' shakey. Last February (less than a year since the machine arrived) I had my first major incident when the computer went through some sort of frenzied self-repair routine that lasted a couple of days (this was preceded by a keyboard failure and the sound card becoming disabled). At the end, the system seemed to fix itself but I lost a huge whack of files.

I was heading into a busy season and needed my machine, so I did a full back up and worked through it and everything seemed relatively back to normal. Then, in August the same thing, only this time the hard drive was fried and I lost all my data after the February backup. I know, I know, I should have been backing up regularly ... but before this I had 6 incident-free years on multiple machines!

Over the past week, the warning signs have returned ... the keyboard stopped and started, the monitor cut out and today the whole machine went wacky. It seems to have calmed down now, but I spent the afternoon backing up everything in anticipation of another collapse. And this isn't one of their discount machines, this is a top-of-the-line XPS Dimension thingama-bobber. I bought the premium machine because I wanted it to be reliable like the others. If reliable is the bright centre of the universe, this machine is the farthest thing from it.

So that's my story. And I'm stuck with this junk for another two years. I've really enjoyed my old computers but I have no love for this one. Consider yourselves warned!
 

3:43 PM , # ,

|


Weblog Commenting and Trackback by HaloScan.com

, # ,

|