I’d been having progressively more frequent Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) crashes for my laptop, and had been harassing checking in with Dell about the issue for a while. But because each Dell interaction requires time I really can’t squeeze out, I hadn’t reached out to them for a few months. Until yesterday by about my sixth crash before noon.
Yes, it’s really that bad, and getting worse by the day.
Dell computers aren’t the best you can buy, in a lot of respects. Their machines are clunky, the battery life is laughable, the keyboard isn’t the most responsive, and so on and so forth. (Their XPS and Alienware lines are up there with Apple in quality, but also up there with Apple in terms of cost.) The one I have is a G-series and a little over three years old. Not the cheapest, not the most expensive. It’s intended as a gaming computer, but I wanted it because it had the specs I needed plus two hard drives.
I won’t bore you with all the particulars. Let’s just say it was worth it to me to upgrade to the gaming rig. For the stuff I needed, it was going to cost me more – a lot more – for a computer with any of the other brands I trusted.
There’s a reason I keep buying Dell, for all my grumbling. Price is a factor. Having a charge account with them doesn’t hurt. Oh, their telephones are manned by people in India/Pakistan/wherever, and their tech knowledge levels vary depending on which tech you get. But if/when there is a verifiable issue with the computer, they fix it, period. In fact, they sent a tech to our house today, and we live out in the middle of nowhere. I don’t know of any other computer company that does house calls, especially not for for a three-year-old laptop.
My guess that the motherboard was failing turned out to be right. Even I won’t try to swap out a motherboard on a laptop.
The tech brought out the new part, swapped it out, then discovered it didn’t have the connection to hook up the keyboard. Ummm… kind of a big deal. This isn’t a tablet and doesn’t have a touchscreen like my old ‘puter. The connector wasn’t broken: it was simply a blank space on the motherboard. The poor tech showed me while he apologized profusely that he couldn’t magically make it work.
I just shrugged. I already suspected the machine would have to be shipped off to Dell, so I wasn’t shocked, dismayed, or surprised when he said that might be the only way to get it fixed. He put things back together and I managed to get all my stuff backed up to an external drive, then I wiped everything on that machine except the basic vanilla Windows installation. All my files are gone, all my add-on programs uninstalled, etc. They’re sending me a box and I’ll ship it out to them.
I can live with shipping it out, long as it does get fixed.
Plus I still have my older laptop we kept as a backup – and while I recall it being interminably slow, it really isn’t. So I’m not going to be going through horrible ‘puter withdrawals whilst waiting for the newer machine to get fixed.
This has been the month for fixing stuff. Despite the frustrations and the time suck, I’m immensely grateful that 1) we had the savings to pay for the duct work on the house; 2) we had the money to pay for the unplanned car repair; and 3) the computer repair is covered under my service contract with Dell. And since it looks like I’m going to have to also have another tooth pulled (knew about it a while back, no surprise) I’m also thankful for my Health Savings account, which should cover that expense, with room to spare.
There’s been a bunch of little “fix it” stuff going on in the background, too.
One example: my security blanket bit the dust.
Not a literal security blanket: a quilt, one I loved to pieces. And “to pieces” is on the nose for the situation.
It started fraying around the edges a few months ago. It was fast becoming more fray than quilt, darn it. I kept hoping I could order another one exactly like it, or figure a way to repair it. From what I could find, that specific pattern was discontinued; and it was going to cost more for the materials to repair it than it would cost to replace it.
Thankfully a combination of some small accrued gift cards and some smart shopping had a replacement delivered today. Same manufacturer, different label and pattern. The new quilt is still too crisp to be uber-comfy, but it’ll soften up within a few washings.
Normally I love a paisley pattern. I was just hoping for less gaudy print. Fortunately, that’ll also soften with washing.
it’s a comparatively miniscule issue. It’s just another annoyance in a string of ’em, though.
Life continues to hand you lemons and you make a lemonade dish out of them. I hope the new quilt is soon as comfy as the old one. It’s pretty if that makes a difference. Good luck on the computer problems.
Thank you, Terri. Worst case scenario they can’t get the part (real possibility) and I’ll have to buy a new computer. If so, they should give me a trade-in on the one they can’t fix. We’ll see how it goes.