The new Dell was really what exacerbated the problem. The motherboards were failing on a weekly basis. They would work for a few days, and then when trying to boot the computer, I would get a starting-up screen that would just never proceed to anything. Dell did replace 3 motherboards free of charge, at my home, and gave me a $500 gift certificate that I used to buy a second Dell, one that would work when the other died. But the whole ordeal just soured me. The same technician (local freelance guy Dell was using) came to replace all three boards. He said that he was pretty busy doing that very thing all over the city. He also indicated that we was not putting in new motherboards…they were all "refurbished" ones that had been pulled from other dead machines. All were made in China, which is not known for its rigorous quality control.
I'm really not missing Windows, even at work. Our Preventer of Information Technology managed to get a policy approved that limits use of the college's computers to virtually nothing. Can't have any programs on the computers other than Microsoft Office, and cannot upgrade any existing software (permissions are all removed). So, using it is a pain in the butt. Every few minutes, a pop-up tells you that an update/fix is available, but we can't install the update. And we also don't have permission to turn off the notices that an update is available. Since I prefer Open Office's menu structure over the Microsoft Office menu structure, I just bring in a Mac laptop and use it. When OIT learns of this, I'm sure they will ban the use of faculty-owned laptops on campus. Jeffery On May 15, 2012, at 7:09 AM, William Robb wrote: > On 14/05/2012 8:21 PM, Jeffery Smith wrote: >> I guess it was the fact that Vista even made it out of beta that sickened >> me. If they had rebadged Windows XT as Windows Vista, it would have won PC >> Magazine's OS of the year. I had 4 gb of memory, more than all of my >> previous computers combined. And "resize to 600 pixels wide" locked it up >> long enough for me to make coffee. >> >> > We used Vista on a few machines at the studio I worked at. While I never > learned to like it (it didn't play nice in our network), we never had any > operational problems such as what you are describing. We weren't using Dells, > but they were still OTS machines with the same canned goop that Dells come > with. > You either had a hardware problem (bad ram) or you had something wrong in > your configuration. > Vista wasn't good, but it wasn't ~that~ bad either. > > -- > > William Robb > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
