Venting: My Dell is Great!

I've used OSX for five years, and had a near-flawless experience (it failed once when my drive died). My Powerbook-G4 is five years old, and has dust from 9 countries (AU, CA, CN, GB, HK, ID, JP, KR, TH) in it. I reboot when the update makes me, and I've had to purchase very few additional components (such as virus checkers, SSH tools, email products, etc).

The Dell build quality, OS quality, integration, and general user-experience would not be so bad if I had not been using a Mac. I would have assumed that every PC did this, but now it highlights what's possible but obviously beyond the reach of Dell and Microsoft, even five years old.

This tumblr is merely to track the little things I need to do every day to get the Dell to work.

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Posts tagged hang

Apr 9

Hang: Left alone too long

Had to reboot (as always, using a long-press on the power button) after I left the Dell alone for 20 min to make a call. Outlook, firefox were up, but the Dell had gone to standby while connected to power. No idea what caused it, but returning from standby hung before i had the keyboard up.

This might be related to my habit of hitting caps-lock to watch for a flickering light to tell me when the Dell has come back (Mac takes 2-3 seconds after opening the cover before it’s usable, from full sleep, so even 10 seconds seems like 3x too long).

All work lost, but at least it was near the start of the day.

Another Reboot

This reboot was a case of letting the Dell sleep while connected to power (hibernate deactivated), then waking it, logging in, and have it never ever show signs of having a keyboard connected, although the trackpad works until it re-activates the bluetooth stack. I’m not sure why it re-activates, since the bluetooth mouse works fine until it (re)starts bluetooth. This kinda feels like when your car is running, you hit the starter motor, it grinds, you blush, except rather than driving away with a shy chuckle, the car’s tires explode.

Mar 27

Hung on Wakeup

Opened up laptop to find a ticketless Itinerary; hung. Screen visible after coming out of hibernation, but no response to mouse movement (trackpad or pointer) or keyboard. Reboot required.