Enjoying the sights, sounds and smells of first-time parenthood. Progress on the vegetable garden and other ramblings of a gaijin in Japan’s least populous prefecture.
I hope I’m not jumping the gun.
The last couple of months have been far from the pick of the year. Perhaps the icing on the cake was the latest laptop misfortune, hence the lack of posts.
Some black vertical lines appeared on my screen whilst knocking up some New Year cards. Having rebooted the best I could get was the BSoD. After a few exchanges with Dell, the best they could come up with was a repair in their factory - fit a quickly superseded graphics card. For which I would have to pay dearly for, in both cases, and they would also not be liable for any damage caused etc.
Although difficult in Japan, I eventually found someone with a separate screen to test the output. Despite concerns about the motherboard, I pushed them to sell me a graphics card since you can’t buy them elsewhere, but to no avail.
Well there is always eBay. For a quarter of the price (again) I got the newer card I was after. It has two heat pipes and is currently running with the fans off, about 15 °C lower than the old Go 7800 with the fans on high. While I was shopping I got some thermal grease for the CPU, probably do the card as well when it gets de-furred before the summer. That will be the overheating test.
A little reminiscent of Wolfgang Petersen’s outstanding Das Boot. Power has been restored and the Craptop has now floated to the surface.
Dell said they were happy to help, if I paid. I declined for two reasons, principle and cost. My parents bought a replacement off eBay for a quarter of the price the same day. Pity it took over a week for the company to manage the trip to the Post Office. I am glad nevertheless.
It is worth a mention that the power adapter I received is the third revision (A03). The system was shipped thirteen months ago with the original (A00). A little surprising?
I shall have to keep this short as the power adapter for my reliable laptop has now ceased to function. This has happened a few weeks after my warranty expired. I expect to receive a reply from Dell reiterating this. What a choice of title for my previous post. How I laughed.
So until a replacement appears, I shall be in the garden - at least the forecast is favourable.
As mentioned before, I said I would continue to press Dell’s Technical Support department. My replacement hard disk came unformatted without the integral MediaDirect program. I requested the CD’s I needed to restore the system to what it was sold with. Today I got a response. My transferred warranty doesn’t cover the missing CD’s. These are usually included with the system sold in Asia. However, I have the option of completing an online form, to receive a quote. Posts on a few forums mention invoices to be three figures US.
The system I bought was probably amongst the earliest batches shipped in the UK. I paid extra for the NVIDIA 7800 Go graphics card, top spec a year ago. I am dumbfounded as to why that the latest drivers on the Dell site are still those released 18-Jan-06. None of the standard NVIDIA drivers are compatible. I discovered during my first rebuild, the card is underclocked to 250 MHz rather than the usual 400 MHz – to keep the temperature down. That wasn’t in the sales literature.
Before moving out to Japan I ordered a laptop from Dell. Having spent quite a while researching what was on the market I opted for the familiar company. Although paying a premium price, I hoped that any problems that might arise would be remedied with little fuss and the system would be reliable. Sadly, I found this was not the case.
Within a couple of weeks of moving out to Japan I found that the hard disk was full of bad sectors. After several attempts to repair the problem it was with reluctance, I formatted the drive and reinstalled Windows. It was fortunate I paid extra for the OS CD having paid extra for the Professional edition.
The warranty didn’t extend beyond the UK & Ireland, since these problems arose so soon I thought Dell might have gone the extra mile. Being a global company I thought it little hassle for them to either send me a replacement or contact details of somebody that spoke English in Japan. I would have used the Japanese support page if I would have been able to translate the pages and if the service recognised my system.
I emailed technical support, detailing the problem. I was asked to run a full diagnostics test, having sent the results I was then told “The error message you have got indicates that the hard drive is faulty” - pull the other one I thought.
Once established, the rollercoaster of conflicting emails, Escalations, passing the buck, one liners began.
After six months, I was about to cut my losses, when the 90W battery, (which I paid extra for) started to fail. I’d only run it on batteries a few times. I tried a different method in contacting Dell and was given a link to transfer my warranty to Japan. I did so and received a snotty reply stating the person was Technical Support not Customer Service. Trying again I was given the correct link and managed to get my warranty transferred. After a couple of hours with my wife navigating, we made a request to get parts replaced. The replies were in English and courteous, the parts came promptly as directed. I am pleased to get the parts replaced but as expected I do not have the functions of the original system, no diagnostics and in particular MediaDirect – I assume a selling point for some people.
Anyway, I was thinking about those less fortunate than me. I like the idea of Reduce, Reuse & Recycle. Given the amount of heat this kicks out, (enough BTU’s to heat a small church) I thought it could be married with other defunct devices, such as the George Foreman Lean Mean Grilling Machine. Perhaps those adventurous, with a working machine could try really multi-tasking.
I’ve not used the computer as a football, to flambé food, or in the jungle, in addition to the above…
Coating on the underside is flaking.
A lug in the middle of one of the USB sockets broke.
DVD R/RW eject button is usually unresponsive.
Decals peeling.
I will try the Japanese support again as they seem willing to help. Maybe after a year of trying I will get back to what I started with.
