About a month and a half ago, my girlfriend’s parents’ computer started acting strange. For whatever reason, it would never get past the login screen when booting, but it did this consistently. I checked everything that I could, but didn’t have any idea as to why it was happening.

Anyways, in the end, I had no idea what was wrong, and I was having troubles re-installing Windows XP on there. Ultimately, they ended up paying for new computer parts, which I put together into a nice system for them. Compared to the old thing, it flies.

So now I’ve got this PIII 700MHz at home, and I need to find a good use for it. I’ve basically decided that for the time being, it’ll be my test platform. I had a 512MB stick of PC133 RAM lying around, so now it’s got a total of 512MB+256MB+128MB=896MB of RAM. Should be good for a while. If I want to test any software or an unattended XP installation, I’ll use it. The network card also has WOL (Wake-On-Lan) support, so I can suspend the computer, and then start it up remotely. Then, once it’s up and running again, Hamachi starts, and I can connect to it through Remote Desktop. I can install my programs, play with whatever I want, and then when I’m done, put it back in standby.

Oh - and anyone who says that PIII is too slow for XP - let me tell you, it’s just peachy. All XP needs to run decently is 256MB of RAM. 512MB will make it much better, but if you just surf the web or write documents, 256MB is fine.

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So, I had been having some troubles with my battery lately. I had first noticed that the wear level of the battery was quite high (15%) after only 4 months. I called Dell about it, and they told me to monitor it, and then let them know if the problem persisted.

I checked again, and now it’s at 23%. Not only that, but when it’s fully charged, and I unplug it, it immediately reports a charge of 95%. When it’s down to 20%, it’ll drop to 7% right away. Kinda sketchy behaviour, no?

So I wrote a fairly detailed support request letter to them on tuesday explaining my problem. I give them all the technical details I can think that they might need, and wait.Today, after I was done my lunch, my cellphone rings. It’s one of Dell’s Technical Support team, telling me that he was reading my e-mail, and he wanted to confirm what my problem was. I say pretty much what I wrote, and without any hassling he says “Ok, we’ll replace your battery for you.” He said that it should take about 2 business days to ship, so hopefully it’ll be here by Monday or Tuesday.

Yet another reason I’m happy I went with Dell when I bought this laptop. Their batteries are covered for 1 year under warranty, although they aren’t covered under my extended CompleteCare warranty. The CompleteCare is a great deal though. For $300 CAD, you get three years of extended warranty that includes accidental damage.

You spill your coffee on your laptop? No problem.
It drops off the table? No problem.
You get a power surge in your house, and it fries your laptop? No problem

Need I say more?

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My friend sent me this video a couple of days ago. I put it up on Google Video for all to enjoy.

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