About ten days ago, I took delivery of a new toy - a Dell XPS M1330 laptop. I spent last weekend happily repartitioning and installing Fedora Linux and I was planning to write an entry this weekend about how well I was getting on with it.
Except, I'm not. It's stopped working.
I did some stuff on it on Tuesday evening. And then put it into hibernate mode and stuck it in the corner of the room. I started a new job on Wednesday and I've been a bit busy all in all, so I didn't pick it up again until last night.
To find that it didn't work at all.
This isn't, I pretty sure, something that has been caused by the partitioning. The system is completely dead. I don't even get to the BIOS boot screen. I just get a power light glowing feebly for a couple of seconds. The battery is fully charged and I've tried switching the machine on using both battery power and mains power. Nothing makes any difference.
This afternoon I posted a message on the Dell community forum and I've had a response from someone, but their suggested workaround doesn't seem to work. It seems I'll need to get in touch with Dell and send it back to either be fixed or replaced. Which is all a bit of a pain.
And that's not the only problem I've had. I watched a DVD last night and the quality of the picture wasn't very good. And it wasn't the DVD that was the problem. Other disks did the same thing. It's a problem either with the DVD player or the TV.
As you can see, the problem looks a bit like a glitch in the matrix. I get a dozen or so equally spaced parallel lines of interference on the screen. They fade out as a scene goes on but come back again if something moves across the screen or when the scene changes. I have many inputs going into the TV and currently it's only the DVD player that's giving this problem. The DVD player is plugged into the composite input on the TV, so I need to swap a few plugs around to see if the fault stays with the DVD player or switches to whatever is plugged into the composite input.
I hate it when technology goes wrong. And having two such expensive pieces of technology break on the same day only compounds my hate.
Maybe I'll just go back to reading books.
p.s. A small prize to the first person who leaves a comment telling me what film I was watching.
Except, I'm not. It's stopped working.
I did some stuff on it on Tuesday evening. And then put it into hibernate mode and stuck it in the corner of the room. I started a new job on Wednesday and I've been a bit busy all in all, so I didn't pick it up again until last night.
To find that it didn't work at all.
This isn't, I pretty sure, something that has been caused by the partitioning. The system is completely dead. I don't even get to the BIOS boot screen. I just get a power light glowing feebly for a couple of seconds. The battery is fully charged and I've tried switching the machine on using both battery power and mains power. Nothing makes any difference.
This afternoon I posted a message on the Dell community forum and I've had a response from someone, but their suggested workaround doesn't seem to work. It seems I'll need to get in touch with Dell and send it back to either be fixed or replaced. Which is all a bit of a pain.
And that's not the only problem I've had. I watched a DVD last night and the quality of the picture wasn't very good. And it wasn't the DVD that was the problem. Other disks did the same thing. It's a problem either with the DVD player or the TV.As you can see, the problem looks a bit like a glitch in the matrix. I get a dozen or so equally spaced parallel lines of interference on the screen. They fade out as a scene goes on but come back again if something moves across the screen or when the scene changes. I have many inputs going into the TV and currently it's only the DVD player that's giving this problem. The DVD player is plugged into the composite input on the TV, so I need to swap a few plugs around to see if the fault stays with the DVD player or switches to whatever is plugged into the composite input.
I hate it when technology goes wrong. And having two such expensive pieces of technology break on the same day only compounds my hate.
Maybe I'll just go back to reading books.
p.s. A small prize to the first person who leaves a comment telling me what film I was watching.
Well, it's Timothy Spall, but I don't know the movie, so I have to guess from imdb: "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"? -- Marcel
That's a terrible guess :-)
Sweeney Todd is set in Victorian England. And I think it's pretty obvious that this file is contemporary.
from a quick look at IMDB, I'd guess "Mysterious Creatures", though I know nothing about the film.
Just don't read books on a Sony Reader :-)
/R
Is it "All Or Nothing"? I feel I might be cheating a bit because I remember you saying last week that you got the DVD a while ago but were waiting for the right moment to watch it. So if I have won, it's because of my memory rather than my knowledge of independent British film!
It is "All Or Nothing". And, yes, you're cheating slightly :)
Good film though. Highly recommended.
Is it "All Or Nothing"? I didn't cheat, nor did I read the previous comments. What do I win and when can I expect to receive it?