Mostly Harmless

I take pictures in Nikon’s raw NEF format because I can use Photoshop Element’s raw importer to tweak the exposure, clarity, black level, etc.  But the NEF files are often 9 MB files and I have almost 3,000 of them and that’s just since May.  That came out to 22 GB’s and counting. Even cleaning up the ones I don’t want to keep still leaves me with a mess.

Time to get more storage. Instead of just installing another drive in my system, I wanted to get an external drive.  In the past I was put off on USB hard drive cases, so this time I went looking for a complete out of the box solution.

Costco had a instant manufacturer’s rebate on the 1 TB Western Digital MyBook Home Edition.  We went and picked it up very quickly. It supports USB 2.0 (480 Mb/s max), Firewire (400 Mb/s max), and eSATA (3Gb/s max).

Guess which interface I picked?  But my Dell XPS 700720 does not have a built in eSATA port.  So I went to Bestbuy and picked up a DYNEX eSATA card and a 6 foot long cable (the MyBook only comes with USB and Firewire cables).

After I installed the card and hooked up the drive, I ran “Command Prompt” as Administrator and ran this command:

convert F: /FS:NTFS

The drive ships with a FAT32 file system and I prefer NTFS for Vista.  The mostly empty drive converted quickly and I started to move data to it.

It’s a fast drive when using eSATA.  I went to my Pictures short cut and right clicked the icon. I selected Properties -> Location, clicked Move…, typed in the new location on the MyBook and clicked Apply.

It moved 22 GBs of files onto the drive in no time at all.  Less than 10 minutes.  Using USB or my Firewire port would have taken a lot longer than that.

Right now I’m playing with my Photoshop Elements catalog, but so far I’m satisfied with the new drive.  It’s got a LED bar on the face of it that does the vertical Cylon eye thing.  I may keep that covered up when I’m watching old episodes of Battlestar Galactica just to be safe.

Today the service technician arrived to do the scheduled upgrade of my XPS 700 to XPS 720 mother board. It was all professional and mostly well done with four not so big problems I noticed after he left.

1. The color LED’s on the top half of the front panel are setup wrong. When I select the default diamond color, it comes up gold. Lucky for me the off setting works. This is probably due to the LED cable being put on incorrectly.
2. The back panel where the ports for USB, ethernet, etc. is off by a millimeter so when I plug USB stuff in it goes in tightly. No big deal, I can live with that.
3. The power button was not secured properly so it is recessed in more than it should be. Really annoying but I already see what he missed and how to fix it.
4. He did not wipe off the old thermal paste from the CPU and heat sink before putting it all back together. That one worries me and Alek (Alek said “Uh, don’t play long CPU intensive video games. You do have a temperature sensor right?”)

That last one worries me. Saturday Alek will come over with thermal paste and we’ll clean the heat sink and CPU and apply new. I am sure it will be fine until then.

Using 20/20 hindsight I can see that it would have been better if Alek and I did the installation. I figured that the Dell technician would be trained, and I am sure that he was. I am also sure that he’s over worked and had lots more stops to go today so I’m not upset or anything.

I did have to call up Microsoft and re-activate Vista but that was expected and I did that as soon as my PC booted up.

Note: calling up Microsoft to re-validate something I paid for feels like a protection racket. I had to call because I activated too many times and the online activation no longer works for me. I had to speak with someone because the voice system either does not like my accent (huh?) or my activation is flagged as “what is this guy doing activating over and over again?” I hope Microsoft never get greedy and asks for more protection money. I am sure that would never happen.

The upgrade and the service were free and it’s a good deal. If you qualify for this offer, go to the www.XPSUpgradeProgramDell.com web site and apply for this.

UPDATE: Nice! He forgot to connect one of my DVD drives.

I just received a call and an e-mail confirming my free upgrade and installation of the Dell XPS-720 motherboard (I have a XPS-700 from when it first came out).  So far so good.

Found out about this on Engadet this morning. This is cool: go here are read this and maybe this link too. Then go to http://www.xpsupgradeprogramdell.com/ and put in your XPS 700 service tag and sign up for the free motherboard exchange.

I signed up early this morning. It’s a remarkable offer and I qualify for a free exchange as well as a free installation. I’m supposed to hear from them within 10 business days and will post an update at that time.

When I ordered my XPS from Dell I had some problems. They were taken care of and I am a happy customer. To now also offer this free exchange as a way of saying “Thanks for the business” is a great way to guarantee that I’ll buy my next PC or laptop from Dell.

Now I really, really, hope that the original XPS 700 roll out taught them about ramping up for high demand.

Version 1.1.6 of the Flash BIOS is out and can be downloaded here. This version supports 64 bit operating systems.

The prior 1.1.3 release would not boot up an x64 Ubuntu live disk. Nice to have a 64 bit Core 2 Duo (what a lousy marketing name) and not be able to play with a 64 bit operating system. After I applied the update I loaded up my Ubuntu 6.06 x64 CD and booted into the live desktop. Cool, previously it would hang on just after unpacking the kernel.

This is probably done to support 64 bit Vista, but now I have the possibility of running a 64 bit Linux on my box just for fun.

Earlier this week I received the replacement system board from Dell for my XPS 700.

The old system board was not always starting up. Sometimes it would take 4 false starts to get it to boot up; it it was more than 3 I usually just gave up and went to bed.

The new board came in an anti-static bag with one cleaning pad and conductive paste.

The system board is attached to a plate that is held in by two screws. Once you get the cables put aside it’s straight forward to remove or install the system. Alek used the cleaning pad to make the top of the CPU spotless. The heat sink shined.

After the system was plugged in and running the fun began. The system would start and stop all without a hitch. That problem was completely solved. But the BIOS was not keeping the raid configuration, so the system could not boot.

I called the direct number I was given last week. I put in the extension and found out that my contacts voice mail was full. I could not even leave a message so I tried the general support line. While waiting I noticed that the BIOS was version 0.1.2 dated 5/5/06.

That did not fill me with confidence since the old system board was 1.1.3. After going around in circles, I unplugged the power, looked in the case at the connectors, and poof it started booting. I flashed the BIOS with the support person on the phone and all seems well now.

I’m going to call up the shipper and have the old system board picked up. In the meanwhile I’ll be pounding on the XPS 700 to make sure that it’s all good.

Update: 12:30PM 9/2/2006

After calling their 800 number, I got a gentleman who really knew what he was doing. It’s the system board. They are sending me a replacement system board.

The support technician actually restored my faith in Humanity!

That may be overstating it, but he really did his job well. I’ll see how long my replacement part takes to get here and if that solves the issue. Ought to; the error we were getting was the same each time.

Original blog entry here:

Sigh. Don’t buy computers from Dell. Give some other company a chance to screw up like Dell does.

I am really beginning to think that Dell’s only concern is to take orders and move boxes only. Their once really good support model is not really working.

Dell shipped me my XPS 700 and it works well. I am playing F.E.A.R. at 1920×1200 with all the options turned onto the max. I average about 112 FPS at that resolution.

It’s a great system. When it powers on that is.

Last night around midnight I tried to show Lily my new kick butt workstation. After 10 minutes of trying, the system would not turn on. The fans would switch on to max rpm and stay there. No BIOS messages on the screen, no sound from typing on the keyboard, nothing.

That’s bad on a new machine but that is not why I am complaining. When you buy something you expect it to work. But us “grown ups” know that sometimes this happens.

What really ticks me off is that Dell’s support system does not know my machine exists. I cannot get support because the service tag for my workstation is not recognized by their support system. I tried to call the support line and got the “Approximate wait time is 10 minutes” message. Having done that before, I figured I would try the online chat system.

The support rep I chatted with yesterday basically said “try back later”. 18 hours later the support system still does not know about my workstation. I tried the support chat again but since I did not have a valid service tag, the system would not even start a chat with the right person.

Instead I chatted with someone else who sent me to the correct queue. Which of course did not even start because I had did not have a valid tag number. One good thing about chat, as opposed to actually speaking with someone, is that I get a transcript of the chat, with me saying “it won’t work”. Doesn’t help me but I feel like I can at least track this nonsense.

I resorted to using the web page mailer to send a I’m-mad-as-hell message. I have no expectation that this will actually accomplish anything.

Sigh. Wonder if HP has decent workstations?

The PC I ordered from Dell June 18th arrived today. No complaints about the time it took, I knew that was going to be the case for a long time now. And the projected arrival was October 17th, so August 31st really is not bad.

It’s a monster. The UPS sticker says the box weighs over 70 pounds and they weren’t kidding. I spent most of the evening installing GAMES CPU and graphic intensive applications.

The only potential problem is that sometimes when I power it up it does not get past turning on the fans. It gets stuck and I need to push the power button down till it goes off. Also standby does not work for me. Not too surprised since it usually only works for me on laptops. But I eventually got it working for my old PC so I’ll likely need to keep tweaking till it works.

Good things do happen sometimes. Dell really did the right thing.

Last night at 7 pm the Dell rep left a voice mail on my work number. I called back this morning, some phone tag and spoke with the rep today.

The rep was really helpful and professional. In order to make it up to the customer (that’s me) they are offering me one of two options:

1. A Dell $200 gift card which will arrive 4 to 6 weeks after my workstation arrives.
2. An upgrade from my system’s Pentium D 960 to a Core 2 Duo E6700 with the understanding that the date will get pushed out into October.

I went for option number 2. My new ship date is October 17th.

The video card I ordered originally is not available so we swapped out the 1GB NVIDIA 7950 GX2 with a pair of SLI’ed 512MB 7900 cards. The old card was that in a single slot, so no real sacrifice there and performance ought to be about the same.

I received an e-mail from the rep with the new parts list. Pricing out the exact same system online is way more expensive than what I am paying. My discount comes out ~19% if I ordered the same system today.

That’s not bad and I can wait. If I get my system on or before October 17th I will be a really happy Dell customer.

This morning checked my Dell XPS 700 status page. Originally it was supposed to ship last Tuesday July 25th but on that day it got bumped to today August 1st.

This morning I checked and the status now says August 8th. Any bets what it will say next week?

Still no call from Dell regarding the offer of a free upgrade to a Core 2 Duo.

Here’s the time line:

1. Ordered the XPS 700 on June 18th.
2. ETA was originally July 25th shipping.
3. Updated July 25th to new ETA for shipping August 1st
4. Update August 1st to August 8th

What’s really funny is that there is that the new status requires me to click on a “I agree to this delay” link for FTC reasons. The link does not work; it gets a nice error page of 404 – File not found.