goodbye dell, hello hp probook!

after 15+ years using dell computers and products, time for a change. the last 3 weeks trying to get dell to repair and/or replace my vostro 1400 laptop have been a long and unpleasant nightmare. for the first time in a very long time i took a business trip sans laptop - thanks to my malfunctioning vostro.

hopefully, those days are in the past. today i unpacked my hp probook 4415s and worked on getting across the learning curve. so far, so good! i was a little hesitant to pass up an intel processor for an amd - but it looks like the amd chip is well up to the task.

welcome hp!!

laptop repair - take two!

that's a photo of the new "motherboard" as it's about be installed in my laptop. right next to it is the old "new" motherboard that was installed last thursday night. that original repair was intended to fix my laptop's video card, which crashed and left me with a blank screen! thursday night i had a working laptop for just over 15 minutes before the computer crashed again - this time because it seemingly overheated. the error message indicated the fan may have failed!!

despite the overheating shut-off and subsequent error message to check the fan, dell decided to send out a new motherboard to replace the one it had just installed! it went out on friday, was delivered to the technician this morning, and he brought it over and installed it today. whatever incompatibility problem existed between board one and my old fan, the new board seems to have taken to the old fan (or vice versa?) beautifully! the laptop has been up and running for a few hours now. phew!

hopefully, this will be the first - and last - post about laptop operating problems :D
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update: wow, the second repair lasted for only a few hours before the computer crashed again! technically, that's an improvement over the 15 minutes it lived after the first repair! arrrgh!! another computer surgery around the corner :(