Now that the semester is finally over, I thought that I would be able to get some quality development time in. My Dell XPS M1730, however, had other ideas. I've been having nothing but problems with it for the last, oh, four or five months. For a while, the Battlefield 2142 would come up with visual glitches, showing weird model textures:
And sometimes even getting the in-game text all jacked-up:
Most irritating! Especially since I was trying to gather gameplay images for my book project. And since I also wanted to sink my teeth into Blender and get more modeling done. So, after countless software re-installs, driver wipes and updates, memory stress tests, and graphics card stress tests, I finally turned the XPS over to campus tech support, who installed a new motherboard and, just yesterday, a new graphics card.
The XPS worked well for about one day, whereupon it promptly crashed hard to a black screen and now stubbornly refuses even to boot. I'm now on a Dell Latitude D630 loaner and am watching Essential Blender Training videos to keep in the flow. Hopefully the XPS will be back soon in good working order (which I doubt), so that I can get back to game development and, most important, so that I can pose as a hard-core gamer at the upcoming Humanities Gaming Institute.
Would I ever get (or request) a Dell product again? Given my experiences with the XPS, probably not. Maybe a comparable Apple product would be nicer.
I worked at dell and I know how bad they are! Need more details.... let me know.
ReplyDeletethree words:
they don't care.
plain and simple. LOL.
Dell has never been good to me, equipment wise and employment wise. arrrg.
CyberpowerPC is awesome. had mine for 2 years and its been awesome. they got great prices and they give you top-notch gear. my system was a little under 1000 bucks.
an apple of the same specs would run you almost 3000! ouch! Plus you cant upgrade them easy.
Good luck Neville!
Well, apparently the video card was replaced (for the second time). The motherboard was already replaced a few months ago. Oh...and a new keyboard. So, basically the computer is entirely new on the inside.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little stuck with my Dell equipment as the university provides it for me. Were I to get my own, however, I'd probably get something different. I saw a nice Asus laptop a few weeks ago. And thanks for the CyberpowerPC tip; I'll have to check them out, too.
No probs ;-) good luck!
ReplyDelete