My name is Mike, I’m a Technical Analyst located at Dell corporate headquarters in Round Rock, TX. I’m part of an internet outreach team developed to interact with the online community regarding technical questions and issues that customers face with Dell products. I’ve read your post and wanted to offer some help and clarification.

First, my apologies about the lost post. I had a similar experience when I was in school and can very clearly remember the disbelief and shock of watching my screen go completely black, and then realizing I hadn’t yet saved. This, of course, was before Microsoft had their auto save and recovery features built in to Word. I remember cursing the computer and swearing that from then on out I would only use paper and pen, which only lasted until my hand started cramping from writing too much. I also have 2 cats that, although impress me with their mission impossible acrobatics and specialized hand to hand combat tactics, have cost me quite a bit in both monetary funds and mental frustration.

Next, I noticed that you said it was 6 months after you purchased your notebook that this problem started. This would indicate that it would have been under warranty at the time, and perhaps still is. You can check warranty status here: http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/en/warranty_information?c=us&l=en&s=gen&~ck=ln&lnki=0. This type of problem is covered under the hardware warranty which would replace any part that is causing the problem, be it with the motherboard, the ac adapter, or the battery (which comes with a standard maximum one year warranty.) I would be happy to help if at all possible so please feel free to email me at customer_advocate@dell.com with this topic in the subject line, ATTN: Mike B (Lean Left Blog Post) and I’ll get back to you ASAP. I hope to hear from you soon.

Thank you,

Mike
Dell customer advocate

Yep, works great. Just couldn’t understand why it defaulted to micro-print. Whatever it was it seems to be fixed.

IE 6 on Windows 2000, as the Good Lord intended. IE 7 sucks. I have Firefox but don’t use it.

I do like the new look. Very readable and a good top banner.

This is by far the best left leaning blog I know of. I may not agree much with you but the tone and the content is light years ahead of the Daily KOS, PatriotBoy, Steve Gilliard, Fire Dog lake, KnoxViews and others.

Yeah – I think that’s true for me, too.

I’ve been hesitating just because of the entry-cost barrier: even with a low-end MacBook, a reasonable selection of ancillaries, and some applications software, you’re looking at $2K – $2500 to get back to the functionality you probably have with your long-term accumulation of Wintel hardware and apps – especially if you’re handcuffed to Microsoft Office. (Yes, you can now run Windows apps on the Mac, but, (1) that defeats the purpose, and (2) you really only want to do that with Windows-only apps; anything you can get in a native Mac version you do want to get in the Mac version, because you lose all the Mac functionality when you shut down and reboot in Windows.)

I do want to upgrade, but I simply don’t have that kind of bread lying around. In the meantime, my legacy system gets clunkier and clunkier, and I keep kludging it up $100 at a time to keep going rather than take the plunge and start from scratch.

I’ll get them back – -as well as some other elements – -over the next few days.

9

What system are you on? On my firefox on windows, the lettering looks the same size.