November 15, 2005
Lil' Dell, they done him wrong
Lil' Dell, (our laptop, a Dell Inspiron) has given up the ghost. We now suffer the-green-screen-of-death with all the black transformed into a lurid green and everything pixellated to hell. I suspect it has something to do with our habit of leaving the laptop permanently-on-since-we-bought-it-in-2003. Of course if you'd asked me I could have figured out that this would be bad for it but NO ONE asked me!
Each night while we were sleeping Lil'Dell here was madly beavering away being sociable, NOT downloading software and music of course, just being sociable, and we never had to wait that few extra seconds when we wanted to use him, just wiggle the mouse and off he went, quicker than a bride's nightie! (Well not quite, it IS Windows) We did turn him off briefly once in a blue moon if he started dragging his feet some but only just long enough to re-start him. Lil' Dell took this sportingly and never indicated that it was getting too much for him, never pleaded to be given a rest, never complained.
The-green-screen-of-death first appeared about a month ago but after implementing a strict policy of "have you turned off the laptop?" Lil' Dell seemed to be coping and we were kidding ourselves that we could go on as if nothing had happened. This head-in-sand-policy was working for us until Sunday when despite a long and restful weekend little Dell just couldn't cope with one more start up. The green-screen-of-death appeared again and despite laying up for several days Lil' Dell doesn't appear to be improving at all. I toyed with buying him a new video card but ironically what attracted me to Lil' Dell in the first place has proven to be my downfall. I fell for Lil' Dell because of his new-fangled Centrino chip with WI-Fi. Seems the video card is included in the chip and doesn't exist as a seperate component.
Posted by Faith | TrackBack