Computer Upgrades

I just ordered four 1 gigabyte memory sticks for my computer from Dell. Only about $88 for all four memory sticks. Wow 4 GB of RAM for $88 bucks. Pretty good if you ask me. Now I suppose I could have found it at an even less expensive price somewhere but I like buying upgrades for my Dell XPS from Dell.

As for this PC, I currently have two 512MB sticks in there and will replace them with the four new memory sticks. My Dell XPS will hold a maximum of 4GB of RAM and that is what I am putting into it. So can someone tell me, what is this going to do for my PC's performance? I figure to be buying a few nice PC games in the near future and am hoping the extra RAM will make them play at their best or at least better than with less memory.

Next up, a new operating system from Windows, no not VISTA but whatever comes out next.
My PC is 4 years old, or just a tad older, but I figure I'll get at least 2 or 3 more years out of it therefore the upgrades. I may buy a new one next year, and if I do then this upgraded one will go to my son who currently is using one that is about 7 years old.

All the best,
Glenn B

Dell Revisited...

...twice today. As it came out today, the Dell tech service guy on Friday did not get my PC back to well being. So when I again got the blue screen today, I again called Dell. I was on the phone about 2 1/2 hours (only 5 minute wait time today), and after that was all done I was told to save whatever was important on my PC, then call back, and do a complete wipe and reload of my system. So I saved what I figured I needed, then I called Dell back. I got a new tech service guy, who was really great, then had the system totally wiped, then reloaded most of my necessary software, and none of my fun software. I am guessing that in all I was on the phone with dell tech support today for a total of about 4 hours and 45 minutes, and my cell phone timer confirms it. I have been installing software for another 2 to 3 hours. Wow, what a pain; but I know for sure that if this had been my former computer's manufacturer and I had this problem they would have told me go fly a kite. Dell took care of it even though they thought, and were almost positive that the problem was due to a virus. Whatever as the cause, it is gone, but at a price. I forgot to make copies of my saved important emails! I did copy the Verizon program from my c drive, so maybe the saved emails are in there since I have MSN Internet service through Verizon, time and a phone call to Verizon tech service (I dread that call) will tell. As for other things lost, well I lost whatever Adobe photo editing software I had installed, Elements something or other. I cannot find a CD for it, and think that is because, as I recall, it was a freebie download from Adobe because i had an earlier version and they gave out a free beta version. It was great, but now I may have to buy Photoshop Elements. Oh well.

Oh well, kind of, sort of, almost back to normal.

All the best,
Glenn B

DELL - Rocks

At least their XPS premiere tech service does. I called them tonight because there were a bunch of problems that came up, a couple of different blue screens showing u when i started my PC, then when I tried to shut it down the fans went into overdrive and it would not shut off until I pulled the power cord. Well I was pissed because let us just say that hypothetically speaking I know someone in my house screwed up on the PC, and I know who it was, though my son admits nothing and denies everything, or so I suppose he will when i confront him about this (must have learned that from me). I tried to fix it to no avail, then got on the horn to Dell. After a 37 minute wait (very long, they usually picked up within a few minutes for the XPS service the few times I called in the past) I got a nice guy on the phone who ran through a list of possibilities with me as he tried to diagnose the problem. he had it sort of figured out in about 45 minutes or so, then he had to work me through the fix. That took somewhat longer, but it is apparently working now. He figured that somehow the video drivers got corrupted, I wonder how that could have happened. Whatever, he got it working, and you know what - my old Micron would have been up the creek without a paddle or even a canoe, because I am pretty sure Micron would have told me to pound sand because it was a software problem. This Dell is 4 years old, with 1o more months of warranty, and they got right to fixing it - software problem or not! I have to commend them, the techie did a damn good job. All in all I spent over 2 hours 40 minutes getting it fixed. But now that is out of the way, so maybe later today, I can get back to some serious blogging.

All the best,
Glenn B