Plan on the worst

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I have a love/hate relationship with Surface devices. They are my favorite for travel as the Surface Go is the lightest one, with the Surface Pro 7+ b
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Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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abbodi86, GreatAndPowerfulTech, Alex5723

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I have a Dell XPS 13 (using it now to write this!), and it’s one of the “super thin and light” breed of laptop that’s so popular now. Like the Macbook Air that is its main competitor (design wise), it is too thin to have standard USB type A ports or a HDMI ports. It has two USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports (like the Mac) that do it all. It’s extremely thin. Tough, too, as I am really clumsy at times, and it’s managed to shrug off my blunders.

The model I bought is called the “Developer’s Edition,” purchased through the business channel, even though I am neither a developer nor a business user of my XPS.

I bought it when Dell had some kind of an anniversary sale, so I got the business-oriented four year onsite warranty/accidental damage plan for a big discount (and the unit itself was discounted too). If I damage the screen, I don’t have to send it out… they will send the guy out to me to replace it, or (as I now know) they can do what they call a “parts only dispatch,” meaning they send me the part and I install it, which I don’t mind. On this unit, easy peasy for things like the lid assembly (they replace the screen as part of the unit) or the battery. I can have the battery out in five minutes, and all I need is a small phillips screwdriver and a Torx T4 screwdriver. I can replace the SSD just as easily, or the cooling fans.

The XPS is proof that small and light does not have to mean unserviceable, though it’s not perfect. The RAM is soldered, which is why I insisted on 16GB, which in turn is what led me to the “Developer’s Edition,” the only way to get the “basic” full HD (1920×1200) IPS non-touch display, the i5-1135G7 CPU, the 256GB SSD (the smallest they offer; I wanted to supply my own) in one package.

Of course, another benefit of the Developer’s Edition is that it came with Ubuntu preinstalled, which didn’t save me any time as I installed my own chosen distro anyway, but it did save the cost of the Windows 10 license.

Aaanyway, I digress (often).

OEMs like Microsoft and Apple have a financial incentive to produce gear that is not (easily) serviceable. As long as people buy unrepairable or mostly unrepairable products, high-dollar items that are essentially disposable like a Bic pen (that costs under a dollar!), they will keep offering them.

There was a discussion about soldered RAM on this site a while ago, and a lot of people seemed to conclude that non-removable RAM is a kind of dirty trick (since people expect it to be replaceable). I am grudgingly willing to tolerate it as long as there is enough of it, but SSDs, batteries, and display panels need to be replaceable on any hardware I buy that isn’t at a “fire sale” discount.

 

 

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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OscarCP

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Ascaris: “Of course, another benefit of the Developer’s Edition is that it came with Ubuntu preinstalled,”

Is this an option and if so, could you have chosen a different Linux distro?

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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I noticed that on two Lenovo laptops the latest Windows 10 Updates blue screen on restart. Both lost the main user profile. Most concerning is that the Windows 10 Updates still install regardless of what applications are open at the time. Although our developers make daily backups, good work was lost and schedules slipped due to this. “How do I get rid of this news pop-up” is a common support question.

I also wish there was a set of settings to minimize all marketing. The recently added news popup with no obvious means of closing it is redundant and extremely annoying at best. Marketing blow-in pop-ups (or pop-ups from any sofware vendor) are unwelcome. People do not want the interruptions. Is this behavior likely to generate new business? Are people who enjoy commercial-free content likely to return to streaming with ads?

If I want to see the news, I will go to one of thousands of available news sites on the Internet. Most importantly, I will go when I want to go – not on a timer or random interval specifically designed to interrupt my work and grab attention for a marketing motive.

If you travel very much, check the waste bins outside of book shops or watch as people stop at waste bins as they shake the blow-in cards out of newly purchased magazines. At apartment complexes, watch as people go from their mailbox to the trash bin to remove all of the flyers and ads.

Why does marketing consider interrupting people as a useful strategy? It seems to me that a livlihood completely dependent on rude behavior is a rather bleak prospect.

The most successful recent marketing is offering streaming content without commercials. People will pay extra to exclude marketing from their lives. Microsoft could charge extra for a Zero Marketing version of Windows that allows people to simply work without interruptions. This would, of course, setup the classic blackmail scenario – God help anyone stuck with the version that includes marketing. Microsoft would do everything in their power to make a Windows version with ads damn near unbearable to drive people to the more expensive version.

Only two types of businesses refer to their clients as “users”. This is not a term of endearment or respect. When Microsoft inflicts marketing decisions on their clients, they are simply seeing all of us as “users”.

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F A Kramer

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When a computer loses the user profile, there is a race condition going on. So look to what other software is trying to load at the same time as the booting process. Next for any bsod, run it through nirsoft bsodview tool but always make sure that you have checked for driver updates from Lenovo.

Remember you can disable news and interests with right mouse clicking on it/or a registry key. MS-DEFCON 4: It’s quiet out there @ AskWoody see it linked there.

What sort of patch management tool does your organization have? I would recommend having some sort of something between you and microsoft update to better control updates.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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P.S. one takeaway I’ve learned from all companies – sales is king, not engineering, so most of the decisions regarding licenses, cost, etc are geared towards sales, not engineering. Why does Microsoft inflict marketing decisions on us? Because this is how our world does business. It is not engineering that makes the decisions, it’s the marketing side.  I don’t like it, but it’s how the world does business.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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OscarCP

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Long ago, when I was still using a soldering iron to repair the complaining users’ equipment built-in flaws and designing and building digital circuits while working for the Australian branch of ITT in Sydney, there was an undeclared conflict between the Engineering people, trying to do things right and the Marketing people hyping products to get more sales. Things have not changed, it seems.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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My 1.5 cents about the missing user profile in Windows at login:

When I was still using Windows (7) I had the same problem and the thing to do, as suggested by another AskWoody subscriber, was to get rid of unnecessary things that launched at start up. I did that and it solved the problem.

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

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Doug Kimzey wrote:

If I want to see the news, I will go to one of thousands of available news sites on the Internet. Most importantly, I will go when I want to go – not on a timer or random interval specifically designed to interrupt my work and grab attention for a marketing motive.

News and interests is not on a timer or set to open at a random interval. Even with “Open on hover” selected as a preference, it only opens if your mouse pointer is stationary above the icon. Otherwise it only opens if you click the icon.

P.S. I haven’t seen any marketing via the news and interests widget, despite using it every day for three months, just news and weather.

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The moral of this story is, buy the support plan for accidental coverage for these types of tech devices that cannot be easily serviced.

The moral of this story also is, that its poorly designed, if battery issue, or brogen display glass ends in the need of giving you the whole new device, instead of repairing such common thing as battery or glass is.

Dell Latitude 3420, Intel Core i7 @ 2.8 GHz, 16GB RAM, W10 22H2 Enterprise

HAL3000, AMD Athlon 200GE @ 3,4 GHz, 8GB RAM, Fedora 29

PRUSA i3 MK3S+

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