Expired New Toy

I am clueless on how excited you would be if you just got a thing that you love or got a hold of long-awaited wish list item. I was little bitchy after got my new toy couple weeks ago. It should not be really bad since the toy was courtesy gift from one of my financial institution. I was lucky, I guess, after was picked by them to be given a Dell Mini 10 Netbook.

Last month their representative called me for the gift ceremony invitation and I eagerly agreed and attended the small ceremony at Damansara Heights. There was a guy who got 3 of Mini 10 alone and I was not jealous of him but wondered how did he get them not just one, but three, though?

The saga started on the first day I brought back the new toy to the office when setting it up for the first time. I straight away faced problem after done the first time setup, where there was bing-bing sound. The sound exactly like when you plug in any new hardware and the OS detect the hardware while making the found new hardware bing-bing sound. Since the field of tweaking gadgets and play around with techy toys and application, are my interest and active income-job, I run through the diagnostic check as I am the doctor. First, when checking system Device Manager(DM), I found funny-weird symptom where the DM keep on refreshing by itself after few seconds and not even 5 seconds frequency. There was no hardware conflict detected and of course it made the bing-bing noise when it was happening and that was really annoying and might impact other task like when you'll be doing a presentation, etc. Mute the sound was not the solution so I then checked the system log if there was any error or warning log and everything seen fine. Up until that point I have not installed or tweaked it further yet, then run the built in system diagnostic tools but none error was detected. Reinstalled all the drivers also did not resolve the problem and even after got all the Windows Update installed was a deadlock. When gugu the symptom on the net, the only thing I found that could relate to the issue is the card reader driver and then removed the driver but did not resolve the problem at all. Reinstalled the OS(Windows 7 Starter) with clean/fresh install did not resolve the problem as well.

After spent most hours on its first day and the second day while handling other office tasks , I decided to call DELL tech support and reported the case. They dispatched their engineer on the next day to resolve the issue. I insisted to get it replaced with a new unit since I got the problem not even started to use it but as per support guy mentioned, they only can do that when there are 3 times same issue occur after each time of the issue used to temporary resolved. When dispatched engineer came and checked the netbook, he suspected the mainboard was being the problem and replaced it with a new one that he brought along. The problem still persisted with the new board and made the engineer some headache and got him to make some reference calls to his top level as I could sometimes check on his progress while doing my work. After advice from his colleague, they decided to take back my new toy to their dock and would return it within 5 days after, not including non-business working day - Saturday, Sunday of course. 

I gave a call on the next day to ask the progress and they told that they were waiting some parts to be delivered from DELL Penang to the dock centre in PJ and at that point they were still clueless of what was wrong with the new netbook. I kept on bugging them everyday since for an update and on the day 5, they told that they managed to resolve the problem but need one more day to monitor the system. At last on day 6 I was arranged by them to return the unit. I did some application installation and windows update and monitor the netbook after got it on hold. I got a call from DELL afterward and was informed that the root cause of the problem was the Webcam hardware issue and what they have done, changed every suspected part and monitored the issue and came to the webcam, they then detected the cause. That was after they changed the board and the palm rest. This is their first such case, when looking their diagnosis to the issue, I believe?

I have not got much time to play hard on this netbook yet and found the touch pad is really annoying to control since I always get it to scroll function when dragging my finger on the pad to browse what is on the screen. Anyway I am getting used to it and slowly adjusting my finger to samba on the pad and as of now I managed to finish up this writing with this new netbook.