Over the holiday weekend, I experienced the ultimate computer security mechanism:
“Spontaneous Security”
I was using my new Dell Latitude E6420 to do some network reconfiguration when the machine started acting weird with regard to the network.
Since this machine runs Windows 7, I decided to just reboot it to clear the network configuration.
After I restarted the machine I was asked for a password by the BIOS.
The odd thing was … I never set a BIOS password.
Last week I decided to start playing around with Windows 7 on my laptop … just to see how it’s going to work.
Luckily I have a spare SATA hard drive, so there was no risk that I would damage anything permanently. If the Windows 7 install went bad, I could simply switch back to XP on the original hard drive.
Well, it’s been a little more than a week with Windows 7 and I’m quite impressed.
One thing I noticed is that the hard drive controller wasn’t for the AHCI I thought was configured. Then I remembered, when I had the motherboard replaced due to the video problems, the default hard drive controller settings would be in place … and the default is to use ATA instead of AHCI.
Theoretically, AHCI should give me better performance than standard ATA.
Note: Although my sales & support experience with the machine were generally positive, my experiences with the machine itself were not. I have since sent it back to Dell.
I just had some really good customer support experiences with Dell. I know, some of you are going to think this is impossible, but it really happened.
Ginny’s laptop is getting kind of old … it’s an Inspiron 8600, almost out of warranty, and the screen hinge is pretty loose. Plus she needs another computer, with more video capability, to play with Second Life.
I figured it was time for an upgrade. I was also thinking it was time for my laptop to upgrade also.
So I ordered a new Dell Latitude E6400 laptop for myself, from Dell’s Small Business division, and will give Ginny my Latitude D630 (which has more CPU power, memory, and better video than her Inspiron 8600).