Rebecca Black

You know what, all I have to say on that matter is fair play to her.

Shes chasing her dream of being a singer, and not letting haters get in her way. I’m not saying that ‘Friday’ is the best song ever, but I think she has certainly achieved her goal. It’s been in my head for nearly a week now, and I find myself singing it, and often listening to it.

It’s funny how all the girls can like Justin Bieber, but despise Rebecca Black, the 13-year-old singer who has just released her first ever song. I hated Bieber at first, but now he has produced a fair few songs, I like his recent single ‘Love Me’. It’s a nice version of a classic, autotuned to the max. I think I smell a bit of jealousy in the air here.

 

First time in a while

I can’t remember the last time I took a picture of myself. The last picture I used as a picture of MYSELF and just me was one my girlfriend took two years ago in spain. I find it weird taking pictures of myself. I’m not sure wether it’s because I see it as a really vein thing to do but I think I know why, I look dreadful!

Home

I miss home.

If I had a big enough suitcase, I would go back right now.

Fuck it, I might just take the essentials. Xbox, games, laptop and a few clothes.

 

 

I’ll just leave this here

Birmingham City FC

Oh, how I am so so proud to be a fan of this glorious team. It makes me laugh because absoloutely not one person considered us to win this trophy. Never before has the term under-dogs been any more true.

Now, just win 3 out of 12 games to avoid relegation and let’s get cracking with next season!

:O

Masters

Kindly

GTFO

Olivia Wilde :O

Dell XPS 17 L701X Review: Hardware & Components

Well, this post was a little late in coming due to the faulty HDD that was shipped with my laptop, so it sort of prevented me from really being able to do a hardware review sooner. However, I think that would bring me nicely into my review.

I’m not going to make some half assed attempt at trying to justify why customers in the UK get shafted as opposed to customers in the USA. It’s been happening for years, and not just by Dell. The USA get cheaper prices, and more features. For example, I know you can pick up a backlit keyboard option for the whole range of Dell XPS laptops for just $15 extra. The option doesn’t even exist yet in the UK, and it would have been something I would have definately gone with, because I do spend a lot of time typing in the dark, or with hardly any light on. That being said, the nice thing about the Dell XPS range is the fact that the parts are easily interchangable.

I’m currently running a Intel Core i7 740, 4096MB RAM, Nvidia GT445 M Graphics Card, 500Gb HD.

These components are all optional upgrades, so my system isn’t necesarily a standard (or should I say basic) spec system. Are the upgrades worth it? In a nutshell, it depends what you really want from your laptop. Obviously, if you are a basic office user you could just go for the i5 if you wan’t to multi task. You don’t need to bother with the RAM either. However, I can assure you my system runs Crysis, and TDU2 full spec on my i7 and GT445.

In terms of build quality, I’m happy. The JBL speakers with builty in sub make me VERY happy. However the faulty HDD, which Dell still haven’t collected after sending me a new one. Also, some of the keys on the keyboard have a little bit of a wobble. But, when I say wobble it really is a tiny bit. There is also a little bit of give in the laptop lid which means if I hold it upside down when I’m moving it from place to place, about half an inch opens up. Another thing is the USB ports positioning. I would like an extra port or two on the side, instead of the back. There is also a little bit of shake on my disc tray.

What I also think is a really nice touch is the fact that the touchpad on this system is smooth and soft, as opposed to rough. On my old Toshiba satellite my finger would get sore after an hour of use because of the nature of the surface of the touchpad. This XPS has a silky smooth surface which my finger glides effotlessly accross. The touchpad also has multi-touch tecnhology, which is a bit strange to get used to bit really works. I can rotate images using my fingers and scroll using two. It works well, but would take some getting used to if you have come from a system which doesn’t use multi-touch.

Another neat feature that I reallly like about this laptop is the fact that it has two headphone jacks. This is an entertainment laptop, with a 17 inch screen, it’s obvious that people are going to watch movies and stuff on it, which is what me and Daria did with my old laptop and had to use headphone splitters, but Dell implemented it with their new range of XPS laptops.

Below there is a bunch of pictures, and a video showing the give my disc tray has.

Touch Sensitive Hotkeys

Battery Status Light

JBL Sub

Dell Logo

USB Input and power socket.

XPS Logo (Flashes when in sleep)

HDMI 1.4, Mini Display port, Ethernet and TV Tuner

Open View

Disc Tray

And finally, the video with the tray wobble which annoys me a bit, but I would imagine is normal-ish?

SUPRIIIISE!

You know what, I fucking give up. I have tried so damn hard, but nothing is good enough.

From this point forward, I’m doing what I want to do.

I’m the one that’s fucking given up everything to keep people happy, I’m the one who has made sacrifices. What do I get? Everything thrown back in my face.

Well happy 2011 Alex, here’s another load of shit for you to deal with. I give it a week before I throw myself into the Thames with brick tied to my feet

A slight interruption (Still a Dell XPS post)

My last post, was a Dell XPS 17 L701X unboxing. I did say it would be in a few parts, but this part I wasn’t expecting at all.

When I recieved my Laptop, I had every intention of upgrading the OS from Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit, to Windows Professional 64 bit. This, is a lot harder than what it would seem.

I had real trouble getting my USB to be recognised by my new laptop to boot into installing the operating system. It took two nights, with a tonne of help from Adz. We finally managed to get it working, after trying every possible option. It came down to either a dodgy download or funky install. What is important to note that, I had to install Windows Professional twice, because an update fucked up my computer the first time…

After I got it working, I installed all my drivers over night and I was good to go. Everything seemed fine. I installed a couple of programs, and started to download the games I had purchased on Steam again. I noticed my system was slowing up, which was strange considering the i7 processor I have on board, but I put it down to a tonne of updates/downloads and thought nothing of it. Steam crashed that night, and it was late and I kind of lost my temper. By this point, I was pretty bored of my new laptop already. I had sampled a few games on it (it was the first thing I did) so was happy once I had everything sorted, I could do what I wanted to do on it. What I didn’t count on, was this was going to be more fucked up than I could have imagined.

The night after, Daria asked me to install a program called Solid Works for her, which obviously, obliged. It took about 3 hours for the damn thing to install, my whole system was running slow. However, I put this down to my error. I was installing the program off of my external HDD, purely down to me being a stupid idiot.

After it had installed, it wouldn’t open and my whole system would lock up. I had to turn the laptop off manually by the power, which I really wanted to avoid. To cut a long story short, I put it down to a horrible program and decided to uninstall it. I started the un-installation, and went to bed. I woke up in the morning, and it was still un-installing. This confused me, and made me angry at the same time. At this point, I KNEW something big was wrong with my laptop so decided the only thing to do was a system restore before installing this horrible program which I believed had fucked my whole computer up.

I couldn’t do a restore, because apparently my disk had errors. This wasn’t a problem, I would just do a chkdsk and everything would be sorted. I had done many chkdsks before because of my paranioa of when my laptop was acting up in the first place, I knew it would be sorted. 24 hours later, chkdsk is only on 10%, and it is replacing bad sectors. Not a good sign. So, the only other option was to use Dell System Checker. I did a scan of the Hard Drive and it returned an I O error of some description, and instantly told me to contact Dell Support. So, I did.

Overall, I was on the phone to Dell for over an hour. My laptop apparently didn’t even exist, because the service tag wasn’t on their system. After we had got round that problem, they could start troubleshooting. I beat the guy to his BS, and told him I had done a chkdsk, tried system restore, re-installed my OS 3 times and I still have a problem. I’m not sure wether this is a feature on Dell Laptops, or laptops in general, but the support guy told me to hold down the Fn key when the laptop was booting. I did that, and a funky diagnostic checking screen came up, with plenty of flashing lights and bleeps. Sure enough, the Hard Drive returned an error code, which the guy quite plainly replied ‘Yeah, your Hard Drive needs replacing’.

I haven’t even had a fucking chance to use the thing yet, and there’s something wrong with it. What I am happy about however, is that it will be here on Friday, and Dell were pretty neat about it. They apologised a million times, and so did the supervisor. I’m quite happy about the service I received, but still kinda gutted at the same time. I mean, yeah, I haven’t really had time to use my laptop, and wouldn’t have used it any ways yet due to spending time with Daria, Dead Space 2 and friends, but still the principle stands that a laptop that is exactly a week old needs parts replacing already.

To top it off, I have done something to my back which has left me practically stranded in my stupid room for 2 days now. Only today has it eased up a bit, but and sudden movements sends a sharp pain through the bottom half of my back. I have no idea what I have done to it, all I can do is hope that it passes soon. I have been dosed up on painkillers and had a cooling patch on my back for quite a while now, and would just like to move around a bit faster than what I am right now.

So this weekend, I am finally going to get round to Part 2 of my Dell XPS coverage, which I think will be a Hardware review.

 

 

 

Dell XPS 17 L701X Unboxing (With Targus Chillmat)

Well, today, my new Dell laptop arrived. This is going to be the first of 3 posts, which is the unboxing. To follow, I will post a hardware overlook and a software overlook, both with my comments and thoughts. For now, just take a look at these pictures to see what’s in the box.