Zxian's Blog

No… not for me, but for Lusankya. The original system came in some old dinky case, and it had only been cleaned out once before when I first saw it at my girlfriend’s parents’ place.

So I opened it all up and took everything apart. I removed the heatsink from the CPU, and took my trusty box of Q-tips and rubbing alcohol and removed the old thermal paste. God I hate it when they use crappy stuff and it sticks like glue. Anyways – after removing the thermal paste, I took the heatsink and washed it in the sink with the brush to get rid of the dust in between the fins. Yes… I know it sounds funny, but it’s a solid block of aluminium. As long as it’s dry when it goes back on the CPU, nothing can happen.

So… a dab of AS5, heatsink back on, but without the stock fan. That thing, as surprisingly quiet as it is, is still too loud. So I took my 80mm SilenX fan and put it blowing onto the heatsink. I’ve got an Antec 2650 case that I used for all the new parts, and I swapped out the 120mm fan that it had for a 120mm Antec TriCool.

Aside from all the standard installation procedures, the last part of it all was to suspend my hard drives. I took a picture of it last night, but I forgot my camera at home, so to get the idea, you’ll have to look here. Aside from silencing hard drive enclosures, it’s the ultimate is making those drives quieter – and believe me – there’s a point where your hard drives are the loudest part of your system.

That all being said – Lusankya has a new home. She’s running SETI@Home right now, and temperatures are the lowest I’ve seen of any desktop system. I’ve just gotta see how much power the system actually draws from the wall. It definately can’t be much…

So… I’ve always had a hard time coming up with names for my computers. It’s always been something like “Laptop1″, or “ParentDesktop”. You know, boring crap.

So I’ve come up with a better system. Every item in my network now has a name from the Empire in Star Wars. Since I run everything from my laptop, it’s called Executor (it’s the name of Vader’s Super Star Destroyer). My server is named Death Star because it’s big… And my test rig is named Lusankya – another SSD.

Now I’ve just gotta come up with a name for my router… and yes – my router needs a name. It feels left out.

EDIT: Wow… the rest of life caught up with me… I’ve officially named my router HyperSpace. w00t!

So, I had been having some troubles with my battery lately. I had first noticed that the wear level of the battery was quite high (15%) after only 4 months. I called Dell about it, and they told me to monitor it, and then let them know if the problem persisted.

I checked again, and now it’s at 23%. Not only that, but when it’s fully charged, and I unplug it, it immediately reports a charge of 95%. When it’s down to 20%, it’ll drop to 7% right away. Kinda sketchy behaviour, no?

So I wrote a fairly detailed support request letter to them on tuesday explaining my problem. I give them all the technical details I can think that they might need, and wait.Today, after I was done my lunch, my cellphone rings. It’s one of Dell’s Technical Support team, telling me that he was reading my e-mail, and he wanted to confirm what my problem was. I say pretty much what I wrote, and without any hassling he says “Ok, we’ll replace your battery for you.” He said that it should take about 2 business days to ship, so hopefully it’ll be here by Monday or Tuesday.

Yet another reason I’m happy I went with Dell when I bought this laptop. Their batteries are covered for 1 year under warranty, although they aren’t covered under my extended CompleteCare warranty. The CompleteCare is a great deal though. For $300 CAD, you get three years of extended warranty that includes accidental damage.

You spill your coffee on your laptop? No problem.
It drops off the table? No problem.
You get a power surge in your house, and it fries your laptop? No problem

Need I say more?