[Discuss] Think I need a new computer

[Randall Rose]

Minor point, but this is not a bad time of year to find a computer at a low price. School's out, nowhere near back-to-school season, no Christmas rush. 

On Sat, Jun 15, 2024, at 7:38 PM, Kent Borg wrote:
> My Dell XPS 13 7390 is getting old creaky, and at nearly 4-years, it 
> isn't new, but how annoying, it has been a nice machine.
>
> This morning it was dead, I had left it plugged in, running, with the 
> lid closed. And this morning its battery was dead. It has been 
> complaining about disconnects, so maybe there is an intermittent in my 
> cables.
>
> Reboot, look at log files, see nothing interesting before the messages 
> from my powering it up. Then a while later, as I unlock it the dialog 
> asking for my password went away, the background of the lockscreen 
> refreshed, and the mouse pointer froze. Trying to switch consoles didn't 
> do anything. I forced a powerdown.
>
> Looking at logs it looks like it saw me plugging and unplugging power, 
> closing the lid, and pressing power button.
>
> I ran a memtest and it passed.
>
> I installed an unrelated-looking Dell firmware update it has been 
> wanting for a long time:
>
>    FW 22001070 Device Update
>    Dell 2200 NVMe SSD Firmware Update
>
>    *Fix the "Drive not detected" issue reported by the Dell ePSA tool in 
> some rare
>    cases.
>
> Reboot and things are slow: Login and my desktop sits dark for sometime 
> before painting my background picture. That sites blank for sometime 
> before drawing my desktop icons.
>
> And now I think I am noticing funny delays here and there, hard to be 
> certain.
>
> I'd willing to be suspicious of my upgrade from Debian 11 to 12, but 
> that was nearly a month ago, rebooted several times, and all seemed to 
> be working well.
>
>
> Grrr. I don't want to spend a bunch of money on a new computer right 
> now. But the battery is supposedly only 57% of what it used to be. The 
> trackpad doesn't like to click in the location where I like to click and 
> is only slightly more agreeable in other places.  One of USB-C jacks 
> seems grumpy (not noticing things I plug in) and the others are maybe a 
> bit odd, not sure.
>
> God I wish everything weren't so damn disposable.
>
>
> Let me see what https://frame.work has in stock, their computers can be 
> repaired, even upgraded.
>
> Do I want an AMD Ryzon 7040 or an Intel i5-1340P? Is one better better 
> supported for Linux for these days…?
>
>
> Grrr.
>
> -kb, the Kent whose incremental backup just finished, time to do another 
> on another disk.
>
>
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