Of course its Saturday night at 11:30 PM and so tech support and PC support (for work) will not be in until Monday. I of course need the laptop for work purposes before then and whenever they can ship me a replacement.
So I went to the local Radio Shack and bought one of those Juice iGo Power things which -really is a beautiful product. Also simple and easy design. I love the idea of using one power adapter for everything. I took it home excited.
Unwrapped it, this thing looks nice and will undoubtedly perform. It has a lovely blue status light and it also has a protective lining that feels smooth, like a thin veneer. It comes with a wall cord so you can plug it into the wall. It comes with a car cord so you can unplug the wall cord and plug this car cord and bam! you can use it in the car without those pesky power inverters (Love that!) and lastly, if you unplug the car plug it is now a standard airplane plug so you can use it on those long flights to Australia! I am thinking Awesome!
It complies with all the standards of any power supply. Basically a solid product Sure to be a winner. Then I plug it into the laptop and I start my usual Sunday night work.
I remember that my battery was at 89% because it hadn't been long from when I discovered it bad to when I shut my laptop down. I see some BIOS warning to the effect of that it isnt the normal Dell charger yadda yadda yadda. So anyway I notice there is no charge icon on the battery just a "On AC power" and so I look and notice that the battery is not charging.
So I then look at the box it came with and see this (read the fine yellow print under Dell)
The yellow words say "Note: Tip 20 will only power your notebook. It will not charge the battery." Notice that tip 20 is only for Dell computers.
I was infuriated. I started looking online for a hack, a mod I could do to make it charge the battery. There must be some way to shut off that AC power detection. If there is a hack, I have yet to find it. It turns out this is entirely the fault of Dell and not the Juice company. So a big FUCK YOU goes out to the Dell corporation for limiting the use of battery charging to only Dell chargers. The assholes probably rigged it so it would go off just outside of warranty (It is a work PC that was acquired in FEB 2006).
So I just bought the wonderfully working adapter that doesn't work with dells. And it wasn't cheap.
I look at the return policy and it says I can return it within 30 days. The guy in the store sold it to me -probably knowing that it wouldn't charge the battery on my Dell but sold it to me anyway.
They are going to get a big FAT return this week.
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2 comments:
I hope you get the same cunt in the store when you go back in.
There's no need to be rude mate, just polite and firm enough to belittle the little cockknocker in front of his workmates and hopefully a shop full of customers.
Yeah, those Dell pc's look good when you see the special offers in the newspaper, but they're twats when it comes to the follow up service. Still, you're probably like me, and won't get stung twice.
Oh yes. Fortunately this is a work PC and they are going to send me a new Power adapter. But imagine if it had been a dell personal PC I bought.
No My next PC is going to be a Macbook no doubt. I still have my 2001 Dell Dimension desktop. And the wife is using a Compaq laptop. Of course she can use the power adapter, but I am going to return this thing and be polite (as always) ;) as I said it is a lovely product but Dell doesnt support it. I am still angry with the bastard for knowingly selling it to me (Radio Shack employees work on sales commissions) even after I told him what model of Dell I had (A Latitude D610)
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