After some 8 months of really trying to use it as my main machine for everything I do, I’m converting my MacBook Pro back into a Mac OS X only machine. In replacement, I just received a Dell XPS 15z.

The brief history went like this. Back in October last year, I thought I’d try using a Mac as my main machine. Hence I bought a 13 inch MacBook Pro, bought AppleCare, decked it out with 8GB RAM and a 500GB Seagate hybrid drive, installed Mac OS X as the main OS, and VMware’s Fusion as a tool to access a Windows VM. I also installed Office for the Mac. The VM was so that I could use those Windows apps I could not do without (Live Writer and Visual Studio being the most important). I continued like this for a while, until probably April, when I’d finally had enough with the sheer flakiness of Office for the Mac (and various other Mac flakiness), and was spending most of my time in the Windows VM.

So I partitioned the drive, installed Boot Camp and tried that instead: booting directly into Windows and basically using the Apple hardware as a Windows machine. Every now and then I’d boot into Mac OS X to update the software and to refresh the videos and music on my iPod Touch (I use it as the testbed for playing around with writing iOS apps).

Even this usage has now palled, and palled badly. The reason? For the most part, it’s the absolutely crappy drivers provided by Apple in Boot Camp.

1. To this day, despite keeping up with the latest versions, there’s hardware on my Mac that Device Manager in Windows 7 does not recognize (“Coprocessor” and “SM Bus Controller”). There are no working Boot Camp drivers for this hardware. Just Google those terms to see the number of people who suffer from the same problem. Google further to see the attempts at magic incantations that sometimes seem to work (tossing salt over shoulder, rotating on your office chair widdershins, etc) – but in reality no they don’t.
2. The screen resolution is just too small (1280 × 800) to be used on its own, say when I’m travelling.
3. The trackpad’s Windows drivers just don’t support the breadth of functionality that the Mac OS X drivers do. In particular, I’m finding right-click virtually impossible to get right now. I have to use an external mouse. I even bought a snazzy external Apple Trackpad – works beautifully in OS X, and in Windows? Meh.
4. If you boot with an external Apple extended keyboard attached, pull the plug out of the USB port and then push it back in, the drivers forget how I’ve set up the function keys. The keys become volume controls, etc, again and not Fn keys. This has to be the stupidest bug in the history of keyboard drivers and is absolutely and utterly effing irritating. The only way I’ve found to get things back the way I want them is to reboot.
5. The MacBook Pros come with a nifty single jack port for headphones and mic. I’ve bought a Y-connector and this works just great with my headphones and headset mic. On OS X, that is. The Boot Camp drivers don’t support this joint jack. Hence, in order to do webinars and conf calls over the Internet, I’ve had to buy a USB-capable headphone set.
6. There are only two USB ports. USB 2.0 at that. It wouldn’t be so bad, except…
7. The Boot Camp drivers for the USB ports allow just a single device to be attached to each port. Just. The only exception I’ve found is that I can plug my external mouse into the Apple external keyboard and that keyboard into a single port. That’s allowed. But try attaching a USB drive to the keyboard as well (there are 2 extra ports on the Apple keyboard) and the system fails with a “too much power through a hub” error. Even my headphones suffer from the same issue. The thing is, this all works just fine in OS X, so it’s not the hardware. It’s the crap Boot Camp drivers. Since I have both USB ports occupied when I’m at home (one keyboard, one extra screen), it means that I lose a screen for webinars, etc.
8. Sorry, Apple, but a Delete key (delete forward, to use the terminology) is necessary. On a journey where I just have the built-in keyboard, to permanently delete an email in Outlook I have to press fn+shift+delete. You can’ t imagine the number of times I press shift+delete and nothing happens.

So, I’m retiring this MacBook Pro to become an occasional usage boot-into-OS-X machine and have bought a Dell XPS 15z with a sweet 1080p screen. A bit heavier, sure, a bit bigger, but faster and suffering from none of those pesky Boot Camp driver problems. 2 USB 3.0 ports, 1 USB 2.0 slash eSATA, two video ports, and, mirabile dictu, separate headphone/mic jacks. It will become my main machine, supplanting the UDR desktop I still have running in the background at home.

(BTW, in other news, the photo service I use for my blog posts, Wylio, has just changed, for the worst. This post is the last time I’ll be using it.)

Last night, I read about the new netbook OS, open source but funded by Intel, called Moblin. It’s been designed and implemented especially for Intel Atom-based netbooks, such as the Dell Mini 9 (Inspiron 910), and so I decided to give it a try.

So, I followed the excellent instructions on the website, downloaded the disk image, set myself up with a bootable USB drive containing said image, and booted the Mini.

The OS’ UI is very intuitive and, dare I say it, cute for a netbook. It makes excellent use of the limited screen estate hiding the top toolbar when not in use. Icons are simple, well-designed and large. Easy to click, from Fitt’s Law. The applications look good and run well too, hiding the arcana of Linux running underneath.

Unfortunately, the network access leaves a lot to be desired. The wi-fi just doesn’t work with the Mini 9, period, and other netbooks seem to have the same issues. The wired connection is only recognized if the cable is plugged in when you boot, and at that the built-in browser doesn’t find any URLs. That’s a real shame because without internet access all of the “mobile” apps, like the browser, twitter, etc, just don’t work in any meaningful way. Flash is not provided, so you must download it, which I couldn’t of course.

So, regretfully, I powered off the Mini and rebooted back into Windows 7, which, I must report, just works on the Mini. No weirdnesses, everything just worked. Intel have a little way to go methinks, but I’ll try it again in a few weeks.

(Interesting aside: I’m writing this blog post in Windows Live Writer on my Mini. Apart from the cramped keyboard, no issues.)

Putting this up there in case anyone else runs into this weird error. Also trying to write the text using all the search terms I used.

The BIOS for my Dell MIni 9 was at A04, and Dell have just released a newer version A05. So I downloaded it onto my machine from their support center and started the flashing process. The update uses Pheonix' WinPhlash program to flash the BIOS.

Actually let's back up. You download an executable, sure, but what it does is to unpack itself in some folder or other and then execute the WinPhlash program. This pops up the main window/dialog for the app but auto-executes it. You don't have to click the Flash Bios button at all. All great until, wham, I got an error dialog stating that the BIOS was not flashable. Exclamation mark. Error -144.

The error dialog said to view the help file for troubleshooting (and there was the button for it in the dialog underneath), but on clicking the OK button for the error dialog, the program just went away. Nice.

So I went to find the folder into which the app had been unpacked (by default, C:\Windows\Temp\WINPHLASH) and ran the WinPhlash.exe app manually. And then went back and ran it as Administrator, for of course it wouldn't run otherwise. Clicked on the Help button to view the help file. Said help file of course had absolutely no troubleshooting page, let alone a list of error numbers and descriptions. I know, because I viewed every page in the help. Completely useless. Thanks, Phoenix Technologies.

So I googled for a while, varying my search terms, and eventually came across a hint that the error meant that you shouldn't flash while on battery power. You should only flash the BIOS when plugged into a power socket.

And, by gum, it was right. I plugged my fully-charged Mini 9 into a power socket and the flashing process went off without a hitch. So error -144 means "Plug your laptop in to flash the BIOS". The BIOS is flashable, just not on battery power.

...rocks.

OK, quick recap. I now have 3 Dell XPS laptops. An M1210 (my ex-laptop), an M1330 (my wife's machine), and an M1530 (my main laptop). For all three I went for the three-year at-home warranty, plus the usual XPS tech support line. I've now had to use the XPS tech support twice, and let me tell you it rocks.

First was the WiFi card in the M1210: it just died one day. No connection to the router. I was on a trip to Microsoft to top it all, so I bought a USB WiFi from the local Fry's to tide me over. I phoned up XPS tech support when I got back and was rewarded, not with a drone reciting a series of questions by rote, but someone who actually listened, agreed with me that the card was dead, and queued up a new card to be delivered after ascertaining that I was willing to switch the cards myself. The next day it arrived and I swapped the cards over and sent the old one back. Clean, simple, and made me feel good about spending the extra cash for the XPS over the standard Dell laptop.

Since that time, I bought the two others, no doubt in my mind about spending the extra.

Just over a week ago, my wife's M1330, after 10 months of stellar duty being her main laptop, decided to freeze and display vertical striped lines. Of course it was the evening before I was due to travel to CA, but I tried various things nevertheless. Always the machine would come up and after a couple of minutes (or 20, it was never regular or predictable) freeze again. I upgraded the BIOS and the display drivers (I was lucky in those cases!), to no avail. In the end, I pulled the hard disk from the M1330 and put it into the M1210, reset the video driver, gave the laptop to her and promised to get it fixed once I was back.

Yesterday, I phoned up XPS tech support, and was again met with someone who just asked the minimal questions about the problem and what I'd done, diagnosed a faulty mobo (motherboard) and queued up a new one to be shipped. This time, an engineer would call round and install it.

Said engineer (hi, Matt!) popped round just now, less than 24 hours later, agreed with me that the mobo was hosed (this time, the screen didn't even come up) took out the old one, put in the new one, reset the Service tag, and went on his merry way. There was a moment when I thought the speakers weren't working, but Matt told me the drivers needed updating. In fact, in my haste at installing a trash OS on a spare hard disk yesterday, I'd forgotten to load the right drivers, and once that was done, the speakers worked as before. I quickly ran the diagnostics to make sure everything was OK.

So, I'd have to say, based on my two experiences, Dell's premium XPS services score very highly. If you are willing to pay a little more for the top of the line XPS laptops, you can rest assured that, not only are you getting a faster machine, but if something goes wrong, they're on the ball.