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Stupid Dell and their stupid proprietary hardware.
Bad enough that the motherboards on our Dell boxes are proprietary, so we have to just live with the fact that M.'s machine has a defective nVIDIA RAID controller. (It works with the drivers as shipped, but any updates to the driver, or any service packs applied to the OS, result in the ever-popular BSOD.) A non-proprietary mobo, I would swap out for a new one, but the Dells aren't worth screwing around with.
But now it appears that the UPS I bought with the machine is also proprietary, such that the APC site recommends the wrong battery based on the UPS model number. So here I sit, an entirely useless $80 battery on my desk, and a UPS which is not supplying uninterruptable power.
I shoulda got the Alienware boxes I was looking at. They were only a couple hundred more than the Dells. 'Course, now Alienware is owned by Dell, so it looks like I'll be building my own boxes next time around. We'll call that a learning experience for the boy.
Bad enough that the motherboards on our Dell boxes are proprietary, so we have to just live with the fact that M.'s machine has a defective nVIDIA RAID controller. (It works with the drivers as shipped, but any updates to the driver, or any service packs applied to the OS, result in the ever-popular BSOD.) A non-proprietary mobo, I would swap out for a new one, but the Dells aren't worth screwing around with.
But now it appears that the UPS I bought with the machine is also proprietary, such that the APC site recommends the wrong battery based on the UPS model number. So here I sit, an entirely useless $80 battery on my desk, and a UPS which is not supplying uninterruptable power.
I shoulda got the Alienware boxes I was looking at. They were only a couple hundred more than the Dells. 'Course, now Alienware is owned by Dell, so it looks like I'll be building my own boxes next time around. We'll call that a learning experience for the boy.