Like it says. After a few days of looking at different Dell machines online, I went out and bought a Dell ECT1250 mini-tower. Once I got it home and set it up, it took an hour or two to update its pre-installed Windows 11. No big deal. The big deal was that it had no trouble with my Samsung 214T, which is no longer my primary monitor and is now on my tinkering desk and not my computer table. The ECT1250 detected the 1600 X 1200 resolution and set it as its display resolution.
So what happened before? I don’t know. Really. There may have been something wrong with the first machine I brought home. It doesn’t matter. I have the 27” widescreen now and the 214T will soon be in the closet as a spare.
I did backups on my main machine and Carol’s machine, and then took a deep breath, found the Windows Update link on her machine, and clicked it. Again, it took a few hours to download the new Windows and configure it. But this time, it detected Carol’s 4:3 monitor without any fuss. Her monitor is the slightly older Samsung 213T, which I bought in 2006 and used for a year or so before I bought the 214T. Apart from the 213T being made of a different color plastic, the two monitors are functionally identical.
So why did the smaller Dell machine not talk to the 214T? I have only one theory: I raised the 214T from the dead ten or twelve years ago when several of its its electrolytic capacitors croaked. This was not an isolated problem. (Does anybody else remember it?) I thought I was out a monitor, then after doing some research online, bought a capacitor repair kit and literally replaced all the monitor’s electrolytics. This didn’t seem to have any adverse effects on the 214T, but it’s possible that I winged something on the main circuit board while soldering in all those caps.
Or maybe it was evil spirits. Who knows? Doesn’t matter. The 214T may or may not ever be used again.
There’s one additional element in our move to Win 11: Open Shell. This is (now) an open-source utility that makes the Start menu look more like the one on Windows 7. It used to be called “Classic Shell” but then its original creator open-sourced it. Carol’s machine had Open Shell installed, and upgrading her desktop to Win 11 magically updated Open Shell to its latest release, which has no trouble with Win 11.
So although I’m no fan of Windows 11, I think of it as a solid product (security and performance-wise) in a bad wrapper. Most of the time I use Windows I’m not looking at the wrapper, but at the software that I use to do what I have to do on a daily basis. I got used to Win 10. I may grumble but I’ll get used to 11 as well. And it was a good excuse to buy a better machine.
Having now run my Windows 11 laptop for a couple of days with Linux Mint as a second boot, I observe that:
– It does not shut down randomly when not in active use.
– It is significantly faster in operation than in Windows 11.
– It is actually comfortable to use.
Progress!
Last week, my LG 24″ LED monitor started displaying vertical lines through the video. The monitor is 4.5 years old, so I bought a new monitor. I would like to get a 34″ curved monitor with a relatively high radius, but that will take research. Although I build my own PCs, my interest in off-the-shelf PCs has increased (DIY PCs are increasingly expensive). I also don’t mind Win11: a few months ago, my primary SSD failed; I was able to download the latest version of Win11 from Microsoft and install the OS on a new M.2 drive. Microsoft accepted my Win10 product key, so the OS cost nothing.
I’ve now upgraded two PCs to Win 11 and bought a new Dell with Win 11 installed. Neither of the two upgraded machines needed me to spend money for the OS; like you, I think any valid license for Win10 on a non-corporate box will enable a Win 11 upgrade without cost. My long-tenure daily driver Win 7 machine will go to scrap once I take another look at it to be sure anything that needed moving to the new machine has already been moved. I don’t know if it could take Win 11 or not, but it’s big, noisy, and now almost 15 years old. It has a SATA toaster-dock slot in the top of the case that made backups fast and easy, and I think that’s why I kept it as long as I did. It was a custom build but done at one of those now (almost) extinct PC box shops, and there were some quirks. I bought it for the case alone. I’m not a gamer, and I think from now on I’m sticking with Dell hardware.
Isn’t it crazy how that model flipped? When I was a kid I fell in love with PC builds after reading the “Build your own PC AT and save a bundle” book by Aubrey Pilgrim,. After careful study my dad let me upgrade our PC XT clone to have a 386sx board and I was hooked.
Thinking further, my childhood clothing was largely sewn by my mom. Now the cheap option is off the rack. The economy has shifted a lot in many ways.
I’m glad it’s going well. Back when I was doing end user PC support I found that display resolutions depended on the graphics card chipset, memory, and firmware. I suspect Dell took some cost cutting shortcuts on the previous PC you tried… Unlike in the past, true spec sheets are often hard to find as PC harware is increasingly commodity.
In truth, that one glitch no longer matters. Getting almost 20 years on a monitor is kind of a stretch. Now, one reason I like Dell machines is that they have relatively detailed manuals in PDF format downloadable for free. Building a box from loose parts was something I did a few times, but there were always some minor weirdnesses in the resulting machines. Dell’s good. I think I’m sticking with them, at least for PCs. I have two Samsung tablets and they’re very good, though one is now almost 10 years old.
… Sigh… I have tried and tried to get my (ancient) Lenovo W530 up with Windows 11, “Enterprise” builds, “Long-term-service” builds, IoT builds… and while the initial install works, after the first round of updates, it just blue-screens every boot.
So, that machine will be Linux-only (and now have to figure out how to get the nVidia Quadro working as otherwise, no external monitor support is available)
Most of the current Linux distro’s have at least nominal NVidia support (which are you using?). Drivers for an older card like the Quadro may take some googling but should still be available. Good luck.
Did any of the existing programs on your Windows 10 computer survive the upgrade to Windows 11? You mentioned open shell but what about other programs? I mainly use my computer for finance and it has years of TurboTax programs installed. It would be a PITA to have to reinstall the program if I get an inquiry from the IRS.
Almost everything I tried to install on my new Win 11 machine works just fine, with the single exception of QuickView Plus, which is very old and not as useful for me as it once was. Overall, the move (which is not yet complete) has gone very smoothly. I’ll probably post another entry here when the swap-out is finally done. Carol has had no trouble at all on her side.
Thanks for mentioning Open/Classic Shell, Jeff. I had never heard of it but now that someone I trust has vouched for it, I can’t wait to use it. I know this wasn’t the main point of your post but it sure made my day!
I have Win11 on a new Beelink SER, works fine. I have some legacy s/w that needs Windows to run.
But I think the amount of spyware and keylogging going on makes it unusable for storing private info.
Basically it is a “smart terminal” to the Microsoft cloud now. For many things that doesn’t matter, but the idea of MS having access to my records for taxes, medical, business, retirement funds, correspondence … and the *passwords* to the same, no.
I’m going to do some research when time permits on disabling as much of that crap as I can. I don’t need cloud storage and don’t want that machinery sucking cycles in the background and possibly uploading files without telling me. I think Microsoft is feeling the maturity of the software market, which is why it’s pushing their SAAS and cloud crap as a revenue source. A friend of mine still uses Word 2000 because it does what he needs a word processor to do. Multiply him by a hundred million or so and you can get a sense for the fate of software in our era.