IT’S ALIIIIIIVE!!!

The Dell XPS m1210 is a BEAUTIFUL machine. I think it’s the best laptop there is. It’s not too big, not too small, and has tons of processing power and of course, it looks and feels great.

Unfortunately, about a year ago, one of my friends (AHEM!!) put the laptop on a surface where it couldn’t ventilate and it overheated and couldn’t be turned on anymore.  After doing some research, I found out that the m1210 has a defect where it is VERY prone to GPU overheating!! … So i guess that didn’t help.

To make matters worse, the GPU is integrated on the motherboard, so to fix this thing would require an entire motherboard replacement. Screw that. I sold out most of the parts immediately: the motherboard, the keyboard, the ram, etc. Everything but the casing and screen, because I couldn’t sell them.

And thank God for that. Just a month ago, I had some money saved, so I did some research and found out that I could get this sucker back up and running if I spent about $300. I was thinking… That’s about the price of a netbook, and instead of getting a dinky little thing, I can get my awesomest laptop back!

So I bought a motherboard ($175), CPU ($75), 2gb ram ($40), keyboard ($15), and battery ($30). I was really scared though, because the motherboard came from China, so sometimes you never know what to expect.

I received everything and guess what? It didn’t work!! Man was I pissed. I spent hours trying to figure out what was wrong, but I figure either one of two things: I screwed up, or one of the parts was dysfunctional.  I only assumed it was the motherboard, so I furiously contacted the eBay seller and asked him WTF and wanted a replacement. After he agreed, I was taking apart my laptop once again to take out the motherboard to get it ready to send.

But, before I did that, I wanted to run a little experiment of my own. After doing some research, I found out that Rhea’s laptop (Dell Inspiron 6400) uses the same components as my m1210, so I asked her (very nicely) if I could take apart her baby. She reluctantly agreed, so I took out the CPU and RAM and everything and popped them into my m1210.

It worked!! I couldn’t believe it. After doing some troubleshooting, I concluded it was the CPU that wasn’t working. Good thing I make sure all these eBay sellers have a “working guaranteed” clause in their auctions because I got a refund, and after more buying and waiting, I put this sucker together and it works again!

It’s good to have you back :)