F*cking Dell!

[Bebus]

So, I have trawled the Dell website for the last 30 minutes, without success, looking for what I foolishly believed to be a simple enough button: "contact us by email". No luck. Do not ever expect any kind of easy tech support from Dell. This is the page you get when you select 'email tech support': http://support.euro.dell.com/support/supportrequests/globalcreate.aspx?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs. If the wine is affecting me more than I thought and I am just blind tell me!

Anyway, I figured the Escapist, being obviously far more efficient and decisive than the jobsworths there, could help me out!

Around a year ago I made the worst decision of my life and bought a Dell Studio 1550. Please note that this computer is by no means especially bad, it is just very badly designed, especially for gaming, and as a gamer this makes its negative impact on my life more obvious!

In particular, I have had trouble with the key mapping. For some reason, Dell decided that having alternate functions for the F1-12 keys is a good idea. Fair enough. Then somebody with a cerebral hemmorhage decided that putting these alternate functions as primary functions, with the actual F1-12 functions needing an 'alt' style button (Fn), would be a better idea, and I am stuck with the fact that the F2 button (on my keyboard design, there is no gap between this and my 2 button) turns my wireless internet off. No 'are you sure', nothing. If I am playing online, you can imagine that in a high stress situation when weapon number 2 would save my life, there has been much rage.

I was hoping somebody could suggest an answer to my problem. I wish to either revert the functions of F1-12 to their intended ones, or disable the F2 key altogether. I have tried a program called 'keytweak' but all this seems to do is disable the 'F2' function, so if I hold the "Fn" and press F2 the key does nothing, but if not the internet is free to come and go. If I am using the program wrong, please tell me. If you know another solution, please please tell me! Another couple of incidents and this otherwise... ok... laptop is going out of the window!

Oh, and yes I have tried ramming a pad under the key itself but this is, more than anything else, an unreliable and uneccesary solution!

I am using Windows Vista 64b, on service pack 2, 6 GB RAM (don't ask, got it free!). If I need to provide any more information, please tell me! I'm probably the least tech savvy gamer on the planet, but I really need help on this!

Thanks Escapist!

 

[Marter]

I changed mine.

I followed this advice:

While it's booting up tap the F2 key (i don't think you need to press FN at the same time) and it will go into a setup screen with a tree view selection on the left, one of them will give you the option to toggle the F keys behavior.

Note that it might be a different key to get into the setup screen, but that's where you want to be.

Good luck!

 

[Danny Ocean]

Get a new keyboard?

Or uninstall all the superfluous dell-branded crud they shipped with your PC?

 

[viranimus]

I dunno.. seemed like the link worked for me to email support. just had to go a page deeper

I would only add that as far as pre fabbed computers go, I have a great respect for the way dells are designed. They are easy to tear apart and rebuild.

past that, sorry to hear about your situation, best of luck to you on that.

 

[Fluse]

heres an idea... use a proper keyboard/mouse?

also, i would recomend getting a desktop next time, you will be amazed at how much better a gaming pc you get for the same money! ^_^

 

[CrazyMedic]

buy a good gaming keyboard it will last you a long time it is worth the price I reccomend something made by the gods of gaming shit Razer.

 

[Bebus]

I changed mine.

I followed this advice:

While it's booting up tap the F2 key (i don't think you need to press FN at the same time) and it will go into a setup screen with a tree view selection on the left, one of them will give you the option to toggle the F keys behavior.

Note that it might be a different key to get into the setup screen, but that's where you want to be.

Good luck!

Thank you so much! That did exactly what I needed it to! I would love if Dell could provide such simple and swift advice, or even just design their computers properly, but who needs that when the Escapist is here!

I dunno.. seemed like the link worked for me to email support. just had to go a page deeper

I would only add that as far as pre fabbed computers go, I have a great respect for the way dells are designed. They are easy to tear apart and rebuild.

past that, sorry to hear about your situation, best of luck to you on that.

Like I said, my wine may have affected my judgement and navigational capabilites, the second bottle just hit the floor! Out of interest which button did you press? (for future alcohol fuelled misadventures!)

heres an idea... use a proper keyboard/mouse?

also, i would recomend getting a desktop next time, you will be amazed at how much better a gaming pc you get for the same money! ^_^

Don't worry, next time I have some spare cash lying around the mistake will not be made again!

Get a new keyboard?

Or uninstall all the superfluous dell-branded crud they shipped with your PC?

I have uninstalled as much of what they provided as possible, but I thought getting a new keyboard was too much trouble for a problem they should have encountered in their basic testing! The mistake will not be repeated!

 

[Bebus]

buy a good gaming keyboard it will last you a long time it is worth the price I reccomend something made by the gods of gaming shit Razer.

I certainly will once I get myself a decent gaming desktop, unfortunately it is difficult to smuggle an entire keyboard with my laptop to places gaming is supposed to be absent from...! I will look at their products though, thank you for the referral!

 

[Marter]

Thank you so much! That did exactly what I needed it to! I would love if Dell could provide such simple and swift advice, or even just design their computers properly, but who needs that when the Escapist is here!

No problem. Glad I could help!

 

[SimuLord]

Your experience with Dell's been different from mine. On the one hand, yes, they do have gods-awful customer service (some of the worst in their or any other industry). On the other hand, I'm tech-savvy and have never run across a problem with a Dell that couldn't be fixed by a simple three-step process:

1) As soon as you get the computer out of the shipping box, boot it up from the OS recovery disc. Dell ships the OEM Windows build so customers have it in case of emergency. This lets you start from a clean install, no branded/partner/malware shit.
2) RTFM. Knowing which parts are proprietary and which aren't (protip: Buying from their XPS line means lots of user-serviceable/upgradeable parts) helps.
3) Enjoy!

I've had a Dell XPS 410 since December of 2006. I've basically gutted it of all original factory parts over the last four years---the only thing left in there that's factory stock is the CPU and motherboard (and the mouse, which is built like a tank). I've put a total of $2200 into it over four years, which as a PC gamer I'll take.

I liked my Dell so much that I just bought another one---a Studio XPS 9100 that's currently on a FedEx truck. It should arrive Monday, and I can't wait to crack into it. Yes, I paid a premium for it ($1215 for a computer I probably could've built myself for about $1000) but having someone else put it together (I'm famously clumsy when dealing with stuff like CPUs, and frying a Core i7 because I fucked up the install is not my idea of fun) and provide warranty support (not to mention the 12 months no-interest credit terms) was worth $200 to me.

Disclaimer: I used to work for Dell and have a fond opinion of my former employer.

 

[CrazyMedic]

buy a good gaming keyboard it will last you a long time it is worth the price I recommend something made by the gods of gaming shit Razer.

I certainly will once I get myself a decent gaming desktop, unfortunately it is difficult to smuggle an entire keyboard with my laptop to places gaming is supposed to be absent from...! I will look at their products though, thank you for the referral!

depending on the type of game you like I would recommend looking into the specialized gaming stuff, IE if you like mmos it would be worth it to get something like the Naga with the 10 buttons on the side for mmos, I used to have a laptop and would just carry it in a large messanger bag with the mouse and keyboard in it, in 10 minutes I was on WoW pwning teh noobzorz.