The Death of a Friend and a Screen Issue

01 Mar 2017

A few weeks ago, the WiFi adapter on my Surface Pro 3 suddenly stopped working. I did the usual diagnostics (rebooting, reinstalling drivers, enabling and disabling network adapter) with no luck. In an act of desperation, I completely formatted the device assuming this would fix the issue. Still no luck.

I called Microsoft support and spent an hour basically repeating everything I had already completed. At the end of the call, I was told that I would need to send the device in for repair. Since it was out of warranty (of course), I would be responsible for the repair bill.

I've been thinking of replacing the device and took this as a sign from the universe that it was time. :)

I spent some time researching what I wanted and decided on the new Dell XPS 13 9365 2-in-1. I don't use my laptop for gaming (when I actually have time to game, I use the Xbox) and don't need anything super beefy. I have access to lots of higher end hardware at work or I can always spin up something in the cloud.

I wanted to keep the tablet form factor but wanted a "real" keyboard. This lead me to purchase the XPS 13 2-in-1.

I've been using the device for 2 days now and so far am very happy with it. I hope to do a detailed write up in the future but my initial thoughts:

• Love the keyboard. Just enough play in the keys.
• The screen is amazing. I have the touchscreen QHD display and it is simply gorgeous
• It is hard to pry the screen open. It can't be done with one hand.

The most annoying aspect of the device is the "adaptive brightness". This is an "add-on" from Dell that causes the brightness to adjust based on the room the device is used in. It was brutal. There are a number of reviews on the web bemoaning this functionality.

I came across a Reddit post that linked to an update on the Dell site to fix this problem:

http://www.dell.com/support/home/ca/en/cabsdt1/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=8GDDH&fileId=3598929443&osCode=WT64A&productCode=xps-13-9365-2-in-1-laptop&languageCode=en&categoryId=AP

Now that the screen stays the brightness I set it to, I can continue to review the unit. Had this fix not existed, it would have been enough for me to send the unit back to Dell.