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laptop issues

Some of you have heard parts of this story.  It's still going on, so I'm going to share here.
In January, I ordered a custom built laptop from a company that was recommended to me by someone whose opinions I trust on such matters.  I named it "Gabilan."  (Computers are named after Steinbeck characters, remember.)  (This was what I was getting delivered when I had my problems with UPS.)  It was a bit overpowered, considering I wasn't going to run a lot of games with high end graphics, but my specific need is having 50 browser windows open and dealing with them one at a time, sometimes playing a video at the same time, and I wanted something that would do that smoothly.

It ran great sometimes, but when I was doing what I described above, sometimes it would start to glitch.  The text and mouse pointer would get fuzzy, with vertical lines through them; sometimes the screen would divide into repeating patterns only showing a little bit of the screen; and sometimes videos would play with black screens, or scrambled lines reminiscent of cable TV in the 80s when you would turn on a channel you didn't pay for.  I couldn't get the problem to fix itself without restarting the computer entirely.  I downloaded every Windows Update available, and the glitch still happened again after that.

So I sent Gabilan back on a warranty claim.  A month or so later, they sent me a new, identical computer.  Gabilan II worked great for two days, then it had the exact same glitch.  When it happened, I had opened a page on a local news site that often has videos pop up in the corner of the browser window; this seemed to be what triggered the glitch.  By then, I was so frustrated that I didn't even try to fix it, download updates, try a different browser, or anything.  I immediately asked for a refund.  (I found out the hard way that shipping was not covered on returns, only warranty claims.  Shady.  But that's not part of this story.)

I found a laptop at Costco from a name-brand manufacturer (specifically Dell, I'm typing on that one now).  This one, "Jody Tiflin," It isn't as overpowered as either of the Gabilans, but I figured it was good enough, and I found photos on the Internet of what it looks like disassembled, so I know it'll be easy to add RAM later.  A few days in, it had the same glitch.  This makes me think that maybe I was too hard on Gabilan's manufacturer, and maybe it's a Windows 11 or Chrome problem.  I've pretty much only used Chrome as a browser with these laptops.  I downloaded every update available, and Jody worked fine...

... for ten days.  Until about an hour ago.  Again, the glitch seemed to be triggered by a news site that had a video pop up within the same window, and after the glitch happened, the text got fuzzy in every visible window, including the clock and weather at the bottom, and other videos I tried to play sometimes got scrambled or blank.

In an attempt to try other browsers, I opened Microsoft Edge, and everything immediately went back to normal.  Then I closed Edge, and with Chrome back in focus, everything went fuzzy again.  This happened three times in a row.  Maybe Microsoft is intentionally sabotaging other browsers?  With the way Edge always reminds me specifically that Edge is better than Chrome, I wouldn't be surprised one bit.

Without trying to make anything happen related to the glitch, I resized an Edge window, just to make it fit.  While I was dragging the window, the screen got really scrambled, but then everything went completely back to normal, and it has been working fine since.

I don't know what to do now.  If this doesn't happen often, and if it goes back to normal eventually, I could probably deal with it.  If I have to use a browser other than Chrome most of the time, I can probably deal with that too.  But it's annoying that this would happen in the first place.  I can't find any record of this being a known glitch, and considering that it happened to me on three different computers, it seems like it would be.  Has anyone else ever seen this kind of thing happen?  If it happens again, I'll see if there is any tech support from Dell or Costco that might be able to help.  I don't want to take Jody back and try to get my money back; I've done that twice with the two Gabilans, and it looks like I might not be able to avoid this if it's a problem with Windows.  I just have a bad feeling that, the day after the deadline for returning it, it'll start happening frequently, or something like that... and I'm tired of all the nonstop hassles I've been dealing with for four years...

By the way, if your advice is "get a Mac," please don't even bother. I'm not joining your cult. If Apple products weren't overpriced and underpowered, I still wouldn't buy one. If Apple products came with a year's supply of In-N-Out Burger free, I still wouldn't buy one. If Kendel Carson, Katie Petersen, and Audra Miller got together and formed some weird, eclectic, Canadian-American cute girl supergroup, and they went on tour sponsored by Apple, and they had a show in my front yard, with a VIP meet & greet for Mac users only, I still wouldn't buy a Mac.

I'm glad Apple products work for you, and I won't use this space to talk you out of them. But please don't try to talk me into them either.


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