Ok, my laytop is seriously messed up. I’m had it with these band aid solutions that Dell keeps giving me. What’s wrong you ask? Well for some reason my laptop won’t boot up. you press the power button, the engine will whir for 0.5 to 2 seconds before dieing. And I usually have to have it unplugged to get that good a result, if it’s plugged in, the power button does nothing, it’s just merely there for decreative purposes. And this isn’t the first time this has happened either. So lets track the history of this problem:
- June 2003: I get the brand new laptop from Dell.ca and it won’t boot up, so I send it to the repair depot and they replace the motherboard and it works, ok, seems fair to me
- Spring 2004: the problem comes back while I’m living in Oz, so I send it to the repair depot again (love international warrantees) and the problem magically disappears when they have it, so they return it to me unchanged
- Oct 2005: the problem comes back AGAIN, right at the start of the Thanksgiving weekend, when I wanted to spend the long weekend working on some files (WP plugins I think), so I have to wait until the end of the long weekend to send it off. I get it back with another new motherboard as well as a new keyboard and fan.
- Nov 2005: the problem comes back intermittently, I now have to press the power button a couple times to boot it up at times, other times it works fine.
- Dec 24th 2005: I want to setup a wireless network in my house and pfffft, my computer won’t boot up… What the? After a few tries it boots up long enough to prove that I got the wireless router configed properly then as soon as I start enjoying it… and it won’t boot up again. This really sucks b/c I was hoping to catch up on my film scanning this long weekend.
I think the irony of the whole situation is that if Santa didn’t give me an external HD for Xmas like I was hoping (which he didn’t) I was gonna buy one at the Boxing Week sales this coming week and back up my files. Now I can’t b/c my computer won’t ***king start!! So now I have to call up Dell technical support again and do their little dance so that I can get an repair number so that I can drop it off at the depot to get it fixed. Their support blows me away, when I call up they ask me to do all sorts of things, trying pressing the power button with the battery out and the AC in, with just the battery, etc, which is fine b/c those are basic moves. Then the fun ones come into play, take out the CD drive and try, take out the RAM and try… excuse me?!?! This is a laptop, the bits are small and fiddly, I’m pretty comfortable around computers and I feel a little bit sketchy trying to do all that, how would a regular user feel? The funny thing is that I probably have more computer knowledge then the phone technician who’s reading some sort of script, why can’t you just take my word for what’s wrong and give me the bloody repair number so that I can drop off the laptop at the repair depot?!?! On the bright side, I am working from home this week, so I’ll have the time to drive to the repair dept (just outside of Toronto).
But I think that this time will be a little different b/c I’m gonna demand that they replace the whole thing (and transfer my files). Their band aid solutions just aren’t working, what a surprise. This whole situation is just making me lean more and more towards a powerbook more and more. I just want to scream… they’re supposed to be the experts but they can’t fix the problem, I’m really inclined to take it to a third party repair shop and see what they have to say. Either way, I’ll keep you guys updated on how it’s coming.
I know that there’s probably a select few of you that are puzzled how I’m still able to post when my laptop isn’t working, easy, I’m using my laptop from work to surf the web. So I’m not totally isolated from the cyber-world, but I have to visit it using Internet Explorer… I feel so dirty.
Oh and by the way… Merry Christmas… hope that Santa treated you well. If you don’t celebrate the fat guy in red, happy/merry _________ (fill in the blank).