Hold up! Before you read on, please read this...

This post was published more than 12 years ago

I keep old posts on the site because I often enjoy reading old content on other people's sites. Not everything that is old is bad. It can be interesting to see how views have changed over time: for example, how my strident teenage views have mellowed and matured.

But given the age of this post, please bear in mind:

• My views might very well have changed in the 12 years since I wrote this post. I have written some very silly things over the years, many of which I find pretty embarrassing today.
• This post might use language in ways which I would now consider highly inappropriate or offensive.
• Factual information might be outdated.
• Links might be broken; embedded material might not appear properly.

Okay. Consider yourself duly warned. Read on...

I have a Compaq laptop. Compaq is owned by HP.

The laptop has never been terribly successful. When I bought it, I also got a docking station, which unceremoniously died about a month after the one-year warranty expired, and HP refused to repair it – even on a paid-for basis. The screen has also broken, and under the Next–Working-Day pick-up and repair warranty, the laptop was picked up two working days later, and returned (working) a week later. The hard drive has also broken, whilst the laptop was under warranty, but I was unable to wait a week for HP to fix it, and so had to have this done at personal expense.

Now to the latest fault. Shortly before the warranty for my laptop expired, the screen broke yet again. Unfortunately, this happened immediately before my exams, so I couldn’t afford for the laptop to spend a week away. I contacted HP, who refused to delay any warranty repairs by a couple of weeks, as the laptop would then be out of the warranty period. So, again, at great personal expense, I bought an external monitor, and a one-year next-day on-site warranty extension. All-in-all, I spent around £250 – over £100 of which was on the warranty extension.

The exams ended, and I contacted HP – yesterday, in fact. After more than half-an-hour in a telephone queueing system, HP duly agreed to send for a technician (from HP subcontractor ICM Computers) to visit me the Next Working Day (today) – well done, HP. The technician came out, very efficiently, with a replacement screen. It didn’t work. After an hour of trying to fix it, the technician admitted defeat, and said he’d order a new new screen from HP.

He’s coming back tomorrow, and I get the feeling that this isn’t going to be over quickly, so I’m blogging the experience. Next installment: tomorrow.