Monday, September 13, 2010

The World Is New

Actually, the world isn't new. My laptop, however, is.

It seems like only last year that I bought a brand new laptop computer, if you recall my previous blog post, and unfortunately, it was only last year. Thanks to hindsight, it's obvious that it was a mistake. What might be the mistake? I bought a Compaq computer during a too-good-to-be-true sale at Wal-Mart. Well, you know the old saying about Compaq? Take the C, the A, and the P from Compaq - remove the O, M and the Q - add an R - and you have crap. Crude, but then again, it's an old saying.

And that's my final word on Compaq. Well, actually, the
word I'm searching for.... I can't say because there's preschool toys present. (Bonus points if you know what that's from!).

Seriously, with the laptop, came a one year warranty. Almost immediately after the one year warranty, the troubles started. A whole host of errors one after the other. At first, I thought they were small and I tried to fix them on my own. At first, it appeared that my fixes worked but after a week, it was apparent that was not the case. Once my laptop was basically a giant, expensive, semi-working paperweight, I took it into Best Buy to have the Geek Squad take a look at it. (If only it was a Buy More...) Didn't take long for them to declare my hard drive pretty much...dead. And like a bad Mastercard commercial, they started to list the cost of repairing it...

Replacing Your Hard Drive: $49.95 (plus tax)
A New Hard Drive: $80
A New Operating System: $120
Your New Laptop Dying Two Weeks After Your Warranty Has Expired: Priceless.

With tax and other assorted prices that would be added on, it would be almost as much as the price of a brand new laptop. But, I still thought about it. The laptop still worked, albeit a little bit slower and with a fair amount of errors. I figured I could use it for a little longer, but fate (and the poor construction of a Compaq laptop) had other plans. Later that night, like Tom Hanks in Castaway, I discovered fire.

Specifically, on my couch as the power cord to the laptop had burst into flames. It had started to spark and then burst into a flame. A small flame - not like a huge wildfire or anything, but fire nonetheless. Enough to make a small scorch mark on my couch cushions, but thankfully that was all. A quick removal of the power cord and the emptying of a bottle of water onto my couch cushion made Smokey the Bear proud, even if we weren't in a forest at all. I think just the whole fire prevention thing should've made him pretty pleased.

And so, I took that as a sign that it was time to go laptop hunting. Once again, I considered all of the options (even contemplating a switch to Apple), but in the end was discovering that many of the more inexpensive laptops were Compaq again, which I had vowed not to do. Never again. I had to decide whether to accept a substandard laptop or perhaps I would have to go a bit outside of my price range to have a laptop that might be more than a one-year rental. Thankfully, not too far outside of my price range was a beautiful Gateway laptop (to be exact this Gateway laptop.) And so far, so good.

This time around, I have a much, much better warranty. (Check back with me in a year though) And hopefully much, much more blogging. (Check back with me in a few days to find out though). Until then, stay classy!

P.S. - And if you're wondering (probably aren't) where the title of the blog post came from, it's the title of a song from the 90's ska band Save Ferris (themselves inspired by the classic 80's film Ferris Bueller's Day off) and if you're at all interested, here is the music video to listen to: The World Is New.

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