Laptop Limbo

Last week, Yuko was being all cute, wanting to be brushed on her new favorite spot, the ottoman. So I moved my laptop to the coach and was moving the hard tray we keep on top of the ottoman to put food and drinks on. Now, said tray had my glass of wine on it. Yuko in her elalation at getting to have the whole ottoman to herself, and seeing Mark (her favortie hairstylist) poised with the brush, decided to do a very complicated streach-roll thing. Which of course brought her into direct contact with the tray, and the wine from my glass into direct contact with the coach. Now, only a small drop or two got onto the laptop, most got feed to the coach god (the one coach potatoes pray too). But none the less a few minutes later the laptop shut down.

The next day I called the very unhelpful (and unhappy sounding) Customer Service agent at the big box store I purchased my laptop from. Luckily, I had purchased the extended warranty (yeah!), but this doesn't include spill coverage which is extra (damn!). However, she silkily told me they would be happy to send my laptop away to be looked at. How long would this take? 6-8 weeks. I almost reached across the phone line and strangled her. So let's recap: laptop will be gone until almost the end of summer and if the problem is spill related they will not fix it under my warrranty. So I will have no laptop and most likely will need to purchase a new laptop. Wrinkles increasing!

The next day I took it to a repair place which after two days called to say they had no idea what was wrong with it and I would have to take it to Calgary to a Compaq dealer. Since Calgary is 2 hours away I called a different repair shop and low and behold they can fix Compaqs. So I take it in, 2 days later the guy calls to say that it is not a spill problem (yeah!), but he thinks my system board is gone (damn!), luckily my warranty will cover this (yeah!), but my laptop will have to be sent away for 2 weeks to get fixed (damn!). So again let's recap. I have now been without my laptop for a week, then it will be gone for 2 weeks to get repaired, so all together I am without my laptop for almost a month. The only good news is that my warranty will cover the $450 cost of the repair.

Moral of this story, buy a cheap laptop, the cheapest you can get, because they are too much of a hassel to repair and usually too costly and time consuming. If you only pay $500 for a laptop and it breaks after a year it is a lot easier to adios said computer and get another cheap one then to give up a month of time and hassel to trying to get it repaired. What a pain in the ass.

Picture from Flickr