Grr... I hate HP more and more with each passing month.

[wolfwings]

Now the lid-closed switch is failing. I prevented it from doing any more damage, but I'm afraid it's already fried the inverter for my LCD screen. Meaning... yup, I get to send it in again to HP.

I'm developing what I think is a 'boil-off' spot on my screen building from the lower-left corner where it's very hot. If I 'massage' the corner lightly I can get the screen to respond again, but after a few moments it goes jet-black again. And not a 'backlight off' black, a 'no liquid crystal there' black.

At this point, I've e-mailed HP, and will hopefully hear back from them shortly. I've had it though... ASAP I'm getting a god-damn Dell so I can take this thing out when I get my 944 here and fling it out the window at 70mph into a concrete support pillar on an overpass somewhere.

Piece of utter shit... gods, I can't say it enough, avoid HP like the plague if you actually travel with your notebook at all.

Comments

[tothwolf.livejournal.com]

Honestly, Dells aren't any better. I had nothing but trouble with the Dell laptops I was supporting at the university and have had all sorts of troubles with the Dells I've owned. My next laptop will be a Panasonic Toughbook.

[sarahemm.livejournal.com]

Funny, I've had terrible luck with HPs, but two of my laptops have been Dell's and they've both been rock solid. I put about 70k miles of travel on my laptop a year and it's 3 years old and the only issue is that many of the labels have worn off the keyboard and ports :)

Dell has one huge difference.

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

Pay through the nose for the 4Yr Warranty? Get on-site repair service in major metro areas. Sure, I travel a lot, but by far it's from one metro area to another metro area. So their CompleteCare package'll work great for me.

This 'ship your only computer off and be without a computer for a week' bullshit is why I'm leaving HP in the dust. And right now Dell's the only one that A) will let me buy a laptop with Linux on it and B) fix the laptop on-site.

I've got one friend with a Dell, they dropped it and their screen broke. Guy drove out with a new screen, and swapped it in about ten minutes, bam, seeing that sold me on Dell right there.

Re: Dell has one huge difference.

[lionman.livejournal.com]

Just be sure you know where you can get it serviced up front. I'm not saying you can't get it field serviced, but that is definitely an up-front question you should ask. And get the name of the guy who tells you its that way.

Most of the DELL equipment we sell, unless we're specifically requested by the client to service them, DELL has to deal with it centrally. You don't get to pick who services it, they send someone. So, if you want to have a business relationship with who you bought it from, and want them to service it, make sure they can do that.

Being fore-warned is being fore-armed!

Dells

[richardatdell.livejournal.com]

we have the new rugged note books if you are interested and others comming. if you are still having issues on other fronts, I would be happy to see what we can do to fix things or get better understanding if we have design flaws.

[lionman.livejournal.com]

Have I asked this question before: Do you have a local HP-certified shop that can do warranty repairs for you, or is this one of the Presario models that you have to send in for service?

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

LiveStrong Special Edition. Bought it during their super-brief super-sale right after he won the TDF. It's a Compaq V2000Z in a black skin, even the PCMCIA 'dummy card' still has the Compaq moulding on it.

And I've spoken to Best Buy guys and a few HP-certified-and-recommended shops. They can't even replace the keyboard on HP laptops anymore without shipping it back to an HP Service Center. HP Certified apparently just means they get to keep a stock of pre-labelled shipping FedEx boxes to ship laptops out. There's no such thing anymore (AFAIK) as on-site HP notebook warranty repair, it's all ship-and-wait.

[lionman.livejournal.com]

It's laptop dependant. There are still shops that service 'business class' models of laptops locally, without having to ship them to HP service centers. However, I'm not surprised that the LiveStrong SE isn't one of those, it's marketed towards non-business audiences, and those are all ship-in only. :-/