Why did it have to happen to me? An issue I can’t resolve — broken hardware. I woke up this morning, opened my laptop and bam… heard a strange sizzling noise for about 2 seconds, then my screen went blank. “Strange,” I thought. I figured it had something to do with rouge permissions or Power Management and assumed the display went to sleep because the computer was still running. After using the hot corner to bring it back to life, it’d stay on for maybe 3-5 minutes before it would go blank again.
I took a closer look at everything I could, in 5 minute intervals using the hot corner until I realized something…. My computer was still running! I could barely make out the Dock in the almost pitch black LCD screen. I grabbed a flashlight and started exploring the surface of my laptop lid like Indiana Jones. Two flashlights — and then it dawned on me that the LCD screen was close to shot (or something inside it). I plugged my USB backup drive in and was able to start Carbon Copy before the screen dimmed again.
Now, I bought the computer at Best Buy and I have this in-store warranty thing where I just bring my computer in and they fix it. After erasing the drive and installing from the original, unopened Dell Recovery DVD (with flashlights), I called around to Dell, and then to Best Buy to find out about my warranty. It turns out Best Buy will take my computer, do absolutely nothing with it in-store, and ship it to Dell (or a third party) for repair. Estimated time to get my laptop back in working condition? 3 weeks. 3 whole weeks to swap a board, wire, or lid. What kind of world do we live in?
Now I’m back to ol’ reliable. My 3 GHz Celeron D desktop running Windows XP SP3. No, I didn’t mean ol’ reliable was Microsoft…
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:23 AM
That’s exactly what happened to me. I have a Dell XPS M1530 now. I want to put Kalyway on my XPS but there’s no real guide or directions to installing. Good Luck!
March 1st, 2009 at 12:48 AM
Howdy,
3 weeks? Oh man, that’s long. Even on one of the forgotten islands on the Indian Ocean, called Mauritius, it took for the support one day to replace it during the warranty period.
On a side note, they shouldn’t have done that, as it was purely my fault why the old 1525 stopped working. They even was so kind to make an image of the old disk and put it on the new one (which I didn’t ask for).
On the other hand, the price for it was AMAZING. I paid for it ~40.000 MUR, meaning ~1k USD… Come on… Half of the price back in Europe… :(
January 31st, 2009 at 6:02 PM
Three weeks!?! Anytime I have a problem with either of my dells, they either send me the part through next day shipping or an empty box for my computer through next day shipping and then a next day shipping label to return it to them. Dell has been very good to me support and shipping wise. That is why I would never go through Best Buy to buy a computer.