I'm not dead
But my computer was.
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
After reading Brad's blog about how his Dell died on him the other day, I went to bed thinking that I was superior because MY Dell was just fine...
..then the motherboard died on the less than 12 hours later. I had tried to restart and kept getting the proverbial 'blue sceen of death' with a weird error message on it. So I took the tower down to the local repair place to have them look at it.
First they said it was the hard drive. So I told them to put in a new, bigger one. They did that, and kept getting an error message. They worked on it for over 3 hours...and finally came to the conclusion that it was the motherboard, and being as I had a Dell and Dell are so secular when it comes to replacing stuff they wouldn'd be able to fix it for anything near a reasonable price - it's cost me less to purchase a whole new system.
To say i was upset ia a huge understatement. This PC was just over a year old...and the warranty had expired 11 days - count them, 11 FUCKING DAYS - prior to this happening. When I called Dell Tech Support to see what I/they could do, the response I got was "well, you shoulda got the extended warranty, shouldn't ya?". I cannot print my response to that statement. Some of you have seen me go off on certain people around here....let's just say it was much, much worse than that. They then offered to finance me a while new system (it was going to cost just as much to get a new tower as a complete system) I said that it would be a cold day in Hades when I purchased another Dell PC and hung up.
The thing thata really gets me about it is that we have a Gateway Astro, our first computer, that Dave's using up in Greenland - we've had that thing for 5 years and have never had a problem with it. This Dell was supposed to be 10 times better than the Astro...but it fucking dies, and dies in a dramatic way, after a little over a year.
As luck would have it, I found a new company in town who had a used tower they could rebuild for me, for a little over $200. It's Windows 98, yes, but at this point I really don't care. I could have gone and got a HP or Compaq, but we're leaving the country this fall and I really didn't want to touch the savings account if I could help it. This new (to me anyway) tower works, gets the job done, and cost me a relatively small amount of money. As far as I'm concerned, it's sufficient. It's actually a lot quicker than I thought it would be - I went back and was hanging with the techies while they tested it and even they were surprised at how quick it was. (I leant some stuff whilst I was back there...I want to go back and hang with them again actually, it was kinda fun to see towers with their guts hanging out...hard drives and modems laying around, pretty damn cool)
So, for all of you who though I was dead because I was missing for a couple of days, I'm sorry to disappoint you. Brad's article jinxed me (hey, I have to blame it on SOMEONE and he's the convienint choice! :)) I am alive and well, recovering nicely from my withdrawl symptoms because I couldn't get on the 'net for a couple of days..and I intend to make up for lost time by blogging my ass off for the next couple of days.
..then the motherboard died on the less than 12 hours later. I had tried to restart and kept getting the proverbial 'blue sceen of death' with a weird error message on it. So I took the tower down to the local repair place to have them look at it.
First they said it was the hard drive. So I told them to put in a new, bigger one. They did that, and kept getting an error message. They worked on it for over 3 hours...and finally came to the conclusion that it was the motherboard, and being as I had a Dell and Dell are so secular when it comes to replacing stuff they wouldn'd be able to fix it for anything near a reasonable price - it's cost me less to purchase a whole new system.
To say i was upset ia a huge understatement. This PC was just over a year old...and the warranty had expired 11 days - count them, 11 FUCKING DAYS - prior to this happening. When I called Dell Tech Support to see what I/they could do, the response I got was "well, you shoulda got the extended warranty, shouldn't ya?". I cannot print my response to that statement. Some of you have seen me go off on certain people around here....let's just say it was much, much worse than that. They then offered to finance me a while new system (it was going to cost just as much to get a new tower as a complete system) I said that it would be a cold day in Hades when I purchased another Dell PC and hung up.
The thing thata really gets me about it is that we have a Gateway Astro, our first computer, that Dave's using up in Greenland - we've had that thing for 5 years and have never had a problem with it. This Dell was supposed to be 10 times better than the Astro...but it fucking dies, and dies in a dramatic way, after a little over a year.
As luck would have it, I found a new company in town who had a used tower they could rebuild for me, for a little over $200. It's Windows 98, yes, but at this point I really don't care. I could have gone and got a HP or Compaq, but we're leaving the country this fall and I really didn't want to touch the savings account if I could help it. This new (to me anyway) tower works, gets the job done, and cost me a relatively small amount of money. As far as I'm concerned, it's sufficient. It's actually a lot quicker than I thought it would be - I went back and was hanging with the techies while they tested it and even they were surprised at how quick it was. (I leant some stuff whilst I was back there...I want to go back and hang with them again actually, it was kinda fun to see towers with their guts hanging out...hard drives and modems laying around, pretty damn cool)
So, for all of you who though I was dead because I was missing for a couple of days, I'm sorry to disappoint you. Brad's article jinxed me (hey, I have to blame it on SOMEONE and he's the convienint choice! :)) I am alive and well, recovering nicely from my withdrawl symptoms because I couldn't get on the 'net for a couple of days..and I intend to make up for lost time by blogging my ass off for the next couple of days.
. So thanks for this. It was really nice to read. GOOD LUCK WITH THE COMPUTER!!