Actually it should be..."And my old computer wasted half an hour in my life". Let me start from the beginning. As you would have read in the first post here, that my new computer, the laptop has been busted and so I am back to using the old 'box' of mine.
It is working great as I said, but the fact is that, it is celeron, 500MHz, 96MB RAM, and I have installed XP on it. I think you got the idea there. It takes almost 12-13 minutes to start working since the start button has been pushed. I mean, just now, some 2 hours ago, I had begun writing my last post about my worst day in February 2007, and suddenly there was a power cut. And the UPS gave away before the computer could shut down. I mean, that is ridiculous.
Then, I again started it on inverter supply. And again, after some 15 minutes, as I was about to begin the post again, someone switched the TV downstairs and again, the computer crashed. And so, another 15 minutes gone.
And now, finally I am writing this post. And now I am getting tired of this. There is only one way that can stop this, and that is my laptop. And finally I got a good news on that point. The HP people have replaced the motherboard, optical drive and HDD. But they are not sure yet. (Think that something else is in bad condition). So I am yet to receive it.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
And I wasted half an hour in my life......
The worst day of my life in February 2007...
Huh.... I really don't know how these things happen... Me and a few of my friends, had decided to go to a movie and before that, a dinner. I wish that I had done nothing of the two.... It was one of the worst movies and dinner ever.
We all had gone to a veg hotel, as a coupe of my friends don't eat non-veg. And so, as me and a friend of mine are not very good foodie people, we decided to order American Choppsie (I am not sure about the spelling.... do tell me what is the correct spelling to help me edit) and Hot and Sour soup. Everyone else had ordered usual Maharashtrian or Punjabi food, but there were we, a couple of bigheads, who decided to get themselves Chinese food in a hotel where even local food is of a very poor quality.
First the soup.... only 2 words, very poor. It was hot and it was sour, so technically it was the correct soup, but apart from that there was nothing in it. Only plain water. We were looking at each other with an expression that I cannot explain in words. But as we had ordered it in one by two quantity, we were saved from the trouble of drinking the whole bowl.
Before the two of us could get ourselves back to normal state, there came American Choppsie. And I am telling you, find a place where this dish is worse than what you get in this hotel, and I will throw you a party. So, we started eating... and I just could not get it down through my throat. I mean, there were some pieces which initially looked to be of potato, but I soon discovered that it was not potato but it was Pineapple. And then there as cherry, Nuts, apple. I mean, it was more of a fruit salad than what it was meant to be. It really did suck. Urrghh......
And nobody even joined in with us, so we had to finish it all by ourselves. (I can't say I would have done anything different than what my friends did..). It was really bad. Then the movie.... Again, the title would be enough to let you know that the day was a bad one for me. It was 'Salam-e-ishq'. I am yet to see any movie (any other movie) with 6 so called love stories which actually are tragic stories. Only the songs were of any relief.
In short, what I learned is that, never order something in a hotel that you have no idea about, and be careful about hindi movies. Don't waste 150-200 rupees. Instead grab a cool DVD, Pizza and some drink and enjoy them in your home with the home theatre system. (Get one if you don't have one!).
Thursday, February 8, 2007
And I decided never to buy an HP product again.....
It was a fine day. 4th of June 2006. I received my first laptop and second computer that day. I was very happy. It was HP's nx6110 model. I was in love with it the moment I saw it.
I began my work with the computer very enthusiastically. I was liking it more day by day, and then came the day, when I was watching a movie on it, and as I moved the laptop, the playback suddenly stopped, and the laptop hanged. I thought that it must be some problem with the software. (You must have guessed which software I am talking about). So I did the same thing again, and laptop hanged for second time in succession.
I filled the complaint, the month was Jully. No notice was taken by HP personnel. Then eventually the problem disappeared. So I was happy again, but then in the month of September, the hard disk started behaving like a lunatic. And before I could have done anything, the whole system came down crashing. It was in October that the hard disk and optical drive was replaced by HP for the first time. And guess what, they gave "Toshiba" hard disk and "Matshita" DVD Writer as a replacement.
I was angry the moment I knew about this, first thing was that the HDD did not come with the preloaded S/W and OS. Second thing, it was from Toshiba not HP and third thing, the DVD drive had problems. I will come to that later. First the Hard Disk. I had payed extra for the preloaded S/W. And as the first HDD was replaced due to manufacturing defect, it was HP's responsibility to give the new HDD with the S/W. But they did not. And no sooner than I had installed all the S/W and OS, the replaced HDD, the 'Toshiba' one, came down crashing. I was mad. I wanted to hit those people. I had complained on the very first day, but no, they said 'Toshiba' is better. So they replaced the HDD for the second time.
Meanwhile the DVD-Writer. The one that came with the system originally could write DVD-RAM disks. But this replaced one could not. It also had problems with the writing speed. With a speed of 11800KB/S, it takes some 15 minutes to write a DVD-5. Which is almost 5 minutes more than the first one took. And again the DVD-RAM problem was always there.
I contacted the HP customer care online chatting. First, I did not get any reply at all. The second time I complained about this, again, the person was not chatting well. First he took a lot of time to reply, secondly when I told him about the problem, he started saying, that I should use the bundled S/W with the laptop for best results. Hello, the bundled S/W sucks. I told him that. He said, try writing a DVD with that. I said OK. And again, the drive took 8 minutes to write 700MBs and moreover, the DVD was not created a multisession one as I had directed. So I told him for one more time that the bundled S/W sucks. Then I made a statement, "You say, use bundled S/W for best results, I want to edit photos, why don't you give me Photoshop CS2 preloaded?" He did not reply.
I then asked him about the fact that this drive could not write DVD-RAM. But he did not reply t that as well. I was so mad at him, that I logged off. This happened in the month of November-December.
Then, again as soon as everything seemed to have settled down, and only after some 15 days that I had installed opensuse 10.2 on my laptop, the 3rd HDD crashed. On the 7th of February 2007. I want to go and hit the people at HP on head with the laptop now. This is really bizarre. I mean, how many times more? I used to think that this was a good company, but not anymore. I have been using an old desktop for 6.5 years. It's HDD was replaced for the first time after 5 years and CD drive after 4 years. Maybe, it worked well because it is not made by HP. The only thing I want to say is that, it is not user's fault, or I would have had faced all the problems with the desktop as well.
What problems are there are with the laptop. Right from month one. I have never heard anything like this before. 3 HDD and 2 Optical Drive replacements in 8 months? And that too because of companies fault? I have been asking for entire piece replacement from the first month itself. But the company is reluctant. I still say, that as a goodwill, HP should look into the matter. This is all theirs fault, and it's me who is suffering from it. Not the company. I am going to try for the last time to see what do they do, but one thing for sure, I am never buying an HP product again.........
