Blue Chi’s

I’ve written about my HP laptop problem last month. Today I got my laptop back and the problem is now resolved.

I have an HP Pavilion dv2000, the screen started acting funny, noise appears, and then the system would randomly just crash. I contacted HP and even though my warranty has expired, they decided to fix it for free because my model is known to be defective and qualifies for extended warranty. HP arranged for a carrier to come pick the laptop, and in about three weeks I got my laptop back. They replaced the motherboard with a new one and now it works like a charm. I had a dual boot setup which they did not touch, my hard disk has all my stuff on it and no data was lost at all.

I had problem with the initial collection because the carrier to which HP hired to come collect is an idiot. (Not directly HP’s fault). Anyway, everything else went fine and HP were swift to act once I contacted them.

If you have a problem with your HP Pavilion make sure you contact HP before you do anything with it.

I am not sure what I’ll do with my HP laptop now that I have my Mac as well. I might try a dual laptop lifestyle because I really like Windows 7 and I hate the fact that Chrome for the Mac is not ready yet.

(Pic Credits: Niklas)

Something weird has happened to my HP laptop, out of the blue the screen flickered, got some pixel noise and then it froze. I tried restarting, into Windows Vista, the pixel noise is everywhere and it freezes before even showing the login screen. I booted into Windows 7 and the same exact thing happened. Somehow though Safe Mode works, and occassionaly the noise would be gone from the boot menu and I can login to Windows before the screen randomly freaks out and it freezes. It feels like a hardware error because of the randomness of it and the fact that it affects both of my operating systems.

I’m happy this thing didn’t happen last week during my exam period, I don’t know what would’ve done. Luckily I’m taking this week off and just not doing anything, but I need to start working on my dissertation soon.

Heard from Diablo that the same thing happened to his HP machine and his only solution was to replace the motherboard of his computer. I emailed HP and their instructions indicate that I need to ‘service’ my system because the problem seem to effect everything even the BIOS menu.

I am going to email HP again to see how the “service” process takes place and how much it will cost me to replace a part such as the motherboard. I can’t believe this happened just two months after the warranty expired. Well, at least it didn’t happen exactly the day after it expired.

I think fixing this is going to take a while, and I’m not sure I can trust it with my work now that I have to start writing my dissertation. I thought I’ll just buy a new computer. I thought I’ll go for a Macbook this time, I have some Windows applications which I paid for, but I can install Windows 7 on the Mac as well, so I guess I can still have Windows as my primary OS and try the Mac OS X from there.

I just ordered the aluminum Macbook online, got a student discount for it as well, but they expect to have it delivered in ten days or so. I might send my HP laptop for service once I get that one so that I don’t remain stuck without a computer during the transition.