So today was disappointing. Remember when I
said that I had to buy a new laptop? I didn't do that because I wanted to. I bought a new laptop because my old laptop broke.
A week before Christmas in 2008, my old laptop broke. My old HP laptop broke in a way that rendered it inoperable. Since I had been hearing their commercials for years, and heard glowing testimonials about their service, I went to
PC Laptops. PC Laptops is not a generic name for a computer store. PC Laptops is a Utah based computer manufacturer/seller that offers, among other things, kick-ass laptops with a lifetime service guarantee. In my hour of need, I went to PC Laptops looking to get my old broken HP laptop fixed. My old broken HP laptop was broken in a way that they could not fix, but I was offered a deal on a new laptop, a deal I took them up on.
I took them up on their deal and for just over four and a half years I had a laptop that served me well. Extremely well. My PC Laptops laptop served me far better than my old broken HP laptop did, and better than I reasonably expected from a laptop computer. Since
three to five years is the expected lifespan of most laptops, I'd say that I was making out pretty well. However, on July 25th, something happened.
I turned on my PC Laptops laptop one morning and the screen was dim. Very dim. I won't utilize an analogy to a Hollywood actor in order to describe the dimness, instead I will describe it literally. Imagine the screen you are looking at right now. Now imagine what that screen would look like if it was fully operational but had no backlight to it. That is how my PC Laptop laptop looked. I could still utilize the laptop's HDMI port to connect the laptop to another monitor, so the problem wasn't with the video card, the problem was with the screen.
But, no worries. I had a lifetime service guarantee! That means if I have a problem with my computer, someone who actually knows things about computers can figure out what's wrong and fix it. YAY! So I called down to one of the several local PC Laptops locations, got confirmation that was I thought was a problem was a problem, and made arrangements to get my PC Laptops laptop fixed.
Three weeks went by. I occasionally got updates about the techs at PC Laptops thinking one thing was the problem, finding out it wasn't, then trying something else. But still, I patiently waited. And waited. And waited. Well, not completely patiently. After all, I
did buy a new laptop. After three weeks of waiting, today I got an update.
The problem wasn't with the screen itself, or with something called a "Backlight Invertor", which is what illuminates the screen of the laptop. The problem has to do with a faulty cable that connects the screen to the rest of the laptop. You would think that a faulty cable would be a simple fix, just switch the cable. However, since my PC Laptop laptop is just over four and a half years old, the techs at PC Laptops do not have any of the necessary cables in stock.
I'm not crafting this blog post to complain about PC Laptops. In fact, I think they did good by me. The amount of time and effort the techs put into fixing my PC Laptops laptop is something you would not expect from people doing it for free. I was even offered a substantial trade-in toward another PC Laptops computer, which I would have taken advantage of if not for Project Buy A House. And it's not like my PC Laptops laptop doesn't work entirely, like my old broken HP laptop did, it's just the screen that doesn't work. It's just disappointing. It's not that I wasn't thinking about getting a new laptop, it's just that I wasn't planning to do so untill after I accomplished Project Buy A House. Now, after all of this, my goals have been pushed back a bit, and I have a PC Laptops laptop that I cannot use in the way that I did before. Still, I do plan on going to PC Laptops when I accomplish Project Buy A House and get around to accomplishing Project World Dominating OmniPC. Untill then, a boy can dream.
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