My laptop is now ... a year and a half or so old. After a few months the screen hinges being way too tight caused the black plastic on the lid to crack on both hinges. This is not an isolated incident. I bought the laptop soon after a mate with an identical one bought his because I knew the spec was good and he didn't seem to have any problems. Only now we both had the problem, and it just so turns out that another mate of mine on my course at uni bought the same laptop as well. I guess you can guess where his cracks were. That's right, hinges again.
Also, battery died a few months later. I mean dead. This is now a DTR in every sense of the word
And towards the end of the 12 month warranty, the fan developed an irritating trait. When the laptop was powered up, the fan (being on a P4M) naturally spun up to full pelt, as did the P4M by design. This is obviously a control measure to make sure that the thing doesn't smoke itself as soon as it stats up, and the fan soon goes down to a more relaxed level. However, periodically, it would make an horrendous noise, like a worn out bearing or something, but that noise would cease as soon as it spun down. As time went on, this became gradually a more frequent occurance.
So, being the good soul I am, with about two days left on my warranty in early March, I got my ass in gear and rang them up, and asked them to fix it. They told me, fairly enough, that the screen would be fixed and the fan would be fixed, but that the battery, unknown to me, had a 6 month warranty. I guess that's something I should have known but just didn't being that this is my first laptop. However, not the issue.
The laptop was eventually returned to me with notes on work done, roughly as follows:
"Screen replaced NFF w/Fan"
Disappointed as I was, I hoped he'd had a look at it and fixed whatever was causing the awful noise. I turned the laptop on, and hey presto.... it makes the awful sound
I figure "hey, the guy must know what he's doing, he's saying that's not a fault, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt as long as the problem doesn't get any worse, and if it really gets much worse, I'll have to get the fan replaced at my cost or something, or complain."
The Whine Of Doom (TM) now happens on just about every boot where the computer has not been booted for more than about 10-15 hours i.e. first thing every day after I've slept. And occasionally more often than that. Only, even worse now, there are signs that the fan is slowing at that speed.
Fast forward to today, July 16/17th (depending on where you live and when I finish this post). And I'm running a virus scan on AVG (automatic, don't really know why it's running but not doing any harm) and the WoD starts. Panicking a little, I pause the test to allow the hard drive and CPU to stop hammering themselves, and the fan to spin down a little. The noise stopped once the thing cooled a little, and I resumed the test. Hopefully, it won't start again while I'm typing this.
Now question is, having reported the fault and it having "not been found" before, yet it's unquestionably there if you look and actually make the fan run properly, all that time ago, can I now ring them and tell them that the fault has developed further and I'm not happy? Bearing (no pun intended
) in mind the laptop, other than this problem that will develop until the fan plain doesn't work and the P4M burns itself to bits, has worked pretty much flawlessly the entire time I've had it.
I'm an extremely pissed off Mole, but I'm a little worried that this isn't going to go my way.
Thanks for listening, this has been an Anti-Dixons and Packard Bell propaganda message.
-Mole
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