[joshstep1]

Evan wanted to here my bad HP story, so I'm posting it here for you all to read. (think Hewlett Packard computers, not horse power)

Ummmmm, how did it go?... ... ... Oh yeah, I remember. About three years ago, we bought two almost identical HP laptops brand new. The only difference was one had one gig of ram and the other had two. I used one laptop for about 1.5 years... then, the unthinkable happened... wait, these are HPs, anything can crap up on them, the video card fried. At the time, we didn't know what was wrong with it. All we knew was when we tried to start it up, these weird lines would show up on the screen and the now-as-useful-as-a-brick laptop would not make it past the initial loading screen. Frustrated, we took it to Circuit City, back in the day when they were in business, and spent $60 to have them tell us that the video card was fried and there is no way to replace it because it is part of the motherboard. However, they were kind enough to gave us a piece of paper with a recall from HP saying, and I paraphrase, "We have identified a problem with (a bunch of model numbers) laptops and we are recalling them so we can replace the defective part. If your laptop is showing these symptoms, (and ours was), mail it to us for a free repair. If your laptop is on the list and it does not have these symptoms, you can download a patch for it to prevent it from happening here at www.we-know-hps-are-junk-so-get-it-fixed-here.com." You have to note, my laptop was on that list! Next day, we call HP to talk to them about the problem and the recall they issued. Fortunately, we were connected with some guy in India who barely spoke a clear word of English. After about 30 something minutes of arguing and trying to figure out what he was saying, he said they couldn't fix the laptop or take it into their shop because they could not identify the laptop based on the serial number. That really, really made us mad! We asked if we could talk to a manager/supervisor. He said no. Eventually, we gave up. End of story. If your wondering what happened to the other laptop, the same thing happened to it about a month ago. We are not even going to bother trying to send it in this time. HP had their chance to take care of one of their customers, and they failed. We have replaced both HPs with Sonys and so far we haven't had a single problem with them. The moral of the story is pretty simple, don't buy HPs... ever.