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Topic: Now taking bets: How long will it take Best Buy to fix my laptop... (Read 3541 times)
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CmdrSlack
Contributor
Posts: 4390
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Has anyone had experience with Best Buy and their accidental breakage warranties before? I went in tonight to see if it actually covered what happened to my laptop, and they said it did. I took it back home, however, because I want to pull a crapload of data off the drive in case they fuck up the HD or reformat.
My guess is that I'll just get a new machine. On Friday night, I managed to trip and fall face-first into my laptop's screen while trying to catch an escaping cat. Fortunately, the screen, a glass-topped table, and the patio cement broke my fall. The cat ran back inside.
At any rate, now half of the screen is a nifty 60s oil-light effect and the rest is usable. My understanding is that when you fuck up the monitor, they generally just replace the entire machine since it's too expensive to replace the screen. They're telling me 1 week if they decide to replace and 2 weeks to a month if they decide to fix it.
Is that par for the course? Any opinions on the Best Buy repair folks? I can easily just hook my monitor up to the laptop and use it, but that sort of borks the other computer. I paid for the uber warranty, so instead of just buying a much better laptop for less than this one cost, I feel I should use the warranty.
I guess I want an estimate for how many grey hairs I may gain from this experience.
Also, GAH, my Spore save games!
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I traded in my fun blog for several legal blogs. Or, "blawgs," as the cutesy attorney blawgosphere likes to call 'em.
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60350
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That's par for the course. I abused the shit out of their warranty for, oh, the entire 5 years i worked there. Had it on fucking everything. Totally worth it for 90% of the items out there that are movable.
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MisterNoisy
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1892
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I know this doesn't help, but you won't get that fucker back for a good month.
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XBL GT: Mister Noisy PSN: MisterNoisy Steam UID: MisterNoisy
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60350
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That's true. Always try to get a replacement. Generally you won't even get your own laptop back if they "fix" it, you'll get a refurb with the hard drive swapped.
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CmdrSlack
Contributor
Posts: 4390
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Great.
Those cockweasels. What really stings is that a much better laptop with actual SONY GUTS /oldschoolsnl is cheaper than my "no ati/nvidia so I get work done" model is wayyyyy cheaper than this one that I bought 18 months ago.
Fuck.
At least I got a new AGP vid card for my circa SWG release desktop machine. I'm confident that it'll let me play Spore.
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I traded in my fun blog for several legal blogs. Or, "blawgs," as the cutesy attorney blawgosphere likes to call 'em.
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Reg
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5281
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I was depending on Spore to force me to upgrade my ancient desktop but the damned thing runs just fine. And the last upgrade I gave it was a new AGP graphics card to let it run Oblivion better.
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CmdrSlack
Contributor
Posts: 4390
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It's been ages since I messed with the guts of a desktop machine.
So, just to be sure, and not create another useless thread, is the following the smart way to install this new video card?
1. Use DriverCleaner or similar to nuke current vid card drivers. 2. Turn off machine, unhook everything, etc. 3. De-staticify myself and yank out old card, replace with new card, being sure to properly seat the damn thing. 4. Hook everything back up, reboot machine. 5. Install drivers from install disk 6. Promptly go find better drivers from that site I always forget the name of 7. Install those instead.
That about cover it?
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I traded in my fun blog for several legal blogs. Or, "blawgs," as the cutesy attorney blawgosphere likes to call 'em.
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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You could download the new drivers before you nuke the old drivers and switch hardware, then just load those drivers and ignore the disc.
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CmdrSlack
Contributor
Posts: 4390
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Isn't that site like Atomic or something like that?
I remember going there a billion years ago to get better drivers, but have since spaced the name.
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I traded in my fun blog for several legal blogs. Or, "blawgs," as the cutesy attorney blawgosphere likes to call 'em.
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Cyrrex
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10603
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Am I the only one that never cleans out the old drivers? Granted, I never use anything but Nvidia products, but still...I've never noticed and adverse effect from not doing this.
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"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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I used to, but I don't anymore. These days I just uninstall them, shut down, swap hardware.
Slack, for nvidia I tend to use whatever the latest WHQL-certed ones are on their site, for ati I use omega drivers.
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CmdrSlack
Contributor
Posts: 4390
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I used to, but I don't anymore. These days I just uninstall them, shut down, swap hardware.
Slack, for nvidia I tend to use whatever the latest WHQL-certed ones are on their site, for ati I use omega drivers.
Yeah, omega. That's it. Wait. This is a nvidia product. Ok, to their website I go, I guess. Now I just have to find my damn precision screwdrivers. My sense of it is that this will force me to finally unpack the "boxes of random crap" that my wife has been bugging me to unpack. Hell, i just hope the card doesn't suck. It was the only AGP vid card that Best Buy had, and I wasn't going to see if Tiger Direct was open just to hope for more than one option. I'm currently running an ATI Raedon 9000 (go go 64mb), so I figure this GeForce 7600 GS with 512 mb should at least, you know, get me somewhere near running modern games.
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« Last Edit: October 08, 2008, 02:22:54 PM by CmdrSlack »
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I traded in my fun blog for several legal blogs. Or, "blawgs," as the cutesy attorney blawgosphere likes to call 'em.
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Strazos
Greetings from the Slave Coast
Posts: 15542
The World's Worst Game: Curry or Covid
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Would have been better if you could have found a 7800 GS or higher, but...with that much VRAM, you should be ok. Depending on CPU/RAM, yo uwon't be running Crysis or such very easily, but you'll still be ok.
I could barely get AoC to run with a AMD XP 2700+, 2GB RAM, and a 256mb 7800 GS. I think the vc is what really hurt the most.
I'm tempted to try to upgrade the card One More Time, but my system is so old I'm trying to not spend any more money on it.
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Fear the Backstab! "Plato said the virtuous man is at all times ready for a grammar snake attack." - we are lesion "Hell is other people." -Sartre
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Salamok
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2803
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You should ask them if you can pull the hard drive and just send it in for repair w/o a hard drive. If you were actually dealing with a manufacturer doing the refurb this is fairly standard.
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