Challenges of technology

Image from Liam Higgins of flickr

I am feeling very challenged by technology :(
I have what should be a 'super duper' laptop. An HP Pavilion dv6000. Lots of RAM lots of Memory wireless internet etc. I have had it for one year now. It crashed on me completely a few weeks after I had bought it and I lost all my data. After it was reset it worked OK for a while but is always flicking on and off the net and occasional crashes but restarts itself. I took it back to the shop several times but it usually behaves itself while it is there so they say there is nothing they can see that is wrong with it. Finally got sick of it and took it to the computer repair people to check it out and tell me if it is OK. This comes at a cost of $50 for each half hour spent, unless it is a hardware problem which is under warranty.

So they checked it out and thought it might be because I had partially removed Norton anti virus (I use Avast which is good and is free). He completed the removal of this and charged me $164.00. OK, so I bring it home and it is worse than ever, keeps having error messages and crashes to blue screen. I phone the computer repair people who tell me the laptop now needs to have everything deleted from it, back to original factory settings, this will cost between $100-200 for them to do. I took the machine back to Dick Smith where I bought it and they put it back to factory settings without charging me (just as well I just might have hit someone). Back home again, now I have to set everything back up again, all my software, plugins etc, this has taken me virtually all morning this morning.

And what happens now??? Well!!! the computer will not maintain a wireless connection. I have to have it plugged into a cable to be on the internet. Dear reader if you have read this far you will perhaps understand my frustration!! I have called the repair man back and he says "AH!! it is probably a faulty wireless card". He does not have equipment to check this, so this check was not done I suppose in his original assessment. This apparently can be fixed under warranty.

I have no faith in this machine. I want it to be replaced and get another one. It cost me whole lot of money which I cannot really afford. But this is not going to happen. So I am going to tell everyone, do not buy an HP pavilion dv6000.

We have another laptop at home. It did not come with wireless but I bought a pcmc card for it. It is not nearly so powerful or 'super duper' but it seems to work OK. It does lose wireless connection occasionally but not nearly as much as this machine. It cost about 1/3 of the price of this machine and is the one my husband uses.

My advice to anyone reading this would be, do not buy a 'super duper' high powered machine thinking it will be, faster, better, more powerful. Go for the cheap and cheerful. It will probably work just as well and you will not be so frustrated having spent a heap of money on a pile of junk that no one will help you with.