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Dreadful Nonsense

"I've read your blog. it's really funny. you should write a column." - Jon Ronson

The saga of the slow but certain death of Eggers (my laptop, not the American School Teachers campaigner) continues apace, finding me yesterday and today engaged in conflict with the company that sold it to me. I have never been more grateful for the concept of warranty, because otherwise they wouldn’t even be entertaining my calls.


Yesterday, a young upstart in Belfast drawled that he thought my problem was probably software. “But”, I explained, “this wasn’t a problem before I sent it into you last August.” Yes, he said, but these things just happen sometimes. “Yes”, I continued, “but this wasn’t a problem before I sent it into you last August.”


The problem is that the laptop won’t turn itself off. It comes to a certain point in the shutting down process, and then just stops dead with the screen brightly lit and nothing going on behind it. That’s not a hugely ridiculous problem, of course, and that’s the reason why I’ve waited until now to send it back to the laptop hospital – everything thing else on the laptop still works. After a fashion.


I continued to explain to m’laddo down the phone that nothing really works up to speed any more. “For example”, I explained, “I have to start Word up three or four times before it will respond normally.” Yes, he said, that definitely sounds like a software problem. “But”, I argued, “this wasn’t a problem before I sent it into you last August.”


He suggested formatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows. I repeated again my opening gambit, the bit about the laptop not shutting down properly. If it doesn’t shut down, you see, it won’t re-start. If it doesn’t re-start, it’s impossible to reinstall Windows. Yes, he said, but it sounds like a software problem. If you re-install Windows, and it still doesn’t shut down properly, then we’ll know it’s a hardware problem. I tried one more time, with the not-shutting-down and incapable-of-restart and the this-isn’t-going-to-work and young bucko in Belfast responded again with his software-problem and reinstall-windows and software-problem. “But”, I whimpered, hanging up the phone in defeat, “this wasn’t a problem before I sent it into you last August.”


Last night we formatted my hard drive. Then we tried to re-install Windows. It won’t restart.

This entry was posted on 11 October 2005 at 3:17 pm. 0 comments

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