The first of many nothings from Nowhere...Battles with my laptop.

So...after many moons of promising myself I wouldn't do it, I've demonstrated my normal levels of willpower and given in. Here I am, writing a blog.

I've already convinced myself that I have absolutely nothing to say, so this effort may well be extremely short-lived,  but what the heck, it's only another half-hour of my life, and I wasn't planning on doing very much with it anyway!

It's a crazy time to choose, if I'm honest, to start writing a blog, as I am typing to you from a netbook with the world's smallest screen, and my failing eyesight (one of the many signs from my body that I am no longer as young as my mind wants to be) means that I'm squinting at the screen and hoping that I can make out any typos through the haze. Maybe the reason for the netbook would be a good place to start? Here goes...




 As I am not a city worker or the CEO of a FTSE 100 company, money is a bit tight. So, when an appliance shows signs of giving up the struggle, I worry.  In late October, I started to worry about my laptop. I'd already popped it into the repair shop for major surgery in June, thinking that it would be fine once repaired, but then the screen declined to illuminate. There was something there, something very faint. I could make it out if I waited till darkness fell, then carried the laptop over to a nearby table lamp and got both the screen and my head positioned at just the right angle. Much Googling and reading about remedies later, I came to the conclusion that the screen backlight had died, and that whilst a repair or replacement was possible, the cost, on top of the cost of previous surgery, was too high to be justified. I'd managed to get hold of a cable to link the laptop to the TV, allowing the TV to act as a giant monitor, so I could just about use the old laptop for as long as it took to rescue any precious files, but it was clearly time to shell out for a new one.

Once upon a time, the received wisdom was that any sort of new technology would, once established, gradually reduce in price. For a while, this was true of laptops. What happened???

In the couple of years since my last purchase, it appears that laptop prices have soared!! Silly me. In those couple of years, the price of almost everything has soared. I was squinting in disbelief at the dinky screen of my emergency netbook, reeling from shock at the cost of a new computer.

Help, in the form of  The Husband (TH), was at hand....

TH is a dab hand at bargain hunting. He is also a dab hand at finding people who know people who have connections to people who can Get Things. He has a work colleague, who has a cousin who can Get Things like computers, ipods, etc. "I'll have a word with him" he said. It was only a short wait before he sent me an e-mail from work. "Not much choice at the moment" it said, above a picture of one solitary laptop. However, the solitary laptop looked fine, was a reputable brand and, most importantly, it was CHEAP.

I should add, at this point, to avoid any confusion, that at no time in its life had the machine dropped off the back of any lorries, and that this was a totally legitimate commercial transaction. Just in case you were wondering..

Meanwhile, back at the story, I agreed to purchase the solitary laptop. After a couple of weeks of waiting (the laptop was coming from far away, and one delivery attempt had to be aborted after an accident closed the M40), it arrived. All shiny and new and working and..well, basically a pretty ordinary new laptop. The date (for future reference) was November 18th.

Everything was tickety-boo until Christmas morning. I switched on my laptop to read and exchange festive messages of good cheer with various people, and all was fine. An hour or so later, I switched on again, only to be met with the Black Screen of Death. Not to be fooled (I'd been here before, remember) I did the squinty under-the-table-lamp thing, and the cable-to-the-tv thing, but to no avail. I checked the manufacturer's website help pages and did everything they said, too. Nada. So I sent them an e-mail. Their robot sent me one back, telling me to do all the things I'd already done. I should have known then that this was only the beginning.

I'll spare you too much detail. This is my first blog entry and I don't want potential readers flatlining. Suffice it to say that the manufacturer came and took my laptop away on December 29th. They were supposed to come on the 28th but they didn't turn up. They were supposed to deliver my repaired laptop back on January 4th. This became January 7th, 11th, 17th, 28th and now FEBRUARY 28th. I've lost count of the number of e-mails we've exchanged, they're only reachable on a premium-rate phone number (and I've racked up about an hour on the phone so far) and  their "we care about you and our MD wants your feedback" form actually limits the number of words you can write when you finally decide to let the MD know exactly what you think of their customer service.

Oh, and talking of "customer service"...a couple of days after the second of their 6 delivery dates had passed, they sent me a survey to complete. "We'd like your views on your recent experience". There's nothing better (and, it seems, more rare) than a joined-up after-sales department.

I've given them a deadline and suggested that, as they've already had my laptop for longer than I did, they might like to consider replacing it with one that works. I'm not holding my breath...