- Joined
- Feb 27, 2006
- Messages
- 2,272
- Age
- 38
- Location
- Sydney
- Main Job
- Secondary Job
- Third Job
- FFXIV
- Lukas
Ok, so about eight months ago or so, a little bit prior to quitting FFXI, the laptop I was using for general word processing and school-related things died. It wasn't a tragic loss - the horrid thing was like a few years old and was kind of glitchy and generally ancient and smelly.
So I had some money stored away and since I was starting university and moving out of home and whatnot, I thought it wise to upgrade to one of those shiny HP notebooks with all the bells and whistles and kind of make it my own little PC for the new place. Everything went along swimmingly for a good while. I mean, for the first couple of months I borrowed wireless internet from the guy downstairs. It was slow and unstable but meh. Eventually I contacted Optus and they installed my own ADSL thing. This is when everything started to turn rather sour.
First, my ADSL line didn't work. It was extremely slow - I did an upload/download test on the line and got numbers similar to dial-up. I contacted Optus and the dreadful woman that dealt with me said that I had to pay an additional fee for a speed increase. Fine, it was a mere $10 or something, so I agreed and told her to do her thing. Bitch said she did it. A few weeks later, my speed was still abysmal and to make matters evermore unpleasant, I could not stay connected for more than ten minutes at a time.
So naturally, I call Optus again in a bit of a huff. This woman "Cheryl" picks up and tells me that although Optus advertises speeds of 1MB, this is merely a "maximum threshould" and one should rarely expect it to reach this number. I knew this, that stupid I am not. But the latest upload/download test I did then informed me that my speed was a static 63kb - not even remotely near 1MB. Cheryl, bless her slovenly soul, tells me that this is probably an issue which concerns the wiring at the complex in which I live. When I inquire as to when she could send people to amend this situation she responds by telling me that this is not a concern of Optus. Lovely.
I then contact my building supervisor (or building super-intendent or whatever that guy that lives on the first floor of all apartment complexes and fixes the drains and always wears a gross, slimy singlet when answering the door is called). He says that he'll "get right on it" and that he'll contact an electrician as soon a humanly possible. This was like... on the 31st of March I believe, and the stupid electrician just came today. Mind you, I was completely without internet access from about the 9th of June and without a landline telephone as that crapped out shortly after.
But wait, wait... two days before I was cut-off completely and my internet still technically functioned at its woeful snail's pace - stu-vac commenced. Which would mean that I had one week of study to prepare for a following two laden with end-of-semester examinations. Thankfully, I had the foresight to promptly save all the internet resources I would be needing on my hard drive on the off-chance anything should happen. Aha, I thought I had one-upped technology this time and was quite pleased with my cleverness.
Little did I know, that my wonderful eight month HP Pavilion notebook would decide to explode on me. I turned it on one morning (on the eve of stu-vac) and the ventilation fan beneath the thing started making this absolutely horrible noise which was loud enough to be heard from down the corridor of my apartment. Not being the most techno-savvy of persons, I sought to remedy the situation by shoving a screw into the fan and stopping the infernal noise once and for all, thereby being able to carry on with PC related tasks.
Five minutes after, my laptop beeped to inform me that its CPU temperature had reached it's "core shutdown threshould" and that it would be promptly... well shutting down. I panicked slightly and removed the screw from the ventilation fan and turned it back on after it had cooled down substantially only to garner myself a rushed ten minutes of computer usage before the horrid fan gave way and turned my notebook into a smoking mess of plastic and wires which smelt suspiciously of solder. I made two telephone calls following this. The first was to one of the nearest IT-repair-whatever-the-people-that-fix-things. They tell me that I should probably bring it in next week as they have a "heavy work load". Had I done so, I would have had to wait a further 7-10 working days for the repairs to be done. This is of course not bearing in mind how much it would cost for repairs, or if it were indeed feasibly possible to fix the notebook for less than the amount it would cost me to buy a new one.
My second phone call was to the hotline number on my notebook's user manual. I called to inquire about the warranty of the blasted thing. The person I spoke to could not speak intelligible English but managed to somehow communicate the inconceivable fact that the company he works for would not recognise the 10 month warranty I had. I called a further two times and was informed that it was because the computer issues I experienced were not due to a manufacturing fault, which is just BS. My notebook was eight months old; it had not moved from my desk since I came to live at my apartment. I kept it on a clean, even surface, away from other electronic decives, far from direct sunlight, in an area of moderate temperature. I had never spilt, dropped or rested anything on it. I had removed dust from it with that aerosol air whats-it regularly, including the problematic ventilation fan.
In retrospect, it was a spoilt, snotty notebook which intentionally combusted itself along with all my university lecture notes, past assignments, writing, music, video files, photos and miscellaneous computer junk I was hoarding for some reason or other. You vile, malicious, vindictive, filthy whore of a computer, you - I hate you. May no one utter your name before me again, HP Pavilion [insert random numbers representing model which I forget and it's far too cold to check].
Stu-vac and thereafter what has already passed of my examination period has been an endless to and fro from my university library during sunlight hours, to the studies of friends or sub-zero temperatures of city internet cafes at night. Meanwhile, I have ordered a brand new computer which should be arriving soon... hopefully.
So I had some money stored away and since I was starting university and moving out of home and whatnot, I thought it wise to upgrade to one of those shiny HP notebooks with all the bells and whistles and kind of make it my own little PC for the new place. Everything went along swimmingly for a good while. I mean, for the first couple of months I borrowed wireless internet from the guy downstairs. It was slow and unstable but meh. Eventually I contacted Optus and they installed my own ADSL thing. This is when everything started to turn rather sour.
First, my ADSL line didn't work. It was extremely slow - I did an upload/download test on the line and got numbers similar to dial-up. I contacted Optus and the dreadful woman that dealt with me said that I had to pay an additional fee for a speed increase. Fine, it was a mere $10 or something, so I agreed and told her to do her thing. Bitch said she did it. A few weeks later, my speed was still abysmal and to make matters evermore unpleasant, I could not stay connected for more than ten minutes at a time.
So naturally, I call Optus again in a bit of a huff. This woman "Cheryl" picks up and tells me that although Optus advertises speeds of 1MB, this is merely a "maximum threshould" and one should rarely expect it to reach this number. I knew this, that stupid I am not. But the latest upload/download test I did then informed me that my speed was a static 63kb - not even remotely near 1MB. Cheryl, bless her slovenly soul, tells me that this is probably an issue which concerns the wiring at the complex in which I live. When I inquire as to when she could send people to amend this situation she responds by telling me that this is not a concern of Optus. Lovely.
I then contact my building supervisor (or building super-intendent or whatever that guy that lives on the first floor of all apartment complexes and fixes the drains and always wears a gross, slimy singlet when answering the door is called). He says that he'll "get right on it" and that he'll contact an electrician as soon a humanly possible. This was like... on the 31st of March I believe, and the stupid electrician just came today. Mind you, I was completely without internet access from about the 9th of June and without a landline telephone as that crapped out shortly after.
But wait, wait... two days before I was cut-off completely and my internet still technically functioned at its woeful snail's pace - stu-vac commenced. Which would mean that I had one week of study to prepare for a following two laden with end-of-semester examinations. Thankfully, I had the foresight to promptly save all the internet resources I would be needing on my hard drive on the off-chance anything should happen. Aha, I thought I had one-upped technology this time and was quite pleased with my cleverness.
Little did I know, that my wonderful eight month HP Pavilion notebook would decide to explode on me. I turned it on one morning (on the eve of stu-vac) and the ventilation fan beneath the thing started making this absolutely horrible noise which was loud enough to be heard from down the corridor of my apartment. Not being the most techno-savvy of persons, I sought to remedy the situation by shoving a screw into the fan and stopping the infernal noise once and for all, thereby being able to carry on with PC related tasks.
Five minutes after, my laptop beeped to inform me that its CPU temperature had reached it's "core shutdown threshould" and that it would be promptly... well shutting down. I panicked slightly and removed the screw from the ventilation fan and turned it back on after it had cooled down substantially only to garner myself a rushed ten minutes of computer usage before the horrid fan gave way and turned my notebook into a smoking mess of plastic and wires which smelt suspiciously of solder. I made two telephone calls following this. The first was to one of the nearest IT-repair-whatever-the-people-that-fix-things. They tell me that I should probably bring it in next week as they have a "heavy work load". Had I done so, I would have had to wait a further 7-10 working days for the repairs to be done. This is of course not bearing in mind how much it would cost for repairs, or if it were indeed feasibly possible to fix the notebook for less than the amount it would cost me to buy a new one.
My second phone call was to the hotline number on my notebook's user manual. I called to inquire about the warranty of the blasted thing. The person I spoke to could not speak intelligible English but managed to somehow communicate the inconceivable fact that the company he works for would not recognise the 10 month warranty I had. I called a further two times and was informed that it was because the computer issues I experienced were not due to a manufacturing fault, which is just BS. My notebook was eight months old; it had not moved from my desk since I came to live at my apartment. I kept it on a clean, even surface, away from other electronic decives, far from direct sunlight, in an area of moderate temperature. I had never spilt, dropped or rested anything on it. I had removed dust from it with that aerosol air whats-it regularly, including the problematic ventilation fan.
In retrospect, it was a spoilt, snotty notebook which intentionally combusted itself along with all my university lecture notes, past assignments, writing, music, video files, photos and miscellaneous computer junk I was hoarding for some reason or other. You vile, malicious, vindictive, filthy whore of a computer, you - I hate you. May no one utter your name before me again, HP Pavilion [insert random numbers representing model which I forget and it's far too cold to check].
Stu-vac and thereafter what has already passed of my examination period has been an endless to and fro from my university library during sunlight hours, to the studies of friends or sub-zero temperatures of city internet cafes at night. Meanwhile, I have ordered a brand new computer which should be arriving soon... hopefully.
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