One might believe that I would be angry and upset. Why you ask? Well, last week, on 14 October to be exact the graphics card started acting up again. For those of you that have read this blog for a while you know that I have had to send my HP dv9074ea laptop in for repair twice already due to the graphics card dying on me, rendering the laptop useless. In order to fix the problem the motherboard had to be replaced in both those instances. When I tried to start the laptop last week I got a blue screen before it finished loading the OS and it restarted again. I noticed red stripes all over the screen at boot-up and Windows offered me the option to repair the system. It did not work, and the only way to boot into Windows was to go into Safe Mode and roll back the screen card drivers to the Standard VGA driver ones. Obviously the graphics card had started its downward process of dying on me…

I contacted komplett.no, the vendor from whom I purchased the machine in October 2006. Obviously the 1 year warranty was out, but I could still complain about the product under Norwegian Consumer Purchase Laws which asserts that a product like a laptop should work for 5 years. Komplett.no approved my request to send it in, and I wrote an additional claim where I asserted my knowledge of the laws in question and wanted a so-called re-delivery. Basically claiming, under law, to have a new laptop in replacement for my old one.

The laptop arrived at komplett.no on Tuesday this week, and I was very anxious to find out how this process would evolve. I got an email reply (after several phone calls) stating that komplett.no’s technician were not allowed to diagnose the machine, and that they had to send the machine to HPs service partner Infocare. The email also stated that just the process of determining whether the machine was repairable or fell under the provision in the law could take 2-3 weeks. Yikes! I am going on a business trip to the Netherlands next week, and I really want a laptop on that trip, and the prospect of that happening were bleak to say the least.

So, after receiving that email yesterday I decided to contact HPs customer service center in Norway to see if there was any way to speed up this process. I explained my predicament to Anna and later Mads at the HP return and complaints division. They were very understanding, and agreed to have one of HPs technicians call komplett.no and perform a diagnosis of the laptop via phone. This was not exactly pr protocol, but they would try anyway. After I hung up after that conversation my hopes were up. I immediately phoned komplett.no to inform them of HPs attempt to help me. They were lukewarm to say the least. “You know, this is not exactly the way it is supposed to be done…” I insisted, and were probably considered an annoying customer by the time I finished my (several) calls to their customer service representative. The end of the story? I got a call from HP today(!) informing me that the machine had indeed been identified as having the third instance of the same problem, and that they would send me a brand new computer as a replacement free of charge, and that I would hopefully get it by Wednesday next week! Amazing! Unbelievable and just a prime example of a company putting their customers first! Huge cudos to HP!

What laptop I will get as a replacement? Sometimes next week I will be the proud owner of a brand new HP Pavilion dv7 2114eo laptop computer. Specs as listed below;

Click here for a product demo.

I cannot wait to get the laptop, and I will of course post a review of it here on my blog once I have run it through its paces.

A big thank you to the customer team leader at komplett.no and a thousand more and then some to Mads and Anna at HP. They understand what customer care is all about!

The common advice out there is that unless you have more than 4 GB RAM there really is no need to go for a 64bit version of Windows. Well, I think otherwise. Yesterday, I figured it was time to reformat and install Windows 7 RC on my recently returned laptop. It is a HP dv9074ea from 2006. It has a AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-56 processor, I have upgraded it to 2 GB RAM and it has two internal hard drives, initially both 80 GB drives, but one has been exchanged to a 500 GB one. I have been accepted into the Beta testing program for Windows 7 Norwegian Language Edition (x86) and heading the first advice I mentioned above, thus decided to install the 32 bit Norwegian Language RC on the laptop.

The install went fine, but I was greeted by something far from a clean device manager afterwards, and had to install Vista drivers in order to have the system running. I then went through the hoops detailed in my install guide. But things did not continue smoothly. Far from it. Norton Internet Security 2009 were not allowed to run its heuristic drivers (incompatible according to the OS), I experienced several systemwide hangs, and had to force a log out to have the OS respond to keystrokes on several occasions. After having installed several of my applications I ran a Windows Update and were met with the Office 2007 SP 2 download – a huge one. For me that was a decision point. I was not happy with they way my system was running. It seemed at times slow, non-responsive and flat out buggy. That coupled with the fact that I am now so used to the English version of the OS that I did not feel at ease with a Norwegian version, made me decide to reformat again.

This time I installed the English x64 version from a USB memory stick (check here for instructions on how to do it) and it took a total of 15 minutes from I restarted my machine, reformatted the C drive, installed Windows 7 RC to be greeted by the desktop. The Device Manager was not completely clean, but a Windows Update found the missing drivers and the system was really running fine. I have now installed almost all my frequently used applications and the system works the way I want it to – smoothly with no problems.

Funny fact; I even have a slightly better Windows Experience Index on the x64 version; 4.5 as opposed to 4.4 on the 32 bit version (both due to the integrated Nvidia GeForce 7600 Go video card).

I am not completely sure whether this is due to the 32 bit OS or to inherent bugs in the Norwegian Language version of Windows 7 RC, but the user experience made it an easy choice. Yes I had to install everything again (not hard – just time consuming), but definitely worth it.

What are your experiences on this? 32 or 64 bit and why? Let me know…

One month and a day after my laptop died on me it returned from the land of the dead bits and bytes (Norwegian PC repair company Infocare). In my first post I said that I had asked HP for a repair under Norwegian consumer laws 5 year warranty. Not that easy. Since I bought the dv9074ea from Komplett.no I had to take matters to them…

So off to the phones… explaining my predicaments… logging a 5 year warranty reclaim on their website… getting a initial positive response and sending the very dead laptop off to Komplett. After verifying that my story was true, they then sent the machine off to Infocare which then repaired it by installing a new motherboard, replacing the DVD drive and updating the BIOS before promptly returning the machine to yours truly. At what cost to me? Nil, nada, nothing!

There are some horror stories of bad customer care at Komplett going around Norwegian forums, but I have nothing but praise for them. They have been very forthcoming and since I am writing this on my repaired and returned laptop I am a very satisfied customer. That’s the way it should be, and it sure guaranties that I will return as a customer.

So my Laptop Hunt ended me up where I was in the beginning; with my HP dv9074ea, a laptop that is soon 3 years old – aging would be a gentle way of putting it in the chronicles of PC life expectancy and relevance – BUT it not only runs Windows 7 RC well, it does so beautifully. I have been to some PC retail stores lately, checking out their offers and I have not seen many machines there that has a better Windows Experience Index score than mine…

So that’s it. A happy ending to something I thought would be something completely different.