Thank you Cringely! Hopefully more folks suffering from this particular problem with their DV9000 laptop will hear about it and take-up HP’s offer for a free repair!
Kudos to Robert X. Cringely: http://weblog.infoworld.com/robertxcringely/archives/2008/12/hewlett_packard.html
UPDATE: Just got word from Robert X Cringely that an HP Representative is interested in “helping to resolve my problemâ€. Most excellent!
Got a e-mail from Robert X Cringely asking how things went. I had to admit that I’m a little afraid of sending my laptop in without having first backed-up the system via Ghost or something similar.
I told him as much, so I guess he’s going to do an article on it later today. Let’s see what happens…
Well, the Free shipping kit has arrived. This is for the HP DV-9000 that I need to send back to HP for a warranty repair.
Some included documentation clarifies the issue greatly. As I had originally hoped, they indicate on one of the enclosed forms that they will only perform an OS Restoration if they have to, not as a first resort as my good friend Al had insisted in the first place.
However, now I have a problem. Al said one thing, and now I have a document that says another. Which am I to believe? I sincerely want to believe the document, but after all that has transpired, I can’t really be sure of anything from HP.
The one constant that I am still looking into is a good backup solution. I’ve got plenty of backup storage space, but what I’d like to just perform a Ghost Backup of the entire drive and if the unit comes back with any missing files, I can just restore the image…
Well, I just got off the phone with Al, the friendly HP representative who tried to convince me that if I sent my DV9000 laptop in for a free repair, that they will absolutely positively have to re-image my system.
Care to guess what needs to be repaired? A defective Hard Drive? Negative. An all-important Motherboard? Nope, guess again.
Believe it or not, the problem is that a left-side hinge that is defective and falling causing my laptop to tear itself apart internally. You can see in the image to the left that the inner and outer shell surrounding the LCD is being forced apart at the hinge.
Apparently HP is well aware of this issue; I’m guessing the failure rate was incredibly high, and they wanted to avoid a class-action lawsuit.
Now, I could see that if I were submitting my laptop for repair of the motherboard or Harddrive that they *might* have to reload the factory image on the Harddrive in order to work with a known quantity at a particular level of quality, but this is just plain insane.
For grins, I decided to e-mail a copy of the original notification e-mail that HP sent me to “Robert X. Cringely†at InfoWorld Magazine. I guess that we’ll have to see what happens…
Don’t mind me, I’m just messing around trying to find a good backup solution to back-up my hard-drive prior to submission to HP…
Yesterday, I didn’t even bother trying to adjust my new Fuze. I spent the remainder of the day (and so far today) just getting to know the new device and seeing how it operates. There are so many new things to play with on this device.
It is a totally wonderful device, and has pretty much everything that I could ever want. It certainly has absolutely everything I want now, but I phrased the previous sentence that way because there’s always the chance that I could discover that there is something else that I want but that this device does not provide. I’m sure there will be a few, but I doubt they will be all that important to me.
So, I’ve already read the manual twice over, and there is so much stuff on this device that the manual barely scratches the surface. I’m going to have to do some serious digging…
The Touch Flo 3D (TF3D) interface shown on the commercials really is that good, but is completely alien to me since I came from the standard “Today†screen interface, so this will likely prove a very illuminating experience for me…
After a lot of soul searching, I came to the conclusion that while I could not afford to buy an AT&T Fuze on a financial basis, I also discovered that I could not afford to keep my original HP iPAQ h5555 and put-off buying the AT&T Fuze until later.
The HP iPAQ h5555 has outlived it’s usefulness for me. It has WM2003 as the OS (putting me five versions behind the current OS), 128Megs of memory, no VGA, no Phone (so I have to carry a separate cell phone), no GPS (so I have to carry a separate GPS receiver), no slide-out keyboard, and no data plan to be able to surf the Internet from anywhere.
For example, I most certainly need a newer mobile device in order to continue to be able to provide useable technical support to users in the Windows Mobile Total Access forums. Almost all of the new users in those forums have a newer device with Windows Mobile 5, or the newer WM6 and WM6.1, so it becomes infinitely harder to provide technical support when you don’t have the benefit of owning a newer device yourself.
Yet again, I most certainly need a newer mobile device in order to be able to provide technical support to users in the GPS Tuner forums. This device, like a lot of other devices that GPS Tuner users own, provides users with a built-in GPS radio, so that I can use 3rd party GPS Navigation software right on the device. GPS Tuner also makes use of various online maps (Google Maps, Topo Maps, etc), so having a device that is capable of using an Internet data plan will go a long ways towards helping me troubleshoot additional capabilities of the program.
As a Microsoft MVP for Mobile Devices, it helps to have a newer mobile device in order to compare notes and professional opinions on the very same newer devices that my peers own and use on a daily basis.
As a Product Reviewer and Writer at MobilitySite, it helps to have a more recent mobile device in order to properly evaluate 3rd party programs and software, since most of the newer programs won’t even install on older PDAs.
And finally, as a Mobile Technology Enthusiast, Professional Writer, and Independent Consultant, it helps to have all the best tools available in order to help you perform your job, no matter where you might find yourself.
So, I bought the AT&T Fuze, and I’m ever so happy that I did! I expect to continue delving into this device for at least the next month or so, as this is my first modern day device in the last 5 years.
More to come in the following days (presuming I remember to come up for air).
Well, I was so tired of DirecTV and their HD “glitches” that I decided to give AT&T’s offering a try.Â
After all, I’ve been with all the major providers so far: Comcast, then Dish Network, then most recently DirecTV. I still had to go thru seven receivers (five Standard Definition, two High Definition)before we got one that worked, and while the programming has been fairly consistent, it still has a lot of problems.  Mostly it was lots of issues due to typical satellite “line of sight” related issues (inclement weather, birds sitting on the LNB of the dish, etc). It didn’t help that I knew more about their services and products than their technical support people did. Please don’t even get me started on their lack of customer service!
Anyways, I ordered the service back on the 8th, and the technician showed-up today as expected.Â
Because I had wired my house for CAT6 way back in 2000, most of the work the technician would have needed to do was already done. We used Ethernet connections to bridge all of the boxes to the new 2Wire Router (3800HGV-B), and I’m getting a good solid 25Meg download (shared between the TV Programming and my High Speed Internet).
Unfortunately, I had to give up my Static IP address that I had with my “grandfathered” DSL service, so now I’m researching Dynamic DNS (DynDNS). I’ll probably have enough info when I’m done to write a how-to…
Got our XBox360 back this last Friday. It’s hooked-up, and is good and working as of this writing, and now it’s a LOT quieter too. Bonus!
So glad I bought the extended Warranty direct from Microsoft…
Well, the Xbox360 failed to boot twice last night, but allowed us to watch one last DVD 
movie Saturday night. But after that, dead. And this time, instead of locking-up on a game, it is now displaying the 3-Red Rings problem that is more often the problem experienced by the rest of the general public. I’ll have to box it up and send it off to Microsoft to fix (glad I bought an extended warranty). Microsoft says 2 to 3 weeks to fix. That’s not bad, but since it was also our DVD player, we’ll have to go without our Games and Movies for almost a month.
Hopefully it won’t really take that long. Still… Sigh…
I’ve been reviewing a lot of different products lately, and I’m trying to put them together for formal publication.
Here’s a partial list: Linksys WRVS4400N Business Router (Gigabit, Wireless “Nâ€, built-in VPN Server), Linksys Wireless “N†Notebook Adapter card, Shavlik Technologies “NetChk Protect†update service, NOD32 AntiVirus 2.7, and Soti’s “Pocket Controller Professionalâ€, and the MobileEdge “Men’s Backpackâ€.
Additionally, Jana will be producing a Product Review of the Tritton AX “Visor†Bluetooth Car Kit. Hopefully we can get these all finished-up and posted soon!