I should have known better, but I went ahead and did it anyway. Duh me. Notice how that sounds just like dummy? There's a reason for that. Despite my previous experience with an HP PC I went and bought an HP laptop, specifically a dv6000. They really do have good prices and I hoped my previous experience with their product was the exception rather than the rule. No such luck.
I hadn't had it long when it just shut down and wouldn't restart. So I call HP and they send a box in which I am to pack the brand new paperweight and send it back to them for repair. They had shipped a whole shitload of them out with a bad BIOS and rather then recall them all, fix them and put them back out they chose to let people buy them and use them until they crashed then force them to have to deal with the whole "wait for a box, wait for shipping, wait for repair, wait for shipping again" ordeal while being left with no computer. Assholes.
So after about a week with no computer I get it back, all "fixed" and ready to go. I'll give them credit for their warranty repair service. It's quick and painless. As it turns out it's also incompetent. When I got it back I found that I could no longer connect it to my television to view photos, videos, etc... They had managed to break it while fixing it, and we certainly can't expect them to actually test something before they send it out because that's just unreasonable! They wanted me to send it back again but I needed it for work and given how little I used the ability to connect it to a television or monitor I decided to just do without it.
Now here it is, about 16 months after I got the laptop and it's completely dead, again. So I take it to a computer tech to see what's going on with the paperweight now. This time it's the motherboard, and replacing it would cost almost as much as I paid for the laptop. The tech tells me that particular model is notorious for that problem, they used defective motherboards which couldn't handle the heat from the processor they used, one better suited to a PC than a laptop because it runs so hot. He then pointed to a stack of them on the floor, all with the same issue, and recommends calling HP to see if they will repair it since it is a known defect with their product.
I go home and call them to no avail, they refuse to fix it because it's just out of warranty, regardless of the fact that it's a known defect. I am done with HP, from my personal experience they offer only inferior quality products, clueless customer service, incompetent repair service which breaks one thing when fixing another and they will not stand behind their product. The price point may be good but in this case you really do get what you pay for.
Now I've got a widescreen Sony VAIO with Blu-ray and I'm loving it.
