When my wife's windoze machine neared end-of-life, we bought her a new
HP laptop. I had to spend a lot of time fixing problems my wife
encountered because of HP's tactic of pasting HP-specific crud on top
of windoze, but eventually, we got things working in an understandable
way. But then ... On the day after the warranty expired, the internet
connection through my wireless router would not come up. I pursued all
the help pages and Google and eventually discovered that the light (on
the F12 key) signifying power status to the wireless adapter was amber
rather than blue. HP FAQ's and Google hits indicated that I should
just press the F12 key, but to no avail. When I contacted HP, I was
told that I would have to pay for support on a time-used basis or get
a contract for $59. I paid the $59 and was connected to a lady for
whom English was a second language. She knew immediately what the
problem was and instructed me to delete and rebuild one of the
programs that was part of the afore-mentioned overlay of HP crud, and
then to download an updated BIOS from HP's site.
What really bothers me about this is:
1) The problem's emergence on the first day of non-warranty status.
2) The fact that the problem is obviously with HP software (or perhaps
manufacturing processes related to software).
3) The fact that support knew all about the problem, but it was not in
the FAQ's, or at least not recognizable by the symptoms I experienced.
4) That I had to pay to discover HP's defect.
Dale Miller
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