My New HP Laptop (the “Neonote”) Is Defective

So I’ve got myself a brand new laptop. It’s an HP DV6-1359WM. I bought it refurbished from eCost.com, a great web site with probably the best deals on the net. But the point of this post is to say that my laptop is defective, which sucks.

It’s refurbished, which means that when someone buys a product and there’s a defect in it, it’s sent back and the company fixes it and resells it as “refurbished”. Nothing’s wrong with it and it’s just as good as brand new products. Most times it comes with the same warranty and all. I don’t really understand why companies even mention “refurbished”, I wonder why they simply don’t just send the item out as normal.

Sometimes, though, some models of a device are manufactured with a defect that effects the majority of the models. The company gets a lot of returns, and either sends an exact model hopefully without the same defect, or they send out a new model to customers to try and keep all old models because of a known defect. So what do they do with all those models with a simple flaw? A lot of times they fix the entire model line and resell it as a “refurbished” model, so that the entire model line is made of from an older refurbished model. Almost always these models are sold much cheaper and sometimes their upgraded to compete against whatever new standard is out on the market.

So that’s what I got, I got a refurbished HP laptop. That’s what I’m typing this on right now. But it’s unfortunately defective. It’s got a “CPU issue” where, it seems that once the laptop is used after two to five hours, it’ll start an issue where the CPU jumps to 100% doing the simplest of things. The system literally just is completely bogged down no matter what you do. The only fix for it is to reboot. But it’ll usually happen again within 15 minutes after rebooting. Then, it’ll start happening much more often, sometimes within 15 minutes and sometimes within two minutes. It doesn’t seem to be a heat issue, the laptop’s nice ‘n’ cool and the fans aren’t even blowing hard. It just seems to clearly be a defect to an otherwise crazy good ‘n’ crazy sexy laptop.

I got the laptop on Thursday and today’s Monday, so I called eCost.com and spoke to a cute soundin’ chick with a light Indian accent, but she informed me that the agreement they have with HP, defects are handled through HP. I was thinking “Oh this is BS…” but the chick said “I’m going to connect us to HP to see about getting you help”. She connected us to HP and then we were on a three-way (yeah baby) with a heavy accented Indian HP rep dude.

After being on a three-way for about 30 minutes, the eCost chick left the conversation and it was up to just me ‘n’ the HP rep. Took forever, was on hold for about 30 minutes, with the guy coming back in to ask me to keep holding. It was no big deal ‘cuz I had my iPhone headphones in and I was walkin’ around my apartment complex, which is part of a nature conservatory so I was enjoyin’ the scenes with an ice cold Pepsi in my hand, so I wasn’t complainin’.

But once I was finally transfered to a “supervisor”, who this guy had one of the thickest Indian accents I’ve heard (and I’ve call through to a lot of tech support lines in my past), but thank God this was short and sweet ‘cuz I could barely understand him. He said he was going to refer me to a case manager and that he would give me a call tomorrow. ‘Freak, tomorrow? Why can’t I just get this all situated… today?? They know the issue is that I simply want to return this laptop and receive a new same exact model, but hopefully one that works. I’m gonna’ have to pay shipping out ($20 bucks), which I’ll be fine with… but I just want a working laptop. I’m tryin’ to be very reasonable.

What I hope doesn’t happen is that they use it for a short time and are like “Hey, this works perfectly fine. Send it back to the customer.” or some crap. Like right now, I’m on it and it’s working flawlessly. But I don’t care if it works flawlessly for a few hours, I need it to work flawlessly 24 hours a day, anytime I need to use it. It’s no wonder they couldn’t tell anything was wrong with it though… it’s near impossible to test a product out to discover bugs if it only happens after being on / being used for a few hours. I think, to cover my ***, I’m gonna’ take a video of this laptop when it has it’s CPU error from my iPhone, as proof of the error it has. But I’ll have to wait a few hours for that to happen.

I already am in love with this model and can’t wait to customize it. It has big shoes to fill. It’s going to become the new “Neonote”, replacing the one-of-a-kind “Neonote II”.

As you can see, much like I’ve done with the Neocell 3GS, I designed the Neonote II myself. You can see the design on the front of it. That’s part of the outside. I had another design for it, made out of vinyl before that (as you can see in the picture, that was taken about four years ago)…

Not only was the outside customized, the software was also customized. The Neonote II, as you can see, was an HP, and that baby went to hell and back for over four long years of service. It was a total trooper. Each year, I upgraded it to keep up with the current breed of laptop models on the market. It finally succumbed to old age a year ago. It’s spacebar key was messed up, it’s CPU thermostat was shot so that it’s fan would run at full blast (and very loud) 24/7, one of it’s fans died so that it was prone to overheating if it’s vent ports were blocked (such as placing it on a bed), the laptop henge was lose so the screen would wobble, the headphone jack would sometimes have a bad connection and the worst of all of them… the power jack port was lose (as problem that happens to so many laptops) and eventually, stopped receiving power. But throughout all of that, the Neonote still looked like it was in mint condition and, because of the design, was better looking than any laptops on the market. The image above, “graffiti” designed Neonote II, I took that picture just now. That laptop was like a sexy tank, it’s got more miles on it than any laptop I know of, but always managed to look pretty for the crowd.

So that’s what I plan on this new laptop being, I plan on making it the Neonote III. I already designed a design for the front lid, and I plan on designing a design for the inside, near the touch pad area. And I’ve already got the software designed. Here’s one of the many randomly changing desktop images, all branded with the “Neonote III” logo.

But this laptop can’t become the new Neonote until this defect is taken care of.

Let’s see how it goes.

Peace, JbB

Update

A few hours later, to my surprise, the Neocell 3GS rings from an 800 number. Turns out to be the HP case manager. Right on.

It’s clearly a chick from America. I tell her the issue. Talk with her for about 30 minutes. I tell her the laptop has been used for about three hours and it hasn’t started its issue yet.

She asked me why I simply couldn’t just return it to where I bought it from, eCost.com. I said “Well, I don’t know, they said it was their policy with refurbished HP laptops”. I said “I really just wanna’ return it to eCost.com for an exchange.”. But after she read the return policy on eCost.com, it actually said they refuse returns on certain items, such as my laptop.  Any issues, including simple returns of “it’s not right for me” all have to handled by the manufacturer. I’m really pissed about that.  For the $80 or so I saved buying from eCost.com, I would have rather spent the extra money buying from tirgerdirect.com or newegg.com, knowing they have a better return policy (I assume at least, never had to return anything to them before).

She seems pretty annoyed that I installed my own Windows 7. But I told her the issue happened while HP’s Windows 7 (and all their bloatware) was installed. I told her I planned on ripping out their software and installing my own Windows 7 anyways later, but wanted to use it for a few weeks as it was. Clearly I had no choice in installing my own Windows 7 when the laptop was having issues. (FYI, I tried everything, including installing Windows 7 with no extra software, besides the necessary drivers, using crappy Internet Explorer with no flash or anything installed and it happened after a few hours.)

After everything was explained, and she put me on hold to talk to a tech person, she came back and said that it was a software issue. I told her I thought that too, but I told her all different scenarios I had gone through with the same results. I told her it was hardware, unless they knew something I didn’t.

She had mentioned that they could only provide tech support, and only if it was with their own installed software. I told her I formated the hard drive and got rid of the 12 gig “restore” partition, because since the laptop was having issues on their software, I deleted that partition and reformatted it because… why on Earth would I want to keep 12 GBs of my own hard drive locked up for a partition that had apparent “issues”. I own my own Windows 7, I don’t need to rely on their bloatware-loaded BS of a restore image. She said “Well sir we can’t help you unless your running HP’s software.”. She said “We won’t take your laptop back without our software on it.”. That pissed me off and I said “Hey, I OWN this hardware. Apple says I can’t jailbreak my iPhone, but I own it and I’m allowed to do whatever I want with it. I’m allowed to do whatever I want with this laptop and you can’t refuse hardware support because I’m not running YOUR software.”. I think she got point in that no… that’s not acceptable. What on Earth would they say if I was a Linux user? I hate Linux, but I feel for them. I can only imagine what they must go through.

I mean, I repair and work with computers for a living for ‘freak’s sake, and I get treated this way? Imagine how the average person gets treated. But I understand where they’re comin’ from. In my line of work, 95% of anyone who has issues all comes from software. But I explained, in detail, everything I went through and that I did more than my share of trouble shooting. After all, I did basically what I would charge my clients to do, but on my own laptop, and spent probably about 5 hours  in total this weekend trouble shooting the SOFTWARE. Think about if I had charged someone for those 5 hours of service, told them it must be software, then that person called HP up and they told them it’s software. They would be so pissed at HP at that point. That’s what’s happening here.

So yes, I know from experience most issues are software… but this ain’t software and I shouldn’t have had to go around in circles convincing people of that.

What was the outcome? They’re going to send me a box, with prepaid postage (I assume) to me that’ll arrive at the end of the week. If the laptop keeps repeating the issue, I’m going to backup any new data and nuke the hard drive (they ain’t lookin’ at my files or gettin’ a copy of my Windows) and send the laptop, in the box, to them. Then a tech will install their HP Windows 7, including (ugg) their bloatware (helloooo Nortion Security Center) and run some kinda’ test on it. I told them this wasn’t gonna’ help because it takes a few hours for the problem to come up, but apparently they’re gonna’ run some benchmarking tests on it and let it sit for a few hours. Oh, get this… they also don’t have a policy of REPLACING a laptop, only repairing them. So what do you think the odds are, if this problem keeps happening, that I’ll get back the laptop and have the issues are gone? Close to none. I’m hoping this hardware issue has magically gone away (hey, weirder crap’s happened) and I don’t have to return it.

I swear, that’s why I’m going to be taking VIDEO of the problem happening if it does as proof that no… I’m not some stupid consumer with spyware on their machine, there really is something wrong. It ain’t Windows 7, so it’s either a driver issue or hardware, both are things HP’s responsible for fixing. I really hope this HARDWARE problem is just a fluke and stopped and never returns. I really don’t want to send my laptop out for weeks (what kinda’ BS is that eCost.com?).

This also means I have to delay doing a customized design ‘n’ everything, which I’ve been so looking forward to having a new Neonote. But for now, it’s just a laptop hoping to be the Neonote and nothin’ more. I’ll keep ya posted.

Peace, JbB

Update

Ok, I’ve sound a solution…

Audio / Video Cables From Best Buy Are A Scam

One of the most common scams out there is the cable scam. Basically, retailers like Best Buy sell cables for ridiculous amounts of money. It’s being spearheaded by companies like Monster who, through deceiving marketing techniques, try to convince you there’s a reason to pay an arm and a leg for a bunch of wires.

Here’s an example; an 8 foot Monster HDMI cable… and at the time of writing this, $200 at Best Buy. The truth is, HDMI cables are very cheap to make. There’s honest retailers out there, like Monoprice, that offer HDMI cables for about $2-$5.

If your thinking the difference between these cables is “quality”, it isn’t. The quality is just the same. In fact, with HDMI, it doesn’t carry an analog signal, it carries a digital one. How on Earth could they justify charging $200 for a digital cable that competitors are able to charge $10 for?

It gets even more worst than that. This is also true for analog cables, such as audio cables.

But I’m not just talking from things I’ve read, I know for a fact. I used to work at Circuit City years ago. Know this, retail companies make profit not from the devices they sell, but from the accessories. They buy items such as USB cables for like $2 whole sale and then sell them for $19.99. And back to quality, some guys in the car stereo department actually hooked up coat hangers to high-quality speakers as cables and compared them to Monster cables and there was absolutely no difference.

So when buying cables, do your homework, know what they’re worth and don’t get taken for a sucker.

Peace, JbB

Looking For An Organization I Can Volunteer For

I’m trying to find an organization I can volunteer my technology consulting services to in Tampa, Fl.. But man, it’s a lot harder than you’d think.

Trying to do a web search for organizations isn’t easy. The organizations that come up don’t really help me decide who I should contact or why.

I tried hitting up the social “community” via Twitter and asked

Looking for a non-profit organization in Tampa to volunteer my technology consulting to. Know of a worthy organization? JbB

But got nothin’ back, no responses. Which is sad because Twitter is ’sposed to be the perfect place for that. (Is the volunteer scene weak in Tampa, Fl? Haven’t heard from any of you…)

I didn’t really think I would have to look hard to find an organization to volunteer services for.

There are plenty of organizations that need general volunteers, but I’m looking to volunteer my skills, ya know? I want to volunteer something that only a very select few can do, and also gain insight and add value to my business. Geeks learn by crackin’ open a manual or spending hours on internet forums. I ain’t a geek… I learn new techniques by actually engaging technology. So by volunteering  my unique skill set, I can gain experience. Learn something like certain older hardware doesn’t work on Windows 7, or learning about how Google Apps is awesome and free for non-profits…

In other words, helping charity organizations helps me. I think I’d really enjoy teaching some inner city youth computer classes or helping organizations that help the homeless harness the power of social media to engage and interact with their volunteers or helping organizations streamline their operation online with Google Apps. I know there are people like me who help charity organizations out there, I read about them all the time in different cities and states, so being in a big city like Tampa, Fl., it’s a shame it’s not easier to connect with organizations like this.

But I’m sure I’ll find something at some point, and when I do, I’ll keep ya updated. And if you know of one, or happen to volunteer and have some advice for me, hit me up via the comments or at twitter.com/johnBbaird. My web site is johnBbaird.com.

Peace, JbB

Don’t Email Like A Sales Weasel

You know one thing I hate when doing business with people? When you email someone, thanking them for meeting with you (even if they’re the one trying to sell YOU something), and that person doesn’t even return the common courtesy of emailing you back. What’s worst are sales weasel’s that not only turn disrespectful once they realize they won’t make money off you, but then add your email to their business spam list.

I meet with someone a few weeks ago that was trying to sell me something. After our meeting on the drive home, as a courtesy, I emailed him and thanked him for taking the time to meet with me. But let’s be straight here… I was the one who took time out to meet with this guy to hear his pitch, so he should have been thanking me. But that’s how I do business, I always try to show people respect. But not only does this dude not send me a “Thanks for meeting with me…” email or phone call, but he doesn’t even bother responding to my email. He realized I wasn’t going to buy into anything he was selling, so “why waste 30 seconds returning his guy’s email on a dead-prospect” is what he thought I’m sure. But that’s business… the majority of people doing business lack the fundamentals of courtesy.

But then today, I receive an email in my inbox. Who’s it from? The sales weasel. So not only does this person not respect me enough to return my email, but oh… he added me to his spam list? And I’m going to keep getting crap from him so I now have to add a filter to block all email from him. Nice…

What Impression Is Mass Email Giving Your Company?

What do you think my impression is now of this guy and his company? I had forgotten about not getting an email from him, or some of his rude attitude towards me after I decided I wasn’t interested, but now he’s taking time out of my work schedule to setup a filter for his emails. It only takes less than 30 seconds. But do you get the point? Because of this guy’s lack of respect and this unsolicited business spam, I know have a lasting bad impression.

Give Careful Thought Before Implementing Mass Email

So if you’ve got a business, you really need to think carefully about using an email spam system. It can hurt the credibility of your business. If you view yourself as a respectable person and view your business as a respectable one, then if you must do email business spam, choose your email addresses yourself. Don’t use an automated system to automatically select any email that comes to you. Or you could always be real with people, shoot them out a two sentence email like this…

“Hi [person's name], I’ve got some information I would like to send you that I think you’ll find interesting. Mind if I sent it to you?”

I’ve never once had someone ask me this. Honestly, if someone asked me this, I would be a lot less inclinded to simply setup a filter to instantly delete all mail from them.

Peace, JbB