Laptop letdown

I have purchased a total of 23 HP laptops, mostly on behalf of my adult students and myself, the latest being a TX1020ea for myself direct from HP in April 2007.

Soon after purchase the 'Y' key kept detaching. Being an obvious manufacturing fault, collection for repair was arranged and I was told that repair would take 7 to 10 working days.

I tried over several days to call the service department, at different times of the day for periods of 10-20 minutes at a time without success. I finally got through on the 12th day, only to be told that they were still sourcing a replacement keyboard - why this was not done prior to collection, having been clearly told the problem, shows the first of numerous flaws in HP's repair system.

It is hard to accept that there can be any valid reason why such a basic component for a current model is not in stock at HP’s central repair centre in Bracknell. As the service centre could not tell me when the required keyboard would be available (they have 8 weeks according their terms of trading before they would consider replacing the unit) I asked them to return the laptop which I could still use until such time as the keyboard was available - at which time I would return the unit personally as I only
live 15 miles from the repair centre.

I was then advised that, if the unit was returned, the order for the replacement keyboard would be cancelled. When I asked to speak to the service manager or supervisor, neither would talk to me. And, when I requested the manager's name, I was told this too was confidential - this is HP service department not the Pentagon.

My dealings with customer services in Gateshead fared no better, as they too could not get through by phone to their own company service department and could only communicate via internal email.

Hewlett Packard makes excellent products but its after sales service is shamefully inefficient. They either have too many repairs to keep a fully stocked spares department or insufficient adequately trained telephone staff.

My experience has left me disappointed and disillusioned with Hewlett Packard, the owner of a laptop with a loose 'Y' key and asking myself why should I recommend and give business to a company that treats its customers in such a cavalier way and cannot provide an adequate repair service.

Mel Franses

HP responded: "HP was disappointed to learn of Mr Franses's experience and is working to resolve the matter as quickly as possible. HP takes the after care service it provides to its customers extremely seriously"

Exemplary customer service

In this era of litigatious insanity and over-frequent complaints it is a pleasure to report an example of exemplary service.

Having tried unsuccessfully to reinstall drivers for my Freecom TV decoder on my upgraded desktop I contacted their helpline and obtained two days of free courteous and helpful advice which solved my problem.

Not bad, two years after the initial purchase.

Alan Ridgway

The trials of buying a new laptop

Currys
Almondvale Shopping Centre, Livingston
Me: I would like to buy one of the Sony Vaio N Series laptop’s that’s on display.
Currys: Hold on, I’ll check and see if we have any in stock... I’m sorry we don’t have any in stock.
Me: Can I order one?
Currys: No, we don’t do orders.
Me: Can you supply one from one of your branches?
Currys: No, we don’t do that, but I have checked on my PC and they have them in stock at PC World in Edinburgh if you want to drive there to get one. It’s only 12 miles away.

Me (on phone): I’d like to buy a Sony Vaio N series laptop and Currys said you had them in stock.
PC World: Let me check... yes, we have some in stock.
Me: Thanks. So if I drive across I can get one?
PC World: The ones in the shop might already me reserved for other customers.
Me: So can you tell me if they have all been reserved?
PC World: I’m sorry, I am not allowed to give out that kind of information.

Me (on phone): Hello. I’d like to buy a Sony N Series laptop. They cost £499 in Curry’s.
Sony Shop: No problem.

Okay, so maybe I am just turning into another whinging customer, but do Currys or PC World actually manage to sell anything?

Jim Fanning

Offline updates

I sympathise with Mr. P Smith's letter "Dial-up Dilemmas" (PCW October 2007, Letters) about the problem of updating PCs through a slow modem line or with no regular internet connection.

I was confronted with a similar situation updating laptops without using the office internet connection, where it is forbidden to connect a laptop in order to prevent infected computers offering backdoor access to the enterprise network.

My research directed me towards two very useful, and free, tools. The first is Bart's Preinstalled Environment bootable live windows CD (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder), which allows a system to be booted from a virus free CD system and then, optionally, to be scanned with, for example, Mcafee antivirus.

And secondly, Autopatcher (http://www.autopatcher.com), which creates a single CD with all of Microsoft’s critical and recommended updates and many other updates (Java run time and Flash player, among others).

Both these tools can be burnt on to CDs and used on any PC and, most importantly, no network connection is required.

Tim Wilson

Vauge policies

I found the article by Kelvyn Taylor on Peer-to-Peer/Bittorrents (PCW October 2007, Bittorrent Secrets) very interesting - especially the how they work part.

A big problem I have found is with the ISPs, in particular their Fair Use Policies and the threats that account will be terminated for overuse.

My ISP, OneTel, which recently brought in the policy, says its fair use policy restricts high bandwidth activity in peak hours and go on to mention P2P, though are rather vague what fair and reasonable is.

Ev Owen

Widescreen woes

I was wondering if anyone else has noticed the quiet disappearance of traditional non-widescreen aspect ratio screens (1,024x758, 1,400x1,050 etc) from manufacturers laptop ranges?

I am beginning the process of looking for a replacement for my Dell D610. This has been one of the best laptops I have owned - it is well built, has a great balance of features and a fabulous screen (1,400x1,050). My wife has the newer version of the laptop the D620 - as you would expect it is faster, has more memory, larger hard disk etc. It also has a widescreen display; an improvement, you might think. However, rather than making the old screen wider, Dell have instead chopped off 150 pixels off the bottom to reduce its vertical resolution to 900 pixels. The effect is that the new model now has 14 per cent less screen acreage than the old model.

This may not seem much, but when you sit the two laptops side by side the difference is much more pronounced. By the time you take into account fixed screen overheads such as toolbars, window banners and page headers, the loss of usable space can be as much as 30 per cent. Comparing two identical word documents on each laptop the D610 shows 40 lines of text while the D620 can only manage 27 lines.

This does not seem like a positive step to me. To be fair to Dell, it is not alone in doing this - most laptop manufactures seem to have jumped on the widescreen bandwagon. But I do struggle to see how this loss of screen area makes the D620 an improvement on my old machine.

What I also find fascinating is that the manufacturers seem to have turned this apparently retrograde step into a positive sales feature. Widescreens are great if you watch a lot of movies. Most of us, however, use our laptops for email, word processing, and surfing the web, which basically involve scrolling down lines of text. In this respect, my old D610 beats the newer D620 hands down.

I am the only person who mourns the death of the old aspect ratio?

Jasper Warwick

Don't knock Vista

It was with disappointment that I read the Letter of the Month, entitled "Vista - no thanks" (PCW October 2007, Letters). Ralph Bacon has encountered a series of problems using Windows Vista as his operating system and concludes that he likes the design of Vista but prefers the stability of XP.

Of course with a new and complex operating system it is inevitable that some people will experience teething problems, but there is no point looking longingly over the shoulder at XP.

The future is Vista and XP, if not yet dead, is dying. The number of people still using XP, in 12 months time, will have dropped dramatically. I recall that when XP was launched there were those who insisted that Windows 98 was definitely superior and that XP was a backward step.

My own experience with Vista is very different from that of Ralph Bacon. Every piece of software I have thrown at it has worked perfectly and every piece of hardware I have installed has worked immediately and without problem. However, of more importance is the fact that I find Vista totally stable, totally reliable, and both very easy and a pleasure to use.

Windows XP - RIP, your time has passed.

Alex Bruce

VoIP's failings

I have always had at least one VoIP phone in my household for many a year now, yet I have recently started to favour the good old-fashioned plain old telephone service (POTS) over the many issues regarding VoIP phones compared to that of a POTS.

A few months ago I started to realise the increasingly annoying amount of issues to do with VoIP phones. While the price may be cheaper there are many issues that make me choose to use a POTS phone instead of VoIP.

First of all, set up is far easier. With POTS all you have to do is plug it into a phone line and you are pretty much ready to go calling who you like in an instant. VoIP, on the other hand, requires you to connect it up to your computer, either via cable or, even harder, wireless. A lot of the time it goes wrong, requiring you to edit network settings and the like.

When you finally do get it working it turns out that, due to the phone and internet being from the same company, it requires you to have a new phone number as well as being unable to drop your phone service without losing your internet connection.

Secondly, there's the delay. Even a tiny amount of delay causes major echo problems. Even something as common as a router firewall can cause delay up to anywhere from ten milliseconds to 3 seconds.

Thirdly, power is a problem for VoIP. With a POTS phone the power is supplied by the telephone line itself, meaning that in the case of a power outage then your phone is still useable without any problems. A VoIP's phone's power is supplied via AC power, as is the router it relies on, which can cause obvious problems if the power is down during an emergency.

After considering the advantages compared to the disadvantages of POTS and VoIP phones, i think it is a wise choice to stay on POTS until a time when VoIP is more stable, reliable and of a better quality.

Callum Smith

Insufficient warranty

My Philips 250 GB external drive recently decided that it no longer wished to function, however, residing on the drive was a relatively important document for a project I was working on, along with some personal photos which I had stored on the drive and a few other bits and bats of less importance.

To my dismay, I thought these were now lost. However, a friend offered to have a look at the drive and see if the data could be recovered. Fortunately he managed to recover my information, for which I was most grateful, however in doing so, he had to remove the drive from the casing.

The drive came with a two year warranty, and having contacted Philips directly to replace the drive under warranty, I was informed that as the drive had been removed from the casing the warranty was now void even though all the components and original packaging has been kept and is accounted for.

This I feel is a catch 22 situation which is unfair on the consumer. Philips’ response was that the drive had to remain in the enclosure for the warranty to be valid, however, if the drive is not functioning, yet the information stored on the device is required and retrievable, surely the warranty should allow for its retrieval by the consumer before replacement?

It appears the Philips warranty only covers replacement of the drive and not data recovery, which Philips do not offer. This is often worth more to the user than the value of the drive itself and I feel this is totally unreasonable.

Dale Moorhouse

Dialup is sufficient

The dialup Dilemmas letter from P Smith (PCW October 2007, Letters) struck a chord with me. I have an 8am to 6pm, Mon to Fri dialup connection which costs £4.99 a month from Tiscali. I am retired so these restricted hours are ok for me.

I don't download video, but do use the internet about 20 hours per week. Downloads do take a long time, sometimes hours, but I have lunch, work off-line, or read PCW, during the download. To go broadband would cost me an extra £120 per year. I can buy a lot of software, or wine, for £120 a year.

I know which I prefer.

John Wood