Hell hath no fury...

[jupiter9.livejournal.com]

A co-worker found a broken laptop on his desk today, with this note:



His response:

Suffice it to say, the Angry Wife got the upper hand here. It looks as if the top ( back of screen) was either hit with something or swung hard at a corner. The frame is bent, the optical drive is missing, and there’s bits of plastic broken off of the case.

I am able to boot it up and log in but it’s way past the point of serviceability. See attached Pics

If anything, We can salvage the RAM, HDD, and Battery.

Out of curiosity, does he have to pay for this or does it just get written off?

Here are the pictures he took.

The background image is the standard Windows rolling hills -- that black circle is where the screen is broken, and the green and black geometrics are where the screen just doesn't work any more. Pushing on the screen made interesting new black blobs.

Note the futuristic curve on the left side of the chassis above the keyboard.

As you can see, we were able to bring up windows and drag them to the side of the screen -- I guess we could tell the user to just "work around it."



Point of impact:



Closeup of point of impact (I guess maybe she just hates Dell?):



Closeup of bent part of the case:



Surprisingly, we didn't find any iffy files, but it looks like the user kept the machine for a while before reporting it. There were no files on it newer than a couple of weeks ago. Either that or he was smart enough to remove them.

Comments

[brotherflounder]

Holy $DIETY! What did $ANGRYWIFE do, run it over with her car?

[batchfile.livejournal.com]

did someone check the husband's head?

bwahahahah!

[reanimated.livejournal.com]

seriously, that impression on the screen... XD

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

That's well and truly mangled.

Here, it would be back up and running in 2 days. You've got to love Dell's no-fault fix-it-at-all-cost warranties.

[jecook]

Not sure if ours would cover that, but we'd sure as hell charge the department or the user for the repairs. that's abuse no matter how you look at it.

[mashiroikaze.livejournal.com]

Man, I wish we had that option where I worked. I've seen more than a couple machines mangled (not quite as badly) over the years due to abuse, and all I'm allowed to do is waggle my fingers at the person and tell them not to do it again.

[meow-tuna.livejournal.com]

Not only is it abuse, it's a waste of a perfectly good lattitude!

[jupiter9.livejournal.com]

I think we're out of warranty on this one, unfortunately.

[curmudgn]

Whether you're out of warranty or not, the circs would preclude any kind of warranty repair or replacement. Not even Complete Care (the Dell warranty's accidental-damage rider) covers intentional damage--and it's blindingly obvious the damage was intentional.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

Dell's warranty is pretty much why I buy from them. The computers are no better or worse than Sony or HP or whoever, but the service, in my experience, has been absolutely amazing.

[wibbble]

Definitely not true: I used to work on the same floor as Sony's apathetically outsourced laptop support.

Which is no different to Samsung's apathetically outsourced support, or Motorola's, or (when I was there) Nokia's.

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

The difference with Sony is that they're designed with malicious forethought to be failure prone and difficult to service.

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

Is that it? Doesn't surprise me.

[natertots.livejournal.com]

Amen.
Complete Care FTW.

And since it's a 620/630, it's certainly still under warranty.

[squigit.livejournal.com]

And this is why we don't have nice things

[reanimated.livejournal.com]

thread's done, everyone out. lol!

[mashiroikaze.livejournal.com]

Yikes. I've seen some abused machines before, but that one takes the cake.

The nearest analogy I have from work is when a faculty member brought in her computer and complained that her screen "quit working". She dropped it off and about half an hour later I looked at the machine. There was a quite distinctive ass-print crack in the screen, with the famous technicolor LCD show.

Needless to say, I told her that her machine wasn't, in fact, infected by a virus and no, it wasn't a manufacturer's flaw. I decided not to point out that someone had clearly sat on the closed laptop as there was little point in provoking a fight (and I was a much greener tech back then).

[sigurther.livejournal.com]

I miss the good old days when people threw frying pans and non-breakable household items. What kind of moron breaks a thousand dollar piece of equipment in a fit of anger? Smart people do the stupidest shit sometimes.

Hell, I dropped a broke MUG one time and felt shitty because it was one of my favorites. But a computer? Fuuu-uuuuuck that!

[mirar.livejournal.com]

Maybe it was hit by a frying pan... :p

[cyberman0.livejournal.com]

Well, thats why I like lian-li cases, you can punch the high end ones, and just hurt yourself :)

[the-reda.livejournal.com]

Damn, now I am really curious what he was looking at -that was embarrassing enough to erase- that caused this reaction. *snickers*

[cjkline83.livejournal.com]

Insert GOATSE joke here...

[the-reda.livejournal.com]

Theheh especially if she caught him wanking to that ;-P

[doctoreon.livejournal.com]

I could fix it. My dad's got like this ultimate set of tools.

[curmudgn]

I'd like to see you try . . . that's a bent chassis, that is (look at the way the hinge cover is caved in, and how the left rear corner is bowed at the heatsink grille), and a bent chassis is, ipso facto, a total write-off. IMO the only thing that coulda stood up to this assault is one of the D630 XFRs, which are designed to meet the milspec for ruggedizing.

[doctoreon.livejournal.com]

You've never seen Fast Times At Ridgemont High, have you?

Response from "the boss"

[gallumbits.livejournal.com]

Just got word the employee will have the cost of the laptop deducted from their check. There is justice!!!

signed,
the tech on duty

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

I saw one like that after his wife tripped over the cord and pulled it off the counter (so, bar height) on to the tile floor.

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

You're making an unfair assumption that the employee is guilty of something (or possibly didn't do something he should have...) to deserve this.

Woman can be just as big of a domestic abuser as a man.

[fallconsmate.livejournal.com]

i'll agree. i had a friend whose "sweetheart" put him in the hospital. then had the police come escort her to get her things from his house because she "didnt feel safe around that man"...they looked at her a LOT different when they asked him what happened to him and he pointed at her "SHE happened".

[jupiter9.livejournal.com]

You're right that I probably shouldn't have called him "bad husband."

I did state that we looked and didn't see any evidence that he did anything worthy of the kind of anger that would lead to her destroying his laptop.

Because of the sharp dent, the damage seems unlikely to have been caused by hitting him. I guess maybe she could have whacked him in the elbow right at the Dell logo.

Nevertheless, destroying something someone else values is a kind of abuse.

And I agree that women can abuse men domestically (happened to my brother). But they're less likely to do so.

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

I saw a study about domestic violence that basically said men were more likely to hit their spouse, and women were more likely to break things. Pop culture seems to bear that message out too.

[soldierx.livejournal.com]

This is crazy, I thought the Latitude D630 I had end up on my work desk with some coffee or somethin spilt on the keyboard, but this definatly takes the cake over what i've seen.

[confectionqueen.livejournal.com]

That actually looks really really cool.

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

I had one a bit like this just recently. Same deal. Boyfriend whacked girl's powerbook on something - twice! - hard enough to shatter the screen and leave dents straight through the LCD and out the aluminum on the other side.
Must be hella fights these people are getting in. Day-um.

[laurajpetri.livejournal.com]

not sure if this has been mentioned, but try the service tag on support.dell.com

if it has "complete care" everything's covered and you can have them send you parts. ... or a new computer.

[dellcalarry.livejournal.com]

Actually, it all depends on how the damage happened whether Complete Care would cover it. If it was accidental, like what happened to mattcaron's system, it would be covered. If, however, it was either used to hit something or intentionally hit then complete care wouldn't cover it. From the look of the picture I would say it probably isn't covered, however, without knowing how exactly the damage happened I can't really be sure.

[laurajpetri.livejournal.com]

with a hit like that, anyone can claim something fell on it. they'd get the system exchange.

besides, it's dell, they should get as much from them as they can before they go under.


you never really get any help from dell unless you have a gold support, 5/10 or 24/7 contract. complete care is the only way you can let someone fuck something up and have it replaced for free*.

*hassle of calling dell not included.

[curmudgn]

They *might* have . . . until you opened yer mouth. you failed to remember that you never know who's listening.

[dellcalarry.livejournal.com]

Yup, you never know who will find a website. ;)

From looking at the pictures, it appears the following parts would need to be repalced: LCD (for the hinge as well as the panel), possibly the keyboard (can't tell from the picture if it survied), probably the motherboard, heatsink and fan assembly, bottom plastics, and top plastics (holds the LCD panel). If it has Complete Care and the cause of the damage is covered, then an exchange is most likely what would happen. If it isn't covered, just replacing the computer would probably be the better plan.

LarryR
Dell Outreach Liaison
(who apparently forgot to 'sign' his last post here)

[amynnah.livejournal.com]

Oho man... that poor laptop!

Here I am, dying for a laptop (to play WoW on surf the net on the free wifi at work check work email), and people go around breaking laptops. Gotta go with squigit... this is why we can't have nice things.