techrecovery | (no subject)

Okay, so, because I couldnt, at the time, pay for a laptop upfront, I took the route of getting a shiny new Sony Vaio from a national lease-to-own shop. This will be the third I have gotten through them, being that I like how they operate and my credit sucks, so manufacturers dont want to offer me payment options.

Also, because i use this shop quite a bit, the manager did me a favour and got me the Vaio directly out of the box, no standard image.

Recently, the power adapter had become loose, and the battery was not holding a charge. Finally it just gave up the ghost and I couldnt boot it at all. Roughly 3 weeks of data was not backed up (I know, bad monkey, no cookie). I took it in to the shop for service, because they include that as part of the lease agreement.

Being in IT for a number of years now, I figured that they would just replace the board within warranty being that its more of a pain to replace JUST the power port, because that has been the SOP for every company I have worked for.

Also knowing that the chain has a "standard image" that they use on all computers leased through them, I made sure that the first words on the service order were "DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES RESTORE THIS MACHINE - STRICTLY A HARDWARE ISSUE" before I even described the issue itself.

So, I happily drop off my laptop, and the manager of the store submits the service request, being sure to include my request of not to restore, because I had some data not backed up.

A week and a half goes by, and I get a call telling me that my laptop is ready to be picked up. I go and fetch it, and before I leave the store, I decide to be sure it works.

I plug the adapter in, it is still loose, but I no longer have to find the "sweet spot" for it to work, so I can live with that, even though that was the reason it went in in the first place. I pull the battery and it still lives, so the power port is really okay. I pull the power and the battery seems OK as well. So I boot up windows, expecting to see my familiar Skull and Bones wallpaper.

You guessed it.

I get a "Welcome to Windows Vista" type of screen. I am pissed. I am beyond pissed. The store manager is more than a little upset.

We call the "on-call service manager"

He informs us that the Power Management System was corrupt, so they reimaged the machine.

That confuses me, because as far as I know (and I could be wrong) but MOST PMS' are NOT linked directly to the OS. They reside on the board. Most OS' have an INTERFACE to them, but as far as I knew the OS was not the master control for it.

And here is where I get REALLY confused... how does a loose power port on the laptop equate to a bad PMS?? That is the one that really boggles my mind.

So I talk to the "Service manager" and find out that he has only been a manager for about 6 weeks, and has only been with the company for about 6 weeks... before that we was a project manager for an engineering company. So he has no IT experience at-friggin-all, and he determines that a loose plug is the OS fault?!?!?!?

I take it in for a hardware issue and I get back a hardware issue with a fresh OS on it.

I am impressed.

I am now waiting on paperwork from the store... The store manager is just as pissed as I am about this, and he is willing to refund me all my money because of it. I am just going to go take that money to buy a mac... at least their customer service can tell a hardware issue from a corrupt OS.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

One of the first lessons you learn with laptops is Never, EVER EVER buy Sony. Second lesson you learn is: Do not hand over a machine with data on it you care about if you don't have it backed up, because reloading a machine is pretty much the first step on everybody's troubleshooting tree, just to make certain you're working from a good software build.

VAIOs are garbage. Deliberately designed to be hard to service. Under the skin they're Rube Goldberg laptops. Get yourself a nice T series ThinkPad or a Dell Latitude, you'll be much better off.

And as part of the second lesson: always keep up-to-date backups somewhere other than the computer itself, because there will come a time when a hardware failure makes it impossible to access the data BEFORE having to take it in for repair.

I see Vaios like Party Girls... Pretty and Recreational, but Totally Batshit Crazy once the honeymoon phase is over and you actually have to do something more complex than power it on.

I 2nd that - I've been using refurb. (ex-corporate) Dell Latitudes exclusively here for years, I can get em cheap, usually with some of the 3yr onsite warrantee left, they're easy to service and easy and cheap to get parts for! Plus most generally run Linux well, which is what I use exclusively now.