Two weeks ago the main hard drive on my laptop computer went belly up. I had just done an operation that required a reboot and when it tried to boot back up the hard drive made a quiet but abnormal clicking noise.

I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’ve heard noises like that before, so I wasn’t surprised when I got the black screen saying that the operating system could not be found. I ran out of time to mess with the problem that day. But the following day I was actually able to get the machine to boot one last time. Then it was done.

I got on another of our computers and contacted HP’s tech support via chat. The technician was very thorough and helpful. I performed a battery of procedures per her instructions. She finally said that the machine would need to be sent to HP for repairs. I didn’t want to do that because I can generally repair things of that nature on my own. However I was pleasantly surprised when she insisted that my machine was still under warranty, despite my protestations that it was 20 months old.

When I got home from work on Thursday, I found a box containing packing materials and instructions that had been shipped via FedEx. I put the laptop in the perfectly-fitted packaging, taped the box shut, and applied the supplied pre-printed FedEx label. I looked on the FedEx website, found the nearest drop off point, and drove there. Since it was late in the day, I was informed that the package wouldn’t ship until the following day.

I had a tracking number, but I was busy that weekend and didn’t bother to check it. Imagine my surprise when I returned from work on Tuesday to discover a notice stating that FedEx had tried to deliver my repaired laptop. I contacted HP by chat on a Tuesday evening and could have gotten my repaired laptop back the following Tuesday afternoon. I was favorably impressed.

The only problem was that HP required a responsible person at our address to sign for the computer and the FedEx guy came by when nobody could be at home. After we received another notice on Wednesday, my wife called the FedEx office on Thursday to see if they could bring it by earlier in the day. Consequently, I spent a lot of time this past weekend restoring my laptop.

I have learned a few things from this episode. HP’s support performed superbly in this instance. I am grateful for the efficiency of FedEx. It’s important to keep current backups of essential data. I was a few weeks behind on my backups, so I have ended up having to restore some things from hardcopies.

I had been using Mozilla Firefox, but my two older sons prevailed on me to try Google Chrome when I was restoring my computer. I like Firefox and I have no complaints about it. But I must say that I like Google Chrome better. This is a subjective view, of course.

I’m just glad to have my computer back on my desk and working again.
Continue reading at the original source →