Before I start ranting on HP, let me just give you a quick advise. If you are thinking about buying an HP laptop, save your money and buy something else.

I’ve had the HP DV2000t laptop for a few months. I bought it through a friend of mine whose wife works for the company so I can get the HP Employee Discount. Reason for selecting HP was pretty straightforward. It has a built-in webcam and it doesn’t cost as much as the Dell XPS or the Asus laptop.

Anyway, first thing I notice immediately was the squeaking noise with the dvd-rom. Not too bad, but it was definitely annoying. But after a few weeks, the noise went away.

So the story started a few months ago. The processor and especially the hard disk got really warm. I installed speed fan and the reading on the hard disk was staggering. It was in the upper 50 degrees celcius and occasionally in the 60s. The core duo temperature are in the 90s. 100s was common occurence. Since the hard disk resides beneath the left palm rest, the palm rest will get so warm to a point that it is very uncomfortable to rest my arm there while typing. I have to type like a pianist plays the piano. Those hands position are just painful.

Anyway, it got so hot at times that I had to turn the laptop off from time to time so the hard disk can cool off. This is definitely not an ideal solution so I called up HP Total Care Support and told them the story. They told it has to be mailed in for repair. Fine. I’ll just back up all my data and mailed it back in a prepaid box sent by HP.

A week later, my laptop was back. And it would have been much longer if I didn’t call in and started pushing for it to be fixed sooner since it’s the only laptop I have and I couldn’t get any works done without it. I opened up the box and there was an accompanying letter stated that they found an error on the board and had it replaced. Looks good so far. So I turned the laptop on and see whether there was a difference. I re-installed speedfan and to my dismay, the heat is still there. What did they do? Replacing the board? And not only that, they introduced a new set of error. I had these fuzzy horizontal lines appear on my screen intermittently. I’ve never seen it before and I certainly don’t know what the hell it is.

So I called the HP Total Care back and told them the problems I still had with the damn laptop. And truth behold, they wanted to take a second crack at it to which I replied no way. So I demanded to speak with the Case Manager but one wasn’t available, so a callback was setup. The Case Manager called me the next day and told me the only thing he can do for me is to repair my laptop. I gave them a chance to repair and they messed it up and now I am supposed to give them another chance to .. should I say f..k it up. And the worst part of the whole thing is he won’t guarantee that the system will be fixed right because he is NOT the person working on it. Do these people stand behind the company they work for?

I argued with him for a few minutes and it’s pretty clear he won’t do a damn thing to get it done right. I told him I would think it over. I might give them another chance to fix it right. So I called them back the next day to setup another mail-in repair.

This time the turnaround is fast. I send the laptop back on Monday (August 27) and they received the laptop on Tuesday morning (August 28). By the evening, I received an email from HP notifying me that the laptop is already on is way. Wow. That was fast. I received the laptop on Wednesday morning (August 29). After one fiasco, I can’t wait to see whether this time my laptop is fixed right.

I received the same damn accompanying letter that says they replaced the board. Same exact letter with different date. I really doubt they did the same thing on those two repairs. I guess I wasn’t surprised that this time my laptop is in worse shape than the one I sent for repair. The heat issue seems to be taken care of. But now I have new sets of problems. The DVD burner won’t open. Using a paper clip to eject it doesn’t work either. And to make the matter worse I got tons of blue screen of death. Sometimes it happened out of the blue, but most of the time it happened when I had these fuzzy horizontal lines on the screen.

I experienced Blue Screen of Death from no messages to MEMORY_MANAGEMENT to IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_EQUAL to PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA. I worked with the HP Support to try to isolate the problems. I tried from removing the memory stick and worked with only one at a time to determine whether the memory module caused all these problems, flashing the BIOS, restoring the BIOS to the default setting; none seems to work.

So now I have to do the unthinkable. Restore. That was the last resort but to me it seems like the only option available. This way I can also find out whether it was my doing that caused all these errors in the first place. So I restored the laptop to its original factory setting. It worked fine for about an hour before I experienced the same problems again. Blue Screen of Death. Whooaa .. How I miss thee. After the restore, I experienced some odd behaviors. Windows Update won’t work. Fuzzy Horizontal lines are back in force.

After the labor day weekend, I did another restore so I can change my life from down right manageable unbearable. It works well for a bit before I experienced tons of BSOD. And now I even had a new BSOD; the APC_INDEX_MISTMATCH. Whatever the hell that is.

I’ve had about enough of this stupidity so I called the HP Total UNcare Support and demanded a new system because this lemon they sold me is a piece of garbage. Of course the Support Person does not have the authority to make that decision so they setup a callback with the Case Manager. Whoa … I have to deal with these people again. I guess I don’t have to worry about it. No one ever called me and I have arranged not 1 not 2 but 4 callbacks already because they never call me back.

HP Total Care is run by scumbags who don’t give a hoot about customers.

Is there any quality control at HP?

Asking that question is like asking a hooker whether she has a moral. Actually I beg to differ. In my opinion, comparing HP Total Care to a hooker is an insult to hookers. At least hookers can claim they have little to no customer complains in their profession; not to mention there’s always happy-ending; something HP can only wish for.

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