_HP or CDW Fail Take Your Pick

It was time for me to get a new laptop for me here at work. I was excited since I can now move up to Windows 7 from Vista and sink my teeth into the I7 processor from Intel. The HP Elitebook was chosen for the availability and specs. 4gigs of RAM,I7 Processor, DVD Burner, 14″ screen, 250GB hard drive..etc..etc..

Now my set up here at work is dual 19″ monitors for my development environment. Works well. So I really need a dock for the laptop.

Here is where the fun begins. I get the HP EliteBook and dock and get it all set up. Move over my files, install programs etc. Then I notice I only have 37 minutes left of battery. Wait. I am docked. Oh, the power cord must of came out. Checked the plug. That is not it. Maybe the power cord is the wrong voltage. Tried another. That is not it. Phone tech support, must be a Windows issue. That is not it. Argh. Must be the NEW dock.

They send me out a new dock. Awesome! I am back in business. Ah…no. No worky still. I have to send back the Laptop. The BRAND NEW LAPTOP. Fine. Then at the last minute they say we have one in stock and we will ship that back out to you. Awesome! I will get a replacement instead of waiting to get this fixed.

Now it is Friday and a full week has passed since the start of these events. I get the NEW laptop. I did not have to reinstall anything since we just swapped out Hard Drives. Look it charges! Yeah..

So all is well again with the HP Elitebook and it is charging when docked. I take the laptop home over the weekend and notice a scratch on the screen. C’mon. It is about 20 pixels big. I did not notice it when docked since the video card was outputting to my monitors. So annoying.

I then come in on Monday and dock my laptop and start my process of plugging in my headphones and listen to some music as I work. Hmm..that is weird, music is still coming out of my laptop speakers. After troubleshooting and doing a bunch of things, it turns out the headphone jack does not work. Seriously?

So, my NEW replacement laptop has a scratch on the screen and a dead headphone jack. Wait there’s more.

My IT guy is now phoning HP to let them know. In the meantime I still have to work. So I am slicing up some images using Adobe Photoshop, I have NetBeans IDE open for PHP development, Firefox running to view my site and MS Outlook. Then sloooooooooowness happens. What the heck it going on? I check the system settings just to see what the memory is and I see 2 gigs of RAM. Not 4 but 2. Really? They rob me of my RAM.

So I close all my apps and then try to install Windows XP on the VMPlayer since my Virtual PC Hard Disk for some reason has been corrupted. I get the DVD and go to my laptop and….what the…where is my DVD Rom?

I can’t make this stuff up. FAIL FAIL FAIL.

I will report back when I get my third laptop, hopefully three times IS a charm.