Trusty Website?

[DaveW]

I'm thinking of giving my laptop to my Girlfriend for our 4 year anniversary. It needs only a new Battery and a Power lead (well, it needs a new touchpad and mouse buttons, but i'll need to contact HP for that.)

Anyway, here's the cheapest battery i can find... (http://www.battery-laptop.co.uk/hp/721.htm)but it isn't an official new battery (which cost £112!) At £32 this is a much cheaper alternative. I also need to buy a new Power Lead as the one that came with it seems to have actually burned at the connector end...maybe i'll post a photo later.

Anyway, it's an nx9005 HP-Compax, so if anyone knows where to get a new touchpad (buttons only really) in the UK, let me know-otherwise i'll just get in touch with Hp sometime soon.

Of course, all this means i'll be without a laptop till Summer...at which point i'll hopefully be buying the most meaty gawdamn laptop i can afford. And i'll have some extra cash at this point, i hope. (at least £1500 to spend.)

-Dave

[Zephik]

What about Ebay?

[DaveW]

No, i want a new battery. Laptop batteries don't really last that long. As for ebay for the spare parts, well, same applies-i wanted everything new.

-Dave

[Indybird]

I'm not sure :think: , the site hasn't been updated (or the copyright updated) since 2005. Other than that or the not 100% professional appearance theres nothing else to hint that its untrusty.

[Airbozo]

Dave, I am a couple of miles from HP and I will check on the parts availability and what it would cost to get it to you.

[DaveW]

Hey thanks man! I need new mouse buttons for the touchpad, i've managed to wear out the button. If you could price a keyboard +shipping that would be awesome, they really rip us off for this stuff in the UK.

-Dave

[nil8]

They rip us off for the stuff in the US too. I've had many dealings with HP on laptops out of warranty for small stuff. They actually wanted ~150 bucks for 3 new keys on a laptop that was 4 years old.

[Airbozo]

They rip us off for the stuff in the US too. I've had many dealings with HP on laptops out of warranty for small stuff. They actually wanted ~150 bucks for 3 new keys on a laptop that was 4 years old.

After being in the business of repairing and refurbishing old systems I do understand the costs, but better planning up front could eliminate most of these costs. Some of the big company's (I'm sure HP is included) have certain requirements for supporting electronics equipment. That means that they must stock certain parts for a certain period of time _after_ the equipment is EOL'd. This means they pay some 3rd party company to warehouse a quantity of parts and that storage cost gets tacked onto the parts cost, PLUS they charge you an hourly rate to pull and ship the parts that are built into the cost based on someones estimate... Then they add their profit. Turns a $.25 part into a $100 part pretty quickly.

Then there is another problem. Take Dave's Laptop for example. All he needs are the little buttons for the touchpad. Guess what, so far as I have found no-one will sell you _just_ the buttons, they have to sell you the whole top cover for the laptop and it runs into the $150 range. For $1 worth of buttons! I could go to the local recycled computer place and buy the whole laptop for that... The replacement keyboard is only $35 brand new and that has 101 buttons! Go figure...

[nil8]

It sounds like computer equipment is being dealt with the same way cars are. The best idea for old equipment is find someone who keeps a lot of used old stuff around and take what you need out of that vs. dealing with the company directly. Same business model I suppose, just different equipment.

What gets me is how difficult it is to deal with in warranty items sometimes.
The prime example I can give is from working in a hospital. We had HP servers and computers which would have drive failures. HP delegates to a third party about hard drive replacement under warranty for sensitive data. Mostly hospitals and government stuff. It took me 3 months to get the kinks finally worked out for us to be able to remove the tops of the drives, get a certificate of drive destruction, and return the top of the hard drive to hp for an exchange. I logged my phone calls and time spent on the phone. It was around 80 calls and over 220 hours on the phone with these 2 companies just so we could get our hard drives exchanged without violating federal law. That was a pain in the ass. Lucky for all those who followed me, I documented the procedure and listed how to renew the account with the 3rd party company.

[Airbozo]

Hehe Pick-Your-Parts for computers! I like the idea! As it gets more expensive to recycle electronics I see this as a good business model.

[DaveW]

I'll order the battery and the power cable later on tonight, and see how much money i have left over.

-Dave

[DaveW]

Hey, remember this thread? Well i ordered the battery, which arrived yesterday, making a mockery of their 3-5 day delivery policy. Well, i actually had to go and get it from the post office. But imagine my surprise when this turned up in my inbox this morning.

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/davew/wtf.JPG

Is this a serious company? Look at the subject! Anyway, the battery arrived and it seems to be ok. It cost about half the price of an official battery, but i have serious doubts about the reliability of this company. Thought i'd follow up and leave a warning/review for other potential customers.

-Dave

[nil8]

Peons get bored. That's the only thing I could think of. If you're working for ****ty money, you have to have fun with your job somehow.

[xmastree]

About the touchpad buttons, remember that old Apple touchpad? Well the buttons on that looked the same as regular mouse buttons. I used one for this:
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f341/chrispollard/386/powerswitck.jpg

[DaveW]

Yup! I still have that lying here. Never had the time to hook it up to anything yet, still can't think of what to do with it!

-Dave