I spent much of yesterday re-installing Windows on my IBM T43, which I purchased almost two years ago. The reason is my Seagate hard drive, 160GB, died, so I sent it out for RMA and stuck in my original 40GB drive (which was being used as an external for some time).
I formatted, re-installed, was loading on a bunch of software when suddenly it froze pretty hard. I had to hard reset it, and upon booting Windows I had corrupted system files. I grew suspicious since this was a fresh install, and since I'd just made a boot CD with a hard drive test on it (Seagate's Seatools), I decided to test this hard drive too. Sure enough, it failed the drive tests (also failed Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test, which I used to double-check).
So I filled out a form on IBM's website requesting service. I explained the problem as follows:
HARD DRIVE FAILS TO PASS SEAGATE'S SEATOOLS TESTS. TESTED AFTER IT SHOWED CORRUPTED SYSTEM FILES, AROUSING MY SUSPICION. I BELIEVE IT IS DEFECTIVE.
That was about 10PM last night. I got a call about 10AM today from IBM tech support. They confirmed that I had this problem, and told me they'd send me a new hard drive tomorrow. So tomorrow morning I should have a working hard drive replacement at my door (plus recovery CDs). I don't think any other notebook manufacturer would do that for a non-corporate customer.
No getting put on hold for 30 minutes, no fighting with tech support to convince them there actually is a problem.
I formatted, re-installed, was loading on a bunch of software when suddenly it froze pretty hard. I had to hard reset it, and upon booting Windows I had corrupted system files. I grew suspicious since this was a fresh install, and since I'd just made a boot CD with a hard drive test on it (Seagate's Seatools), I decided to test this hard drive too. Sure enough, it failed the drive tests (also failed Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test, which I used to double-check).
So I filled out a form on IBM's website requesting service. I explained the problem as follows:
HARD DRIVE FAILS TO PASS SEAGATE'S SEATOOLS TESTS. TESTED AFTER IT SHOWED CORRUPTED SYSTEM FILES, AROUSING MY SUSPICION. I BELIEVE IT IS DEFECTIVE.
That was about 10PM last night. I got a call about 10AM today from IBM tech support. They confirmed that I had this problem, and told me they'd send me a new hard drive tomorrow. So tomorrow morning I should have a working hard drive replacement at my door (plus recovery CDs). I don't think any other notebook manufacturer would do that for a non-corporate customer.
No getting put on hold for 30 minutes, no fighting with tech support to convince them there actually is a problem.