So two weeks ago, I had to send my brand new (just over a month old) laptop to get the screen repaired. It was giving me odd colours and lines and all sorts of dodgy stuff across it. The repair guys at PC World decided it was a crack from damage and charged me to send it off to get fixed. Upon recieving it back (three days ago), there's a new screen, and they refund me the money they charged because it was down to something inside. All well and good.
It runs fine as I start it up the next day, and for hours it's all going fine. Until I move it. Suddenly there's red/pink overlaying everything. I put it back, but it stays flickering red. Like you can still see everything, but there's this annoying flickering overlay over everything. I open up google, and the white screen has no red on it, but it still flickers on the bars at the top and bottom, and other, non-white sites (e.g. the videos on youtube, and just about every other site I regularly visit) are flickering.
So I sigh, and go to close it and get ready to bring it back in to PC world in the morning, and as soon as I move the screen forward, the red goes away. I let go and it starts again, but then, with a little manipulating of the screen position, it goes away totally. So I shrug, shut it down, and go to the bed for the night.
I wake up in the morning and start it up, and...it's totally fine. Right. So, having woken up late, I quickly do my online test for uni as I eat my breakfast, and it's all fine. Until I'm about to shut it down and head out the door. And the red flickering starts. By this time, I don't have time to head to PC World, so I shut it down, shut off the charger, leave it on the desk, top open, and grab my old laptop and charger that I'd been using while my laptop was getting repaired. By the time I get in after the day is over, PC World is shut.
So I wake up today, and turn on my laptop. The red flickering was still there, covering my welcome screen and turning the blue into flickers of purples and pinks. I sigh, grab my purse, find my reciepts from the earlier fix, close the lid of my laptop, put it in my rucksack and wander down to PC World.
And wouldn't it be just my luck, that as soon as I arrive at PC World, and open my laptop to show the tech-guy, the red flickering is gone. Just like that - GONE! So the tech-guy thinks it's a pinched wire in the hinges, or a loose connection (if that's true, I can't help thinking it's related to the screen replacement, since it didn't have this problem before), but is confused, seeing nothing when he moves the screen back and forth. So we go through the whole procedure of checking the details of the laptop, and the guy is also surprised that it's needed two repairs when it's still less than two months old. He turns it over, screen still open, to check the serial number on the back, and *Hello, Red Flickering!* He turns it over again, and it stops. Needless to say, he never saw it the first time, and we can't get it to do it again, so I'm starting to feel like a loonatic.
So, the poor guy spends a good half-hour on the phone getting passed from person to person, until he eventually ends up at Samsung, who are now apparently going to fix it, since it's still in warranty. So I probably have another 10 day wait before I get it back. Seriously? By the time I get it back, my laptop'll basically have been away for repairs for almost half the amount of time I've owned it. I don't even know if I'll still be in Aberdeen if it comes back late to the store, so I'll have to reorganise for it to be sent to the store at home, and that'll just be awkward. If I knew this would happen so soon after buying, I would have gone for a different brand - the reason the guy at tech-support believed me was because he had just seen another similarly new Samsung that did dhow the red flickering. I can't help but wonder how long this laptop is actually going to hold up if it's having problems at this stage.
Meanwhile, my poor 5-year old Dell is plugging away nicely under the strain of my uni work. Sure, the battery barely lasts 2 hours, it's a bit sloooowwwww at times, and the memory isn't great, but at least it's reliable and won't start giving me strange screens in the middle of a lecture. Being honest, if I defragmented, got rid of all the odds and ends and programmes on the hard drive that I don't need anymore (or just plain got it restored to factory settings), cleaned out the fan (which is probably FULL of dust and soot from the coal fire at my parents house - my mums laptop was completely choked up with it), cleared out under the keyboard, and got it a new battery, it would probably last a good while yet.
As a matter of fact, that's why my mum was meant to be getting my Dell once I got everything moved over to my Samsung, but that never happened. My dad was going to pick it up, take it to the computer guys in Dundee that fix all his computer stuff for him to get it wiped, then clean it up and give it to mum so she can let her dying 7-8 year old Acer finally bite the dust. Although, judging by the multiple crashes, and the Black Screen of Death she got recently, that might have already happened. Even the computer guys can't fix it. In any case, by God was that thing sloooowwwwww.....
Anyway, off topic now. I do hope this is the last issue my laptop has. I do want to get around to buying scrivener one of these days with the NaNo winner codes.
Wishing you better luck than I've had this last while :)
Tigereye
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