Laptop Woes
Okay, so those extended warrentys that they try and sell you when you buy things? Sometimes they might not be such a bad idea. My Compaq Presario 2700T has been having some… problems, shall we say. Mostly video related, but then recently it started shutting itself off. Nice feature eh? Anyway, called a few places and eventually took it to CompUSA. Problem was, the laptop was out of it’s one year warrenty, by about 6 months. So they charge $140 bucks for looking at it. Now that includes any additional labor after the problem is diagnosed, so if you need work on it you’re paying for parts only. Still, pretty steep. So I leave it with them and the short story is it’s a power inverter on the LCD display. He says most other laptops can have just that part replaced, not mine (of course). A new screen, their cost, is $1100!! Yeah, that was my reaction too. So naturally I bought a new one 
The cool thing, and I give them props for this, they refunded the entire $140. That was nice. So CompUSA has gone up a notch on my list of local computer shops. And yes, I bought the 3 year extended warrenty on this one, and this time I’m trying a Toshiba from Best Buy. Wish me luck.