A learning experience...

A few weeks ago the hard drive on my laptop failed for the second time in nearly four months. This is a little too frequent for my liking. While the first failure didn't surprise me too much (hard drives die from time to time), the second came out of nowhere.

After spending a few days taking it to different places to get repaired and hours on the phone with Best Buy to try to find out how they would pay for it (it's on warranty with them), I finally came across a place that would be suitable under Best Buy's little deal. There is no Best Buy in town, and only one place in town was accredited by them to fix my computer.

After waiting a few weeks to get it repaired, the computer guys told me that the probable cause for the hard drive failing was that Best Buy had given me a 'refurbished' (used and repaired) hard drive when my first one failed in September. This is pretty bothersome. Luckily these new guys were smart enough to give me a brand new one.

I learned two valuable lessons from this experience. The first: When buying a new computer, check to see if there is a similar store in your place of residence to make sure you don't have to go through all these annoying phone calls and store visits.

The second: Ask Best Buy (or any company really) to replace any failed parts with brand new parts rather than shabby, cost-cutting, used parts that have a much higher probability of failure.