6/30/2006 9:06AM
HP zd7000 Laptop

Purchased July 2004. Nice unit: 3.4gHz P4, 60gig 7200rpm hard drive, integrated nVidia video hardware, "BrightView" widescreen 17" LCD display (crisp & clear), optical CD/DVD writer combo drive, 1gig of memory, built in SD card reader. Extended warranty plan was purchased along with the laptop - you never know when things will go wrong, and laptop repairs can be expensive.

December 2005: the system just up and died. It wouldn't power up or anything, it was just dead in the water. The hard drive was OK though - I put it in a USB enclosure and was able to back up the contents to another system before contacting HP and arranging for warranty service. Since the extended warranty plan covered the unit through July 2006, repair costs were covered. Sent the laptop to HP, got it back in about a week. They replaced the motherboard, and other than the fact that the cooling fans seemed to run at max speed all the time, the system was fine.

May 2005: both the display and the hard drive die at the same time. Sent it to HP, got it back four weeks later. The LCD display panel itself was fine, it seems - the problem was with the integrated video hardware on the motherboard (NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5700), so the whole motherboard had to be replaced. Don't know what the problem was with the hard drive, I was not even able to connect it to another system via an external USB enclosure - as soon as I connected it to another XP system, it would crash with a BSOD - but they sent it back to me in working order. (Good thing I back up my stuff regularly, because they had to wipe the hard drive and I had to rebuild the system from the ground up. I also bought a second hard drive and Acronis True Image software, so I made a mirror of the rebuilt system so that if the drive crashes again, I can just slip the backup drive into the laptop and I'm back in business.) They also replaced my CD/DVD combo drive and the keyboard - no reason given. The reason they said the repair took so long was the motherboard was out of stock and back-ordered. One nice thing: the fans were no longer revving up to max speed. They were definitely running, but now the system seemed to run much cooler.

Ten days later: the display dies. Again. Send back to HP. Four weeks later to the day, I get a phone call. It seems the delay is due to replacement motherboards still being on backorder, and it would take another month for them to come in. (Gee, I wonder if other zd7000 users are sending in their systems...) I was given a choice: wait another month for a replacement motherboard, or let HP install a different motherboard with slower video hardware but that is in stock now, and get it back in two business days. The difference in performance would be slight but noticeable if I use the laptop for gaming (I don't - I use it for music & audio production, web development and general administrative stuff), otherwise it's the same montherboard. They would also throw in some free goodies: a 1GB USB thumb drive, a "Tech Kit" (laptop mouse and other trinkets), and noise-cancelling headphones if I went with the motherboard with the slower graphics hardware. I took the deal, and the laptop will be in back in my hands later today.

Through all of this, and despite the inconvenience of not having the laptop at my disposal for large chunks of time, none of this has cost me a dime.

The three morals of the story:

1) Laptops are designed to break down just after the regular warranty expires, so it really pays to spend the extra money on an extended warranty plan.

2) Laptops evolve so quickly that, once repairs become necessary, replacement parts may not be readily available and at some point down the line (3-5 years?) may not be available at all.

3) Spend the extra money on a second hard drive, USB enclosure and drive mirroring software, and mirror your hard drive every two weeks or so. There's nothing more time-consuming than having to reinstall an OS, reinstall all your software and get all your data back on a hard drive after a major crash.