Frontpage Story #45

My Compaq Presario 7222 died last September, no reason, just wouldn't power up. Called Compaq "support" and after they ensured that I had checked the appropriate wire connections, including the wall plug, they told me to take it to an authorized repair center since it was still in warranty (Thank God!). I took it to CompUSA, which is a whole other story. The long and short of it was the computer was there for 2 months while they (Compaq) coached the CompUSA moron on what to do. Two mother boards, a new CPU and a hard drive later the machine was ready to come home, or so I thought. During all this time, I called Compaq, including the President's office several times to ask at what point would they declare the machine a total loss and give me a new one, or at least an allowance against a new one. Of course that is not in their playbook. They wouldn't even consider a loaner.

When I got it back, I discovered that the speakerphone function didn't work and after many, many calls to tech non-support, which included my reinstalling the media pilot and speechmail, which they sent to me on diskettes. The long and short of it is, it has never worked. Fortunately, I can connect to the Internet, but I've never been able to use the speakerphone function again. Now, I get an error message when I boot up and I'm unable to use the FAX function. The machine is now out of warranty, so I tried posting a message in the "forum" which I have a feeling is the rough equivalent of writing down my problem and sending through the shredder. Better days are coming, I'll be buying a new computer soon--and IT WILL NOT be a Compaq