I had a Dell at one time and for whatever reason, I had to send it back to them. They had me remove the hard drive, sent me a box to ship it in and had it repaired and back to me in about a week. Really a very pleasant experience. I expect things have changed now though.

That will work unless the hard drive is the problem or..
 

That will work unless the hard drive is the problem or.. they cannot tell over the phone if it is a hardware or software issue...
Talk host: should we refuse to take out our hard drive to protect our data before we send in the computer? I do not think so.
JJ

I experienced a terrible time with a Toshiba laptop where the display window burned out. My call for Toshiba service ended up with them suggesting I return the laptop to them along with $400!!! I told them, for $400 I can buy a new laptop. Bye bye and never to speak to you again. BTW, my laptop was still under warranty.

Went back to my trusty HP's. About four years ago my HP got sick and I called HP for help. The tech asked me to try this 'n that and finally asked me to open the casing. I was petrified!!! He said not to worry that he will walk me along the procedure. I opened the casing, at his direction, very delicately reset the modem and closed the casing. Still no help. The tech said that he would send a new modem. I casually mentioned, "and who will switch the modems?" He said, "You will." Hmmmm Well, when the modem arrived, I called HP was walked thru the procedure to switch modems. Voila!!! It worked fine!!

This last HP laptop I bought at Best Buy, I decided I'd go along with a year's insurance for maintenance, especially after my horrible experience with the Toshiba laptop. All is well (knock wood) and I do feel so much more secure with HP.

I too was going to try a Mac and upon being told the differences between the Mac and HP and the like, I decided I was more comfortable with my HP and Windows and not interested in learning the differences with the Mac.

After thinking about this, I believe that the problem was the screen. Had nothing to do with the hard drive.

That's fine for those of us who know how to do it, but what about Aunt Sadie who didn't want the damned thing in the first place.

Also, the question remains, what if the amateur consumer damages something else inside the machine during this "talking him through it" routine. Is the company going to warrant that too?

Most people who are forced to fly airplanes because the pilot dies, are not successfully "talked into a landing." They end up as dead as the pilot.

Aunt Sadie, meet JimJoe. :D

Was the tech support guys name Peggy?

Isn't that a scream?

The support guys name was probably Muhammad. Tech reps are in New Deli

tech support
 

I was ROFLMAO.....I too have been lying on floor unplugging things from computer at tech support's urging. I wanted to send them the chiropratic bill.

Probably not. New Delhi is mostly Hindu.

No, this guy was in the good old USA.:Screen_of_Death:

tech support
 

with the recession tech support has returned to the USA, too many people out of work permanently, not a good thing

JJ... you're right. Hardware is hardware and anything can fail on any computer, whether it's the hard drive, memory, display...you name it.

But from a "hassle factor", for me, the Mac is more hassle free. Mostly, because there isn't anything I can do to it... I can't tinker around with the OS as easily as I can with Windows.

As for support, I can't speak to Apple support, since I've never needed to call them for the MacBook Pro, iPhone or iPad...all three just work. I probably shouldn't have said that.....one of them will probably fail today :loco:

Finally, your advise on data security is spot on. When you send a computer back to the manufacturer [or whomever], you don't always know what you are giving them. It's very difficult to know if you've cleaned all your personal information from a hard drive. About the only way [that I know] is to reformat and "overwrite" everything on the hard drive.

Cheers....

That's the wit and humor I've missed for the past couple weeks!

Welcome back PT!