[kaisen]

I always like to share a positive experience with a company

We have a few laptops that we use as internet portals, not a lot of heavy app crunching. So we buy cheap and replace them every year or so.

Our last several were cheap HP or Compaq. Specifically, we bought two Compaq Presario CQ60's this Summer for $299 each.

One of them shorted a battery somehow. Worked fine plugged in but the second the power cord was pulled it went dead immediately. Brought it into Best Buy and they told me that the computer was under warranty but they do NOT warrant batteries. Grrrr... not a big deal, they're only like $40-70.

So I went into my HP Advisor self-diagnostics that were pre-loaded on the computer. It ran a battery health scan, noted a problem, and connected me to HP Pro Online Support where I chatted 'live' with a fellow with an Indian sounding name. He was great. 30 minutes of chatting and them running remote diagnostics and we had a email confirmation that they already SHIPPED a replacement battery. This was 8pm at night. He asked if there were any other concerns and I asked him about how to set up my wireless router to be secure vs open. Even though it was a Linksys/Cisco, he ran me through it (while online) and we set it up together. He even reflashed my BIOS and did some other firmware update to the laptop (that the excellent HP self-updates didn't do).

I received the new battery this morning, Fed Ex Priority OVERNIGHT.

This on a $299 (retail) laptop.

GREAT SERVICE. Thank you HP/Compaq!!