HP is a bitch
I have/had an HP dv9000 series laptop. I used it for work, and for play. The GPU blew out (overheated) while sitting idle on a desk just one week after the one year manufacturers warranty expired. I called, referred from various class actions, other blogs, and general forums about those with similar or the same issue, and they denied any responsibility of their product.
The calls: This occured at around four o'clock, and I called for support, thinking they would just suck up the loss and send me a new laptop. I was mistaken. After battleing with their voice prompt IVR, which only understands Indian (dots, not feathers) accents, I was forwarded to (suprise suprise!) someone who didn't speak english. I'm not implying his accent was bad, as that would be an understatment. The human on the other line skimmed over an ??? to english book, and said "ok, I are can be now doing technical supports now, sir.". I was greeted, and my name was taken. Then my account was verified. Verification of accounts and serial numbers is a painful process. "one, two q as in queen." "ok, dat iz ha-one, two, g as in geen (I believe he meant green)." After the static data was transferred, I explained my problem, which he didn't understand. Apparently "gpu" isn't something you need to know as technical support for personal computers, as I had to explain that it meant "graphical processing unit" many times. Ultimately he said that if I wanted technical support, that I would have to pay $49.95 per incident as my warrenty had expired. My reply was that technical support was not what I was calling for. The "support" portion of the issue had been resolved personally. I knew what the issue was, I just needed technical repair. He gave me another number, and told me to call back later. I call back, and get someone a little more accent nerutal, but just as stupid. He explained that in order for me to repair my laptop, that I'd have to ship it to their repair location, and it would cost me over $800 to repair. Seeing as this is a known issue I asked if the $800 repair would come with a warrenty. It of course, did not.