Dammit! I HATE when you buy something, and it's defective out of the box.

[Madrone]

I purchased this:




On overstock.com a week or so ago. I have been soo excited, waiting for it to get here so I can organize the piles of cds and dvds I have laying around ...well, everywhere. Finally, it comes today so I rush home from work to get it assembled. I get midway through the task, and am in the process of installing the bottom. I have the unit flipped over, and am trying to install the bottom unfinished side up, and the f'ing holes don't line up. If I flip it over so the unfinished side is down, they line up perfectly. Problem is, I don't want a particleboard BOTTOM showing at the bottom of my shiny new BLACK unit. Grrrr! Now I have a huge monstrosity of a half-assembled piece of furniture blocking my living room that can't really be moved since it's not assembled enough to be sturdy. Who KNOWS how long it will take to get a replacement piece - I just emailed the manufacturer but they don't open until 7 am. Here's hoping I don't have to trip over this damned thing for a week before I get the new piece.


I guess it could be worse. Last night I went to one of our customer's house (I work for an ISP) to help him set up a new, out of the box computer. He was SO excited (as he should be, his old computer is a POS - my god, I don't know how he's dealt with it for so long - it's like circa 486!) and kind of afraid to get it all set up himself. I agreed to go over on my personal time and help him out. Get the thing set up, turn it on, and no video. Check the connections, turn the flatscreen on and off, turn the computer on and off. Nothing. So, it's the onboard video, or the flatscreen, but which? Unhook flatscreen, hook up old crt monitor. Turn it on - nothing. Brand new, just out of the box computer and his onboard video is tits up. Poor guy - had to box the whole thing right back up again for a return to the store this morning.

It will be at least a week before he gets his new one.

[BiggJawn]

1. One of our Techs was building some new 'Pooters...

Industrial rack-mount P-5's Anyway, he has one put together and fired up, and he reaches across the thing for something and right then, the power supply blew up in his armpit.

Brand new 400-W power supply, pre-crispy-crittered....Shop stunk like capacitor confetti the rest of the day.

[Madrone]

2. I HATE the smell of toasted power supplies...

bleah!

I feel your pain. Had a customer show up at the office one time because his computer stopped turning on. (small ISP's - where else can you get such service?) I set it on my desk, turned it on - nothing, off - nothing - on, off, on off ---- on, flash, fizzle, puff of smoke and the raunchiest smell on god's green earth.

*L* Thank god the customer didn't freak out (you never know with people , and I sure don't want the "It worked FINE until SHE touched it!!" rap) - I'd forgotten about that til you brought it up. THANKS - now I'm going to have "capacitor confetti stink" nightmares tonight... :)

[Sugarbleus]

3. I used to work in computer manufacturing. I was

A Quality control/assurance supervisor. I actually worked for Seagate building hard drives at one point. In those days and the ones before that, MADE IN AMERICA meant something! You got top notch products worthy of every penny of your money.

We bought a new mini van a few years ago. It immediately began to fall apart (body wise). Fuses blew, headliners failed, screws fell out of seats and seals etc. The motor is fine, we keep it that way, but the body is about to fall away from the chassis. LOL

I wonder if offshoring and outsourceing is also the culprit in today's defective merch. I've purchased many things in recent years that are just abominable in terms of quality and worth.

I think the whole issue of poor quality products in this country is embarrassing and a certain slap in the face to we US workers and consumers.

[Deja Q]

4. If there's no beep, check the CPU - could be loose... or power supply

If it's video, there's almost always a series of a repeating pattern of audial beeps.

Memory (RAM) not being seated usually emits a pattern of repeating beeps too.

If the computer passes the POST check, it will beep once and continue on its smurfy way. If it didn't beep once at all and no series of beeps, then something's dead, Jim...

But I'm thinking power supply, poorly mounted CPU, broken mobo, shorted mobo, or socketed-chip-come-loose-in-mobo.

If it DID beep just once, then it is most likely the monitor being bad.

[Madrone]

5. It booted normally (from all the audible signs)

but NO VIDEO. If I'd had a video card w/ me I would have slapped it in the AGP slot and tried that out. My initial thought that it was the monitor proved false when I hooked it up to his old crt.

I was suprised the tech support people didn't lead me thru a huge rigamarole to verify the onboard vid was dead. I DO tech support, so I know that most of the time people call thinking they know what they are talking about, but dont. I expected them to doubt that was the issue and make me troubleshoot a bunch of bs until they were satisfied. Nope - they took me at my word right away.


I'm sure it was the mobo - the onboard video portion of it, anyway. lol - you should have seen this musclebound army guy blanch when the tech said he'd ship a new mobo/processer and he could install it himself when it arrived.

It sucks he has to wait for a new one, but the upside is he's getting almost double the hard drive space, a 128meg agp video CARD, double the memory, and a faster processer along with a better warranty. Oh, he's also getting 3 free games, as the new one he's getting is considered their "gaming machine" - all in all, it worked out pretty well. It's just a bummer to be excited about something and have it not work.