The story so far...

Ok...

Around July 3rd I start having issues with my hard drive and/or motherboard, and am told to send it in.  It leaves on the 6th of this month and returns to me on the 12th.  That's great service!  They also send me a new (refurb) hard drive, in case that was it (which turns out to be the case).  For a couple days I'm using the installation discs to re-install WinXP and all my old programs.  All is happy in laptop land.

Three days later I notice that the battery indicator is on, showing no AC power.  A quick check of my power supply shows the green light is off.  I figure it must be my Advanced Port Replicator doing something, but then I un-dock it and try a totally different (spare) power supply and it still does the same thing.  Just great.

I inform tech support and they tell me to send it in (oh joy).  So DHL picks it up on the 19th and promptly loses it.  It doesn't arrive at Dell the next day and they haven't a clue where it is.  I call DHL and they tell me it's probably arrived, but just didn't scan in.  They'd call and have the proof of delivery sent to me.  Several hours go by.  Does anyone call, or FAX me?  Nope.  I call back.  Looks like there is no proof of delivery, because it was never delivered!  They have no clue where it is, and tell me it'll take 24 hours to trace its whereabouts.  He apologizes up, down, and sideways about them losing it, and not calling me back and assures me he'll let me know the status the next day.  24 hours goes by, and then some.  Do I hear anything?  Nope.  I call yet again.  They tell me to contact Dell and start a claim since it looks like it's lost.  Yay.

A week later is shows up in Memphis.  Apparently they sent it by ground, and didn't know it.  It arrived there last friday, and I get it back today. 

The note in the box from the Dell tech repair person said they couldn't find anything wrong with it, and it was probably my power supply.  Ya, sure.... both of them failing at the same exact time.  Right.

I hook up one power supply and fire up the laptop, with just the hard drive and 1 battery installed.  The power supply shuts itself off after a few minutes.  Yup, I knew that was gonna happen.  Power it down, and then I try another power supply.  Same thing happens.  I power it down again and I try a different battery, and the same thing happens.  Ugh.  And they couldn't find this?

After all these different combinations, I leave out the batteries and it seems to work.  I ran it for 30-40 minutes and it stayed on.  Well, that's something I guess.  As long as I don't actually want to use it as a portable laptop, it'll work fine.

I then power it down and put both batteries back in.  I plug in the first power supply.  Now I'm getting an error saying that it's a 70 watt power supply.  Huh?  I plug in the 2nd power supply.  Same thing.  Ok.  I head down to Radio Shack and have a friend there that lets me try one of their IGo 90 watt laptop power supplies with the Dell tip on it.  Powers up without the message, but the power supply shuts itself off before WindowsXP is even loaded (just like my 2 other supplies were doing before the 70 watt messages)!

First off, that's 3 power supplies acting the same.  Secondly, this laptop better not have damaged 2 fully working power supplies that your tech repair said were bad... Because I guarantee they weren't.

Lastly, it looks like tech support is setting up a 3rd trip this month for the laptop, back to Memphis.  I sure hope this time it actually gets repaired properly.  The month it almost up, and I've actually had the thing in working condition for all of about a handful of days in the whole month!

Oh... ya... one more thing.  Is my laptop going to get any frequent flyer miles out of this?  It sure deserves it...

 - Brian