Reader reaction

The Gripe Line’s inbox overflowed with pithy, helpful, and witty commentary on some of the problems that have aired here recently. Here are a few that I thought you all might enjoy.

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Matt read Al’s tale of woe with a Toshiba laptop and laughed. “I purchased a Toshiba Satellite myself,” he explains. “It overheated while I was setting up Windows. I let that slide and continued using it anyway. It got progressively worse, but I used it for school and could not afford the time to send it away. A cooler helped a little, but eventually it became so bad that the paint burned off in places and the stickers fell off because the glue melted.

“I sent it in to Toshiba for repairs (they paid for the shipping) and after waiting about 1 1/2 weeks, I got it back. Toshiba said there was nothing wrong with it. After a day or so, the problem resurfaced. Even though my warranty was now expired, Toshiba offered to pay to ship it in again for repair and to service it under warranty. But I again got the laptop back after two weeks back — with the same note: Nothing is wrong with it. It was well out of warranty now, so I took it apart myself and checked the heat sink — just as I had suggested Toshiba support do. I discovered that the thermal grease was crusted and dry. So I cleaned that off and reseated it. That worked like a charm.”

In response to Mordechai’s lament about the termination of Microsoft Money, Mark wrote to point out that at least, “People in Los Estados Unidos have something in the pipeline with the demise of Microsoft Money. We poor plebs on the other side of the pond have no such luck. Quicken sales stopped in the UK in January of 2005 and support was pulled in January of 2006. I’m currently looking at GnuCash as about the only viable alternative I can find here for Windows. Just my two pence worth.”

William’s dilemma, where Microsoft insisted his copy of XP was pirated a full year after it told him it was fine, struck a chord with Al. “As a developer, I routinely reinstall Microsoft software on my systems from original disks. Very infrequently, I have had a good install go bad. Microsoft’s tool for checking for illegal software is indeed very buggy.”

And when Joe wrote to say that he’d been treated well by Seagate, he inspired Phil to share his own good-enough service tale about Western Digital.

“I got two 250GB drives a year and a half ago,” he explains. “I installed one but didn’t get around to installing the other. It sat on my desk until last month when I tried to use it as a backup drive. No go. It just sat there and clicked. I couldn’t get the Western Digital Web site to work, so I called the company. A technician told me the drive was still warranted and he would send a mailer so that I could ship it back for replacement.

“A couple of weeks passed and that didn’t happen. So I tried the Web site again. It worked this time, so I printed up the RMA and mailing label. I had to supply a box and spend $6.34 on shipping, but I got a brand-new drive with a bigger cache within a week. This was perhaps not a perfect experience, but it was far and away better service than I have gotten from many tech companies!”

Got gripes? Send them to christina_tynan-wood@infoworld.com.