A Pavillion power supply smoked and died. (one of the torriods, by looks through the vent holes). It was still under the 1-yr warrantee. I wanted a replacement power supply, but I had to start the HP repair process of the sending a pre-paid shipment box, probably have to reformat the hard-drive in the repair process, and a turnaround time that was too long, not to mention all the time it would have taken to re-install everything on the PC if it was reformatted.

I decided to just hunt down the proprietary, underpowered little power supply, for a rip-off price due to the proprietary design, and pay for it myself. Job done.

I am an embedded hardware designer for Raytheon. The process HP repair wanted me to go through was ludicrous and extremely frustrating for me, knowing what the problem was and how to fix it.

I then sent the broken power supply in the prepaid box explaining that I just want a credit to my credit card for the cost of the poser supply, and I will not hold HP responsible for any other damage that could have occured from not testing the entire PC according to HP procedures. I don't think they even read my letter, because they returned the box with the broken power supply with a note saying they require the entire PC. No Kidding? If they read my letter, they could have said something more intelligent.

The point of this letter to you is to point out that I just had an awesome repair experience with Compaq this week. Additionally, I will use my significant relationship with fellow engineers, as well as those reponsible for ordering hundreds of PCs, to convince others to NOT buy HP, and continue using Compaq for now.

I am an experienced EE in a computer illiterate world, but I was able to rip apart the Compaq PC, which was under warrantee, to decide that it was a dead motherboard. I had a new motherboard installed up and running 3 days later. Very impressive, I still can't believe it! It offsets the animosity HP left me.

I've already mentioned my bad experience with some fellow engineers. Not too damaging to HP. Perhaps some miracle could change my mind about HP before I have lunch again with some of my friends in our IS and purchasing department. I work for Raytheon. (thousands of employees and computers at my site alone)

My resume: www.geocities.com\mguydish\resume.html

Thought you might want to know this, I have some friends who are shareholders. I am doing this for them. Although this is a whining complaint, if a better service is offered to your more hardware literate customers, HP might be better off. Compaq had me do a bunch of stuff on their checklist over the phone before they offered the motherboard.

-Michael Guydish Sr. Electrical Engineer II, Raytheon Systems