HP PC and Fry's Electronics

Spent most of the day poking the garage with a pointy object. Made some progress but still a long way to go. Need to get rid of some more stuff, move some stuff around, and always keep things accessible.

I have been trying to get Fry's to fix or replace a PC bought over a year ago. It's been pretty much useless as a computer. I've taken it to Fry's 4 or 5 times over the past year and most recently they had it for over a month. I set it up yesterday and immediately had problems with it. Fry's takes the position that it's a software issue, even though that makes no logical sense. But, due to the fact that the extended warranty doesn't cover software problems I understand why they wouldn't want to say otherwise. Shit, they might have to actually honor the warranty and fix the damn thing if they admitted it was a hardware problem. You know, it's funny, I turn it on and it immediately breaks, I take it to Fry's, they keep it a month or two, and tell me there's nothing wrong with it. But I digress. After  trying to restore the factory partition one more time without success I called Fry's again. The tech that's been working on it was actually there and actually came to the phone. We talked for a while and he said I should bring it in, etc. Same as it ever was. The tech suggested I call HP and gave me the number. Yeah, so I called them, in less than 5 minutes the tech said it was clearly not a software problem.HP tech said since it's out of warranty with HP, the thing I should do it pay them $50 for a one-time phone diagnosis, or better yet, pay $100 and get 1 year support. I just don't feel good about that. The HP tech was completely sympathetic. So, I'm trying again to restore the factory partition. It's not working. I guess I'll try a few more times then take it back to Fry's. I'll get a loaner from them this time since they get the PC onto the bench much quicker if I have one of their loaner PCs...

OK. Enough of that for now. I'm off to Seattle to watch the fireworks!

p.s. I guess I forgot to press the publish button so  the above post was not quite on-time.