The Computer Saga

I am no longer angry with Best Buy. Two days ago, after a long and complicated mess involving misleading warranty details and backorders, I was pretty upset with them. I was leaving in three days for another country, the battery had finally arrived at the last minute (and, since I didn't have any idea when it would arrive, I had after two months paid 100$ for another one)... and a new battery didn't fix the problem. The problem was the connection between netbook and battery, and now I had three batteries I couldn't use. I went to the store and they said that they'd have to send it in for repair - this could take 2-3 weeks. Weeks I didn't have.

After talking to the store manager, hoping to negotiate free shipping to Europe post-repair, since it was their fault I didn't have this sorted months ago, he poked around and managed to replace the whole laptop for me, free of charge. Brilliant, mostly. Of course, I had to back up all of my files, and its a newer model of questionable improvement (it's supposedly faster, but it took a significant hit on battery life)... but all in all, it's a faster, easier, and better solution, and I still have the free battery from the warranty. Not bad at all considering what I paid for the protection plan.

As for Toshiba lowering the battery life, it seems just plain stupid to me, especially as the reason I went with this netbook originally was because of its excellent battery life. However, its still a pretty long life if the manufacturer's estimate can be believed, so I'm not going to complain. Much.