Averatec

I have to say that even though I’d heard plenty of bad things about Averatec on the various support forums and I was dreading having to send my C3500 in for repairs when the hard drive started to fail, I found my support experience to be good overall.

I wasn’t thrilled at all with having to send the whole unit in and would have preferred to have received a new hard drive and done the swap myself but since that wasn’t an option I wiped the drive, packed the computer up and sent it off.

It arrived at their facility a week later and as it turns out, they turned it around in a single day.

That was both good and bad.

Good because I knew the machine was on the way back (presumably fixed) and bad because I’d intended to call and ask for expedited shipping so I could reinstall everything on my upcoming day off. Oh well, can’t have everything.

The computer arrived today and I discovered three things:

  1. They’d replaced the hard drive with a completely different manufacturer’s drive. It previously had a Hitachi "Deathstar" drive and now has a Fujitsu drive that I hope is more reliable.
  2. They’d put an updated version of the WindowsXP and OneNote on the drive so that at least I’d have slightly fewer updates to install.
  3. They’d replaced the top panel and even transferred the hologram I’d put on there to the new panel. Very nice of them.

I’m again not thrilled with having to spend a bunch of time reinstalling all my apps but this time I’ll get it set up and ghost it before I do much more work. If I ever have to send it in again at least I will be able to restore it to a state that is ready to go.

Overall I’m pleased with the experience. Everything was covered under warranty and I’ve got my laptop back.

Published by

Michael Harrison

Husband, Programmer, Irish dancer, tinkerer, astronomer, layabout (as much as possible)

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