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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.