My laptop was stolen in January of this year. It was a nice laptop, and it was my own stupid fault. I left it on a plane. Twenty minutes after arriving at my hotel I realized what had happened, phoned the airline and asked that they look for it. I had my seat number…
The thing was never found. I think someone swiped it on the way out of the plane. Heaven knows they all searched for it (and were very nice about it). So, it was gone.
I had a short-lived moment of panic: there was a lot of personal information on that thing, but then I remembered that I had a password that was about as break-proof as can be managed. After a couple tries the memory banks would have been erased and the machine sold on. It was still annoying, but, as I said, it was my own stupid fault.
I was out of town. I commissioned a friend to find me another, gave a price range and a sincere thanks. She found a laptop that had been marked way down because a newer model was being rolled out. The markdown was very dramatic. The laptop had huge memory, incredible RAM. It was fast, capacious – and it was on sale for just about $30 more than I’d budgeted. Definitely a fabulous buy.
I have been using it and very happy with it, but it started getting a little cranky. I backed everything up in duplicate and then took it to ‘The Geek Squad’.
They looked it over, gave some suggestions, and I took it home and followed the suggestions – defrag the thing, do a disk cleanup, upload updates. It froze. It would not start.
So I took it back the next day. It was under warranty, though I had declined the extended warranty. I left it there, ran my errands – and received a phone call.
You have a defective hard drive. It will need to be replaced. It is, however, under warranty… (Imagine the voice of the announcer for Superman).
What can you say? Machines fail. I gave the OK to ship the laptop out and get the hard drive replaced (they didn’t have one in stock, since it was an ‘older’ model). I had no complaints. It was under warranty and it would be fixed. I had backed everything up, so I had lost no graphics or manuscripts. And my friend, who found me the laptop in the first place, has one she isn’t using.
Life isn’t always convenient, of course, but I think I was lucky.
dianawilderjottings 
A hassle, yes, but SO MUCH better for it to occur under warrenty! Glad they're fixing it for you!
You're right, Hart – and guess – just guess! – who's buying an extended warranty on the new hard drive….?
I shudder to think of a loss, meltdown or other calamity in connection with our computers. Your own experience confirms once again: Use your memory stick frequently (even if it is a pain). I have been thinking about a new computer (I am using a 2001 Dell Inspiron on a docking station with a large monitor)…still hums along but I try not to do anything too complicated on the Internet. As sexy as the new laptops are, as a writer I still prefer an All-In-One with keyboard and mouse.Hope you (but not the thief) could retrieved all your information–I can just imagine how devastated you must have been.That reminds me: Let's all back up our documents NOW.Thanks for sharing, Diana, no matter how painful it was.Inge
You were SO lucky! I try to back things up, but admit to not doing it as regularly as I should.