Dell :: D630 & D420 Double

This is just fabulous. Dell has essentially shut down my business indefinately. On Wednesday, my D630's (my primary machine) hard drive failed. They sent me a "new" hard drive on Thursday. Great. But, it was a "refurbished" drive of a different brand, and something wrong with the bracket fitting left the sharp corner of the bracket sticking out of the side of my computer. Ok, I get yet another on Friday -- same thing. They promise to send me a new bracket assembly along with it, in case the one on the other drive is bad, too. Got the "new" refurb in today. As expected, they didn't include the new bracket hardware, this one has the same problem and, in addition, the thing is a cheapee Fugitsu (my original was an 18 month old Seagate) that is scraped up on the sides and seems to have some of the connectors broke off! Their only options are -- wait for it -- to send me another POS,non-fitting refurb drive, or send it to the depot, where they'll keep my computer for two weeks and send it with the jagged edges of the refurb drive hardware sticking out the side of my lappy.

So, lucky me, I can't play their "refurbished" drive game any more, and I had to pay to order a new one from New Egg. So, now the computer will be out at least a week after the drive failure, and I'll still be faced after a week's down time with rebuilding the programs and data.

But wait, it gets better. I've been working on my refurb (purchased 10/2007) D420 with 2 years of warranty left on it since my D630 went down. As "luck" would have it, the thing is suddenly getting scalding hot on the bottom near the vent, and my PC Card slot has failed, so that I can't get on my mobile broadband. Looks like the darned motherboard on this one is going, and I have to send it into the depot, where I'll likely get more of their "refurbished" (read, "used") parts. 7-10 business days for this one, and now I have no computer, can't use my primary programs, and I've lost tons of data.