"Hello, thank you for calling Compaq. I barely speak English. Let me help you fix something."

Well, once again, the good people at Compaq have proven to me that they make once of the worst products on the market. Let me start this story from the beginning:

Last April, right around finals, my computer literally just turned off on me; the screen just went black, would not turn on, anything. I took it down to the tech support guys at the college, and they took the thing apart to try and reset the BIOS (whatever that is). No dice. They eventually told me to get in touch with Compaq and, since its still under warranty for another year, get them to look at it. So I basically had to eat my ass and redo all the finals work I had on it on school computers.

When I get home from school, I send it the computer to Compaq. They send it back in three days, which I find a little suspicious, but it worked so it was ok. Fast forward a week later, computer just shuts off again. Once again send it to Compaq. They send it back to me. It doesn't work out of the box.

I call them and tell Ali Baba on the other end that this is bullshit, what's the point of having the computer under warranty if it just means you get to play tag with a broken computer? He assures me that it is a hard drive problem and they will send me a new one, free of charge.

I get the hard drive, install it. Doesn't work. Call back. Turns out I need 7 CDs to get it to work again. They tell me they have to be burned with my computer's specifications on them, that it'll take a week.

Three weeks later, no disks. This time I called the corporate office in Washington state and talk to an American. I eventually get my disks, and the computer works fine.

This was about a month and a half ago. Took it to tech support this morning, and they told me it might be a hardware problem. Yay.

Dad is sending me the disks so I can see if I can do it myself. I bet it won't work.

So at the end of this, I end up with a computer breaking on average every month and makeup work to do on top of all my other work. But on the plus side I'm almost fluent in Hindi from talking to Compaq help techs, who are outsourced to India who tell me their name is "Robert" when I know its really Raqib Ishtar.

Someone give me a computer.