Shitty title I know. I don’t care, it’s what Oxycodone was made for… Right?
Regardless, I decided to call Verizon and see if I could return this bloody brick of a netbook to a Verizon store, instead of playing the FedEx game back and forth. Seems I could, bad news is it was on other side of island towards Kihei and Kahului.
Verizon Store Kahului @ Dairy Rd. is a bit of a mess, and the ‘greeter’s aka herders do the best they can, but at least 3 times during having Glenn work on the Netbook we had 3 assholes interrupt reminding us ‘oh we were in line’, to which Glenn replied ‘yes sir you’re next in queue, you can check the monitor in there..’, etc. It was a small crowded store so there was overlap.
Regardless, unphased during the process, Glenn acutally understood the S.M.A.R.T mechanism on the HDD and pronounced it dead upon booting. Fucking closure. Thank you. I wasn’t going through 3 tiers of tech support handed off to Bangladesh to have to fake going through redundant tasks with the techs, before it was called dead. Glenn checked inventory and apparently they had just got in the new batch of Netbooks. Amazing.
Few new things I’ve noticed: Spiffy new Intel Atom inside sticker sported, that the first Netbook did NOT. Also, HP tools setup while Windows was started, and in the GUI at system boot, they didn’t come pre-loaded. This was also a change. So far the system boots faster, seems more agile, and has 100% less HDD failure! Maybe this is secret revision B, or 002, or just has a few bug fixes?
Still kicking myself in the ass for getting this originally the day it came out, but I’ve got high hopes for this second machine.
Can’t wait to see how this Netbook 1151NR finally performs. It’s about bloody time.
Big thanks to Glenn in Tech Support at the Verizon Store in Kahaului, HI. I would’ve returned and canceled contract otherwise… I was that angry. He saved me as a customer. Promote him, in the very least. He knows his shit, period. Should be managing the store, not just in the Technical Support department.
