My faithful Ferrari has been chugging along merrily for a year, following me almost everywhere, and keeping up with the latest fashions in Ubuntu Linux (amd64).

Suddenly, while I was busy reading some lecture slides, cramming for an exam earlier this month, it crashed. Odd. Reboot.

BEEP BEEP BEEP

Hmm. Badly seated RAM? Try a quick re-seat.

BEEP BEEP BEEP

To cut a long overly-geeky story short, it seemed temperature-related. It would run for ~20 mins and then crash. And after that while still warm, it wouldn’t turn on without giving the beeps of death.

Aha! It’s Just as well I bought a 3yr warranty, thinks tumbleweed, otherwise I’d be in a bit of a bind. The laptop is 14months old now - what good thinking! < pats self on back />

Not so fast. Acer informs me that my 3yr warranty isn’t valid in South Africa (as I’d been assured it was when I bought it). They also accused me of grey-importing my laptop. Sure, I spend most of my time in South Africa, but surely I can get my employers to buy me hardware in the country they exist in?

I was quoted over R6000 to get it repaired. For that price I could fly to London, (with the help of youth fares) get an in-warranty-repair and have a quick holiday to boot. Rude letter writing time… (I’ll add the letter as soon as I’ve vetted it for the spammy world of the web)

I faxed it off to the EU HQ, as well as the local office, and waited.